The FDIC was created in 1933 by the Glass-Steagall Act, and provides $100,000 of deposit insurance to checking and savings deposits. “Bank panics” used to be fairly common, and the FDIC was intended to instill confidence in the banking system after the Great Depression. The most recent big failure, that of California bank IndyMac, will cost the FDIC between $4 and $8 billion, and they estimate that about $1 billion of IndyMac’s deposits are “potentially uninsured,” meaning that the depositors had more than $100,000 on deposit. So what does a bank run look like these days?

Well, we took a peak at the Library of Congress’ photo collection and we realized that a bank run in 1912 looks a lot like a bank run in 2008, even though a much higher percentage of the modern day depositors will be leaving with smiles on their faces and their money in their pockets. Some things never change.

Photos: (Library of Congress, Run on East Side Bank, N.Y. 2/16/12)
(AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

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