>"you should see what happened to a financial system in the bad old days, when there were banks but no deposit insurance, and there would sometimes be a run on

>"you should see what happened to a financial system in the bad old days, when there were banks but no deposit insurance, and there would sometimes be a run on the banks, and they lose all their customers' cash, and the shock waves ripple through the whole economy." It is my understanding that there was never a run on a solvent bank; runs were the consequences of bank failures, not the causes of them. It should also be pointed out that most bank failures were clearly caused by so-called 'unit banking', where the government prohibited banks from having multiple branches in diverse areas. Less-regulated banks (such as those in Canada and Scotland) suffered fewer failures, and had no issues with runs.