Saturday, April 17, 2010

Greek Running

I found an article, via Marginal Revolution, on Greek bank runs. In the EMU, you can withdraw your money from your country's banks and deposit it in another EMU country and still do business. The article discusses deposit insurance as a way to curb banks runs. If citizens don't view the insurance as credible, though, the insurance will fail to prevent a bank run. One factor that determines credibility would be GDP. If the country's income isn't large enough to cover the amount of deposits along with it's other expenses, how will insurance work? Ohio had a deposit insurance scheme as recently as 1985, and it failed. And the best line in the article: "...in 1985 and even today, Ohio's GDP is larger than that of Greece."

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