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Another Bank Run Underway

mayk from their web site:
While interest payments and the face value payment at maturity are guaranteed by the Commonwealth Government, it is possible for capital gains or losses to be made if Bonds are sold prior to maturity.

if they default where are all in de.p sh.t
 
my old man closed his $150k bankwest account today as well and moved to commonwealth. interesting times.

Bankwest has a very high credit rating, A+, which means your old man's money was as safe as it was in any other bank of the big 4, at least for the next couple of years. At the moment Bankwest offers the highest interest rate , so it is actually the best chance to make some easy money with nearly zero risk.
 
OK...so you think the risk pretty high? Why?
The risk doesn't have to be pretty high to be far from zero. Checkout the credit ratings of a random sample of 5 banks just before they went over the cliff. All it needs is a sniff of blood and there is a piranha fest these days.
 
credit ratings don't mean anything anymore, and bankwest are being offloaded by hbos so there is uncertainty. when things settle down the money can always be shifted back, everyone has their own personal level of defensive paranoia so whatever works.

theres plenty of 50's somethings who were (note: were) planning to retire on their superannuation soon but not any more, it just goes to show you can't trust anyone or anything, and your best bet for survival is to control your own financial destiny.
 
OK...so you think the risk pretty high? Why?
Echoing rub92me's comments, I don't think the risks are "high".

But bank deposits outside of a few very conservative institutions are a hell of a lot more risky than appreciated.
 
mmm....Thanks for all your opinions which make good sense, but I am confident that Bankwest is going to be safe. The key question mark here would be "whether HBOS will collapse?" If it does, Bankwest will sink with it. However, HBOS is just too big to collapse, and under current circumstances, HBOS will definitely be swallowed by Lloyds TSB, which means Bankwest will be backed up by one of the largest bank corporations in the world.
Futhermore, Bankwest is tightly regulated by APRA. It will not make sense that it will be in trouble anytime soon.
The only thing that I don't quite understand is what sort of impact it would be if it was sold to another financial institution. Will it make the deposits more secure or worse?
 
But for the sake of some basis points of income, is it worth the risk? Who knows what the government would do if a bank got in trouble, but at the moment it is under no obligation to do anything.

What I do think is that if Bankwest failed and there was no bailout - there would be a newspaper headline or two and some ACA and Today Tonight stories about the poor people that lost all their money and a shot of an old couple that lost their entire retirement savings etc. and the swag of businesses that suffered or went broke etc. as well as the obligatory debate on whether the government should have stepped in or not etc.

But if CBA, Westpac, ANZ or NAB went bust and the government decided not to enact a bailout there would be rioting in the streets and all hell would break loose.

There is safety in numbers in being in a 'big four' bank account (if its an investment product or 'special account' offered by the bank it may not be a bank account and it may not even be an asset of the bank but of a related or subsiduary institution so fine print is important - as Opes clients found out). Out of the our banks I'd probably favour CBA or WBC over ANZ or NAB.

If there were ever a situation where the government had to choose between a bankwest and one of the majors it would favour the majors.

(all that being said I think the government would work to enact some sort of bailout if a bank did go bankrupt - at least for the first one or two that went under anyway ... not so sure about credit unions and building societies and these have gone broke in the past - I think it was Pyramid that went broke in the late 80's or early 90's).
 

quoted for truth. while following the herd isn't always a good idea, there is safety to be had in numbers.
 
Interesting topic. What are the thoughts on BEN/ADB?
Leveraged Equities are backed by ADB so wonder how secure
funds are with them also and whether the merger with BEN would
be beneficial at times like this.
Cheers
 

http://www.gracecheng.com/stocks/2008/10/10/market-summary-what-a-ride-and-bank-failures-too/
 
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html
 
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/history-united-states-bank-failures
 
right now after looking to the market situation every one is facing towards bank for withdrawing the money. Bank usually maintain CRR for that but if people comes in bulk then it is not possible to pay money to all the customer which raised rumors and panic all around.

This happens not only with this bank but with all banks in the world...............
 
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