Loan

AFTER taxes this year, I found myself in the curious position

of having a decent-sized refund and absolutely no idea what do with it.

See, I’m one of the hundreds of millions of Americans without a degree in finance. I also live in a state where foreclosures are high

and 14 community banks have closed since the economic crisis began. If you look, you can see the seams tearing — empty houses and vacant stores beginning to rot because their owners have lost their shirts, the cost of using public transportation going up,and Atlanta’s property taxes being raised just to keep from having to close more fire stations.

No doubt we all have heard people saying it’s time to get out, especially after that tax increase was announced, but where are they going to go? California? The GoverNATOR just essentially rendered Cali BANKRUPT. Who is going to buy their houses?

They’re stuck.I know I’m one of the lucky ones: I have a spouse, a child, a dog, a car, a mortgage and, thankfully, I still have a job. And all I want is to grow — or at least, not shrink — my nest egg.

Easy? Not easy. Not when you add the rest of the story:

The country’s soaring deficit is making the dollar less valuable. State budgets are collapsing...

...If I were rich, none of this would matter. If I were poor, none of this would matter. But

this recession is an absurd kind of middle-class-only limbo. So in an attempt to salvage my economic status I spent a couple of

days calling and visiting banks around the state, asking them why I should bank with them. It didn’t help.

“Aren’t most of the same folks who started this mess the ones working on fixing it?” I kept wondering. “Aren’t those bad loans

still out there? Why isn’t anybody talking about the 45 banks that have closed in the United States this year? Is your bank safe?”

Most people I met scoffed or shrugged when I asked my questions. Almost all parroted the line that my money was covered by

the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It seemed this was the best they could do, but finally a few bankers sat down with me and assured me that they hadn’t made risky loans, hadn’t needed bailout money, that their institutions were stable and drama-

free.

Which is how I ended up using my nest egg to buy a couple of low-interest certificates of deposit. By low, I mean abysmally low.

But in the most stable, most conservative places I could find — Georgia Federal Credit Union and an Atlanta branch of the Royal

Bank of Canada.

However, I still felt a fool to believe anything anybody in the banking industry told me about making, not losing, money; so my

anxiety-fueled mind kept churning. Where does the F.D.I.C. get all that money to do its insuring? Does it have a vault with enough cash in it to cover everybody?According to its Web site, F.D.I.C. funds come from premiums paid by banks (that have no money) and from interest on its own investments in securities at the Treasury.

Can’t I cut out the middleman and deal with the Man myself? Lo and behold! It turns out, I can. No intermediaries, just me and Uncle Sam. All I have to do is open a free account at the Treasury’s Web site. Hey, it’s as good a deal as any to be had at the banks, and it’s safer. I can invest my dollars directly into the busy goings-on of the government. I can buy and sell securities. I can be my own F.D.I.C.

Marc Fitten, the editor of The Chattahoochee Review, is the author of the novel “Valeria’s Last Stand.”