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I have a dumb question that I thought of while reading an article about the SVB thing. Say you have $50 million in a savings account. You are really smart (or an idiot) and after doing your research you expect the entire banking system to collapse in a few weeks, and you want to take your money out and figuratively “stuff it under your mattress” (as in not just wire it to a different bank account). Is it possible to even do this? I know you can’t just walk into a bank branch and ask for your $50 million dollars, but say you informed them ahead of time, will they actually be able to give you $50 million in 100 dollar bills? If they can, will they deliver it to you in an armored car, or is it your problem to figure out what to do with it? Is there some way of dealing with this where the Fed will hold it for you in something like a “bank account”, or you can get some sort of government IOU so you don’t need to take it out of the banking system in cash?
The problem with your hypo is that if the entire banking system collapses, so does society, so the dollar bills themselves are worthless. The economy based on attenuated supply chains will break down. Center City apartments will become charnel houses under the strain of the famous trope about society being three meals from anarchy.
So the first thing you're looking for is to buy a ready-made isolated cabin with its own water supply and a relatively off-the-grid setup as far as electricity, heat, etc. You need a quick closing, cash offer, two weeks. Then see how many pallets of these CostCo will deliver in a hurry. You're going to overpay, because you need this done now, don't haggle over $100k and lose the whole $50mm. I recommend the North, far North, if you're handy with a chainsaw (buy a bunch of those too, electric will actually be easier to keep fueling than gas at a certain point) you can heat your house with wood, and a depression will see hordes wandering South where it's warm as it becomes harder to heat your home on broken supply chains.
The most practical way to cash out the rest of your $50mm is to buy something with it. Gold, for example, but anything else physical and storable and useful, is going to be better than literal banknotes in an emergency. Personally, ammo in a mix of 9mm, .223, and 22lr would be my first pick for a diversified "The Entire Fucking Banking System Collapses" portfolio. Ideally, take your weeks, and bury the gold and ammo in big plastic bins throughout your newly acquired woods.
Assuming the banking system, for some reason, doesn't collapse, you're probably going to take a big haircut if you have to get that stuff back to cash. Certainly the rush/freight shipping is going to brutalize you. What do we think, team, 20%? 25%? I don't think more than a third.
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