Same thing as if everyone stopped paying any type of loans. A shock to the banking system, potentially a collapse if the debt in question is a significant percentage of all debt. Many people would lose their savings.
And no don’t hope that bank owners would absorb the debt, they would just liquidate the bank in a bankruptcy wiping out everyone’s deposits.Edit: In most countries there’s also a deposit insurance scheme meant to cover cases of bank failure. But it can cover one or two banks failing, not all of them at once.
Many people would lose their savings.
In Germany, everyone is protected up to 100,000 €. So it would actually be a nice reset button where only the rich would “suffer”
Yeah except it’s backed up by the government. So if it all comes due with the exact same time the people are still paying that money either way.
Deposit guarantee schemes (DGS) reimburse up to a certain amount to compensate depositors whose bank has failed. A fundamental principle underlying DGS is that they are funded entirely by banks, and that no taxpayer funds are used.
It works by having a central fund to back the money that qualifies for the deposit guarantee, however said funds only contains 0,8% of covered deposits. Although this might seem small, this is still a large amount of capital (~40 billion euro), and should be able to cover all deposits during a major financial crisis (like 2008) according to this research (ECB funded).
