Yes but I don’t perceive them as a “major US bank”. I was expecting that term to mean the largest banks for typical consumers like Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Chase. Everbank is small, and GS is mostly an investment bank rather than a retail bank.

This isn’t accurate. A fintech’s own money (as opposed to customer funds) may have low insurance. But if set up properly, those customer funds can have pass through FDIC insurance. See https://www.fdic.gov/financial-institution-employees-guide-d...

However this apparently doesn’t protect you from the failure of the third party, which is what is unexpected. If you look at this bulletin the FDIC put out after the Synapse incident, they’re basically claiming they aren’t stepping in because a bank hasn’t failed. A fintech that isn’t the bank, but has records of what’s at the bank, failed.

https://www.fdic.gov/consumer-resource-center/2024-06/bankin...

Personally, I find the explanation to be pretty weak - what does pass through insurance even mean then? Does every fintech startup need to also directly be a bank - if so that’s a huge barrier to entry and basically gifts incumbents with regulatory capture. If the money is in an FDIC protected account, it should be safe. It does not make sense to me that they would step in for Silicon Valley Bank’s failure, but not in this situation.

One weird part of the situation is that it seems the underlying bank does not have records about each customer and their numbers. To me that seems negligent on the part of the underlying bank. Surely they knew about this arrangement of pass through insurance and the need to protect funds. They should have maintained separate accounts for each client of the third party service. Regardless of negligence it seems the FDIC is trying to make this record keeping a requirement: https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2024/fdic-proposes-...

> J6 was an insurrection that should have been appropriately responded to with immediate and overwhelming national guard force (not necessarily lethal), not a protest.

This is incorrect. It wasn’t an insurrection but also not a legally protected protest. It was a riot. No one has been charged with insurrection, let alone convicted for it. That word has only been used by news media, politicians, and private citizens. The most serious charge was seditious conspiracy but only a few people (like five) were charged with that. Most of the charges were for simple trespassing since most people on the Capitol grounds were not involved in any conspiracy and weren’t violent or destructive either.

> At a real major US bank, I was getting 4.65% in my savings account at this same time.

Was that in a CD, or in an account with a big minimum? Most major banks did not offer such a rate in a generic mass market liquid savings product.

Neobanks and other third parties can legitimately have pass through FDIC insurance: https://www.fdic.gov/financial-institution-employees-guide-d...

The problem is that the FDIC isn’t stepping in because they claim they can only do so when there is a bank failure, not a failure at the third party. So they’re claiming that clients of the third party have to go through the bankruptcy proceedings, rather than just getting covered by the FDIC, whereas most clients are expecting the FDIC to protect funds in all situations not just a “bank failure”: https://www.fdic.gov/consumer-resource-center/2024-06/bankin...

Another problem is that in some of these setups, the third parties are not managing separate accounts for each client at the underlying bank. So the underlying bank is not maintaining records that track each client’s separate funds. To me that seems odd and I would expect neobanks to track those numbers themselves but also for the underlying bank to do so. The FDIC is working on making that a hard requirement: https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2024/fdic-proposes-...