S&P 500, Dow Jones Global ex-US, Gold, Bloomberg Commodity Index returns exclude reinvested dividends (gold does not pay a dividend) and the three-, five-, and 10-year returns are annualized; and the 10-year Treasury Note is simply the yield at the close of the day on each of the historical time periods.
Sources: Yahoo! Finance; MarketWatch; djindexes.com; U.S. Treasury; London Bullion Market Association.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. N/A means not applicable.
IS MY MONEY SAFE? The run on a California bank brought the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan to mind. If you’re a fan of It’s A Wonderful Life, you probably remember the scene where George and Mary Bailey distribute their honeymoon savings to make sure the Building and Loan remains solvent. George explains to the townspeople:
“You're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The, the money's not here.
Well, your money's in Joe's house...that's right next to yours. And in the Kennedy House, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and, and a hundred others. Why, you're lending them the money to build, and then, they're going to pay it back to you as best they can.”
While banking is not that simple or straightforward, programs are in place to protect depositors.
For example, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures up to $250,000 in qualifying accounts at FDIC-insured banks per depositor. If you have accounts at multiple FDIC-insured banks, each account may be insured up to the maximum. (In many cases, depending on how various accounts are titled, more than $250,000 may be insured at a single FDIC-insured institution.)
Last week, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC augmented FDIC protections by introducing the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP). The program offers one-year loans to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions.
Participants in the program, “can pledge their assets such as bonds and mortgage-backed securities at par, or the value at which they were originally issued, instead of market value, giving banks a greater borrowing capacity since bond prices have fallen” reported Karishma Vanjani of Barron’s. The measure makes it possible for banks to avoid selling long-dated bonds at a loss when depositors withdraw money.
Federal Reserve officials indicated the BTFP provides enough financial support to protect all of the deposits in the United States, reported Craig Torres and Christopher Condon of Bloomberg.
Weekly Focus – Think About It
“The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.”
—Benjamin Graham, father of value investing
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