Confessions of a 'Buy Gold' Promoter, 2008
"I was finding it a little hard to breathe," gasps columnist John Authers in the Financial Times, confessing his own memories of the week few will ever forget."There was a bank run happening, in New York's financial district. The people panicking were the Wall Streeters who best understood what was going on."
"People are starting to question the wisdom of investing in banks and building societies," one gold buyer explained right in the middle of the 2008 crisis."[The UK Government] has said it will guarantee individual savings accounts...but if it all goes terribly wrong does the government stand a chance of paying it back to everyone?"
"As it happened, I had a lot of cash in my bank account, at Citibank [from selling his flat back in London, apparently]. I was above the limit covered by US deposit insurance, so if Citi went bust, a once inconceivable event that I could now imagine, I would lose money for good."At lunch hour I headed to Citi, planning to take out half my money and put it into an account at the Chase branch next door. We were in midtown Manhattan...[and] I found a long queue, all well-dressed Wall Streeters...doing the same as me. [But] once I reached the relationship officer, who was great...she opened accounts for each of my children in trust, and a joint account with my wife."In just a few minutes I had quadrupled my deposit insurance coverage. I was now exposed to Uncle Sam, not Citi. With a smile she told me she had been doing this all morning. Neither she nor her friend [next door] at Chase had ever had requests to do this until that week."
"They suffered from the crash because the economy tanked – there was no way for them to avoid that. No consumer bank was allowed to fail. If they held stocks, they went down sharply in value, and then enjoyed a ten-year bull market. "