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The day the Dow fell 777 points, David Latham, a 45-year-old Alabama cattle farmer and electrician, was busy doing errands. Driving his Chevy pickup into Montgomery, he dropped by the hardware store, then stopped into the bank, where he withdrew $8,000 from his CD account, all in 20s. Back home, he slipped the four inch-thick bundles into a Ziploc bag, popped them into a waterproof PVC tube and set out for a remote location on his 300-acre property, where he dug a deep hole with a post digger. And then he buried his money.
Is there an American alive who hasn’t considered burying his savings—or at least stashing it in the mattress—as this financial crisis has deepened? Latham assumes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will step in if his bank collapses, but he figures it might take a few weeks to get his money. Now, he says, “I can get my hands on cold, hard cash anytime I want.” But beyond that, there’s the nagging fear that the world isn’t as secure as we’d like to believe. Latham says the $8,000 is an insurance policy against, well, who knows? “I’m hedging my bets,” he says.
America’s uneasy relationship with banks has deep roots. Between the financial panic of 1837 and the Great Depression, the nation endured six widespread bank failures in which millions lost their savings. The bank runs typically started in rural areas before spreading to the cities, accounting for the lingering distrust country folks have for banks to this day. “In some ways, it really was wiser to put your money in the ground,” says Dartmouth history professor Ronald Edsforth. Given this history and the current panic, he adds, “It’s not unusual that it would resurface...
Dig It: These People Are Burying Their Cash at SmartMoney.com
Is there an American alive who hasn’t considered burying his savings—or at least stashing it in the mattress—as this financial crisis has deepened? Latham assumes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will step in if his bank collapses, but he figures it might take a few weeks to get his money. Now, he says, “I can get my hands on cold, hard cash anytime I want.” But beyond that, there’s the nagging fear that the world isn’t as secure as we’d like to believe. Latham says the $8,000 is an insurance policy against, well, who knows? “I’m hedging my bets,” he says.
America’s uneasy relationship with banks has deep roots. Between the financial panic of 1837 and the Great Depression, the nation endured six widespread bank failures in which millions lost their savings. The bank runs typically started in rural areas before spreading to the cities, accounting for the lingering distrust country folks have for banks to this day. “In some ways, it really was wiser to put your money in the ground,” says Dartmouth history professor Ronald Edsforth. Given this history and the current panic, he adds, “It’s not unusual that it would resurface...
Dig It: These People Are Burying Their Cash at SmartMoney.com
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