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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Big 5 banks have unlimited FDIC coverage because they're "too big to fail"

Less than one year! We had three banks fail—the second, third and fourth largest in our nation’s history—less than one year ago [1]!

None were TBTF, let alone big five. Every deposit was covered. I get that the headline reads hysterically to a lay reader, but less than one year!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_bank_failure...

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They were largest failures not largest banks failing.

Going by https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/lbr/current/ and JumpCrisscross's link, the banks that failed would have been around ~16th largest US bank at the time of failure. I don't know how large Washington Mutual was at the time failure compared to other banks, but just doing straightforward inflation adjustment would put it at #10, and I suspect it's closer to #5 or #6.

> were largest failures not largest banks failing

Correct. The comment I responded to claimed unlimited coverage was limited to the Big 5. We're less than a year from non-TBTF (we let them fail for god's sake) non-big-five banks (a) failing and (b) receiving unlimited depositor coverage.

On paper, yes. Which is why I also said:

> That said, the FDIC ignored their playbook and rules to try to calm things down last March.

There's the SOP and there's what they did, there was no relation between the two which means we have no clue what they might do next time.

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