Recent bank failures have required the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to make payments to depositors. The FDIC is called in when a bank fails and can't give depositors the cash in their bank accounts. A lot of focus has been on the limits of FDIC insurance, so that depositors are protected. But there hasn't seemed to be as much focus on the actual ability of the FDIC to pay claims.

Bankrate.com has a nice article about the FDIC and how it works. The agency is funded with insurance premiums paid by banks for the coverage on their deposits. Can the FDIC run out of money to pay depositors? Yes, the agency could be giving out more than it's bringing in from insurance premiums. But if that happens, the FDIC can borrow money which would be paid back via future collections of insurance premiums paid by banks.

Funds at the FDIC are currently lower than legally allowed. The law requires it to have $1.15 on hand for every $100 of insured deposits sitting in banks. Currently, it has only $1.01 for every $100 of insured deposits. How will this difference be made up? The agency is trying to raise insurance premiums for 2009, so that increase along with a hope that other banks don't fail (further depleting cash reserves) will help the FDIC bring its cash balance back up.

I live in Portland, Oregon, and a lot of my friends have accounts with Washington Mutual, given its roots in the Pacific Northwest (WaMu was founded in Seattle over 100 years ago). Most of my loved ones' accounts aren't anywhere close to FDIC limits. But I've been getting the question almost every day: Should I take my money out of WaMu?

[Update, September 25, 10:30 p.m.: Tonight's takeover of Washington Mutual by J.P. Morgan may negate this advice; tellingly, $16.7 billion of your deposits were taken out in the past 10 days.]

We now have a "Dirty Dozen."

This weekend, Ameribank Inc. failed -- the 12th bank this year. And trust us, it won't be the last.

We don't expect this to be as bad as the nearly 900 banks that went under from bad loans in the early 1990s during the S&L crisis. That's right -- in case you've forgotten (or, gasp, aren't old enough to remember!), we've been through this before and apparently the Wall Street money guys didn't learn a damn thing the first time around!

I love the idea of a 100 year crash. It makes the market seem mysterious and inexorable, a force of nature that is completely uncontrollable.

Hearkening to the image of the 100 year flood or the 17 year locust, the 100 year crash seems to make sense. After all, seasons go in cycles, oceans rise and recede, and it seems natural to assume that our economy's cycles of expansion and recession would hit the occasional neap tide, resulting in massive growth or massive reduction. Best of all, the 100 year crash gives us the idea that financial crises are nobody's fault: they are part of an eternal process, like the movement of Apollo's chariot across the heavens or the seasonal chill caused by Persephone's return to Hades.

It isn't all that hard to figure out how the idea of the 100 year crash came about. Right now, we are a few weeks away from the 101st anniversary of the 1907 stock market crash; a couple of weeks after that, we will have the 79th anniversary of Black Sunday, the crash that signaled the start of the Great Depression.

In keeping with the trend of shutting down banks late on Friday afternoon, the tenth shutdown of the year occurred on Friday. Integrity Bank of Alpharetta was closed by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance. Why Fridays? It gives officials a couple of days to assess things and prepare for dealing with consumers.

$974 million in deposits at Integrity will be taken over by Regions Bank of Birmingham. The FDIC is reporting that it will end up paying out an estimated $250 million to $350 million for insured deposits.

Why another bank failure? It's said that this one can be blamed on the real estate market. Integrity specialized in real estate lending and grew quickly, but as soon as the real estate market got sketchy the problems started. Late last year there was a management shakeup and the bank was delisted from the Nasdaq market early in 2008.

Another week, another bank failure. Columbia Bank of Topeka, Kansas became the 9th bank to fail so far this year. You can read all the gory details here, but we want to focus your attention on just one number: $46 million.

$46 million was held in accounts at Columbia Bank that will NOT be covered by FDIC insurance. Most likely because those accounts were over the $100,000 FDIC limit. That's a lot of people losing a lot of money-money that, like you, they probably thought was safe in their bank. That's a lot of hard work, retirement dreams and college tuition payments that just went up in smoke!

Look, the banking industry is facing some serious trouble right now and we expect more failures ahead. (There are 90 banks sitting on the FDIC "trouble" list right now.) Don't let this happen to you and your loved ones.

Understanding how FDIC insurance works and taking a few simple steps to making sure you are playing by those rules can save you tremendous heartache should your bank fail. So, please take a few minutes now to be absolutely sure your money is safe.

Just watch our video below for a simple explanation of the rules and the steps you should take to protect the maximum amount of money possible.

Is your bank safe? Let personal finance experts Ken and Daria Dolan show you how to get the answer at Dolans.com. Plus learn 5 things you need to know if your bank fails.

After customers of the bank formerly known as IndyMac waited in blistering heat to get their life savings out of the bank many are finding out that the piece of paper they just got may not help them out so much after all. The LA Times reports that WaMu is placing an 8 week hold on checks issued from IndyMac. Other area banks are also placing partial holds on funds coming from IndyMac but to a much lesser extent.

There is no excuse for WaMu to place an 8 week hold on a check from a federal insured and currently FDIC controlled bank even if they do claim it is to prevent forged checks. The acting chief of IndyMac in Pasadena has a similar sentiment, and is contacting other local institutions to try and smooth the process. Wells Fargo is another bank who has placed extended holds on funds coming from IndyMac but these holds only apply to a portion of deposits over $5,000 and should be released into the account within 9 days.

These partial holds are pretty common when you make a large deposit at an institution even when the money comes from a reputable source. The last time I had to deal with a large check the funds were dispersed into my account over the course of a week, with a small portion being available immediately.

If you are upset by WaMu's decision to place these exorbitant holds on your money, then simply walk across the street to another bank and find one that will take your hard earned money. Do you really want to settle for a bank that treats you like this on the first visit? Imagine what it will be like after you're already committed and breaking up is difficult! When you set up your new account make sure you take the right steps to keep all of your money under FDIC insurance.

The federal takeover of IndyMac bank has consumers worried. How do they protect their deposits and make sure they get their money back if they need or want it? This is a legitimate concern. After all, banks are supposed to be a safe place to put our money, aren't they?

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures deposits at banks or savings associations so that customers don't lose their money if a bank goes under. But believe it or not, most consumers do not know that there are limits to this insurance coverage.

The general coverage limit is $100,000 at any one bank. If a consumer has multiple accounts at one bank, but in total they exceed $100,000, they may not get all of their money back if the bank fails.

Is President Bush fishing around for something to do after he leaves office in January? Yesterday at a press conference he seemed to be trying out the job of dispensing personal finance advice. I know, I know, telling people how to save seemingly microscopic amounts of money seems so glamorous. The fancy financial calculators! The posh setting (your home!).

Other presidents have been tempted. If WalletPop were around in 1977, Jimmy Carter might have wanted to write a barn-burner post headlined Will a sweater lower your heating bills?

President Bush -- who learned from reporters in February that analysts feared gas was heading to $4 -- dropped quite a few money-saving and economy-stimulating tidbits into his press conference. As busy as he's been these last seven years, he's still moonlighted a bit, instructing Americans about the meaning of recession or the value of shopping.

Over the past weekend it was announced that IndyMac was being taken over by the FDIC after customers began a run on the bank, which had denied any solvency issues. Many customers had their life savings in the bank, whose accounts are protected by the FDIC, but not all of their funds were insured. In one instance a man had been told if he simply added the names of several relatives to his account the insurance amount would be increased to cover his deposits of over $300,000. Instead he found out that initially the FDIC will fully cover the insured funds but only cover uninsured deposits to the tune of 50%.

Hopefully things will work out for everyone -- even those whose accounts went over the insured limit. If you have over the insured amount in your current bank account I highly suggest you take the needed steps to make sure you are fully insured. This could be creating a joint account with your spouse to gain coverage up to $200,000 or it could be creating several trusts for your children in order to gain the protection they are entitled to as beneficiaries. If neither of these options work, spread out your money at other institutions. As my colleague Zac Bissonnette pointed out recently, most banks are offering the same services these days.

If you have enough money to be over the FDIC limit, you should really spend some time with someone who can provide an expert opinion on keeping your money safe as well as growing it. The FDIC provides an explanation of the protections afforded to different accounts as well as how your protection changes based on the beneficiaries of the accounts. If you are an IndyMac customer the FDIC has also set up a specific site to keep you up to date on the fate of your loans and deposits. While I'm not predicting a huge bank run in the near future, why not take a few minutes to make sure your savings are covered? The FDIC insurance is free so take advantage of it!

Ever since the explosion of IndyMac, we've been getting lots of e-mails from our readers, wondering, "just how safe is my money?" As someone who doesn't hold even five figures in her bank account, I'm not at much risk of losing my (ahem) life's savings. But you're frightened, so let me answer some common questions about FDIC insurance for you:

• What kind of accounts are insured? Checking, savings, money market deposit and certificate of deposit accounts; also, some kinds of retirement accounts, including IRAs and Keogh accounts.
• How does the $100,000 limit work? If you hold any combination of accounts at one bank -- checking, savings, CDs, whatever -- your accounts are added together for insurance purposes. The only way to get past the $100,000 limit is if you have an IRA or certain other kinds of retirement accounts; these accounts are insured up to $250,000.