Yes, sometimes you can survive a crisis by just waiting till better times come. The question is only how long you have to wait and if they come at all (like in Zimbabwe)

" Also, AFAIK, never in the FDIC's history has it failed to cover eligible deposits in any FDIC insured U.S. bank that failed "

but that means nothing? You can't feel assured just because it's never happened in the past. We are in totally uncharted waters with all the debt around the world and FDIC has never before had to work in an environment where the country is $18 trillion plus in debt.

Oooooh, what big numbers. Soooo scary.

it looks much scarier on the clock which now says more than $20 Trillion

http://www.theusdebtclock.com/

That clock is running way fast showing a debt of over $20T which would be news for a week once it occurs....that website ought to time-sync it's clock.

Here a better clock showing the U.S. national debit and a bunch of of categories of debt.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

It shows the national debt at 18T

Re the late 90s, it's kind of hard to find clear reports from farang bank depositors in Thailand at the time, in terms of what happened to those who had deposits in the various Thai banks that failed. Obviously, not all of the Thai banks did totally fail in terms of being liquidated.

Of the few first-hand accounts I've seen, people did get their money back eventually, but it may have taken a couple of years for that to happen. And during that period, the accounts people had with the failed banks were effectively frozen, meaning they totally lost access to whatever funds had been in those accounts.

That was under the OLD Thai system, which really was an ad hoc, on the fly response to that crisis. Today, under the Thai DPA, if a Thai bank were to fail, the DPA's regulations call for funds to be restored within a matter of a few months, depending on exactly how their process plays out. But as I said above, the DPA process here has yet to be tested in real life, AFAIK.