Depositors loan banks money. Of course they are investors. Debt investors. The deal was you had a government guarantee (well FDIC, a government corporation) up

Depositors loan banks money. Of course they are investors. Debt investors. The deal was you had a government guarantee (well FDIC, a government corporation) up until $250k, and anything past that was best effort. Typically, this effort involved finding a new private bank to guarantee the deposits. For amounts over the insured limit, typically there would be a delay. The whole "We're just going to loan the money and print it into existence and we're also going to do that for other banks and oh yeah we will charge every American account holder for it" is novel.