Bank accounts are insured up to $100,000. You'd get up to that back from the government per bank account.
Not really, you're insured up to 100K per person, per vesting, per bank-not per account. It can be structured to insure much more than 100K. That being said, FDIC only has 55B on reserve to cover banks that go under so getting that money could be a huge, time comsuming, pain in the ass. If you have money at WAMU, wachovia, or another bank that is looking bad, move it. BofA, Wells, and Citibank are in relatively good shape.
You can have $100K in a personal bank account, your wife can have $100K in her account, and you can have $100K in a joint account - all in the same bank - and they're all insured. That'd be up to $300K. If you have an LLC, you can get another $100K of insurance for a 4th account. A trust gets you another. A second LLC gets you another, and so on. Stuff for the rich to worry about if they want to keep their money in a bank. The real losers could be small businesses who might need access to more than $100K cash. Dunno what the feds would do if the $55B runs out, probably cover it. They don't seem to mind borrowing money that's going to take us decades to pay back or take on decades' worth of unfunded liabilities.
So if I only have like 3 thousand dollars in my bank account I should be fine, right? Nothing to worry about?
No. But like WarriorFan wrote, if your bank is at risk, better to move the money to a safer bank (BofA, Wells Fargo, etc.). Filing for and waiting for the FDIC insurance claim isn't going to be fun.
You are fine with Bank of America. As said above, BOA, Wells Fargo and Citi are the three major companies that are fine financially. WaMu is going under and I personally wouldn't be surprised if JP Morgan buys out Wachovia within a year.
You don't even live in the US, what are you worried about? How much money is in your wallet right now? Don't lie.
Someone isn't paying attention to the World lol The US crisis is affecting everywhere, especially the UK where we rely so much on the USA. Last year one of our major high street banks collapsed, a few days ago one of the biggest (HBOS) nearly collapsed and had to be taken over. We're in a crisis too, it doesn't just affect the USA.