Crisis Coverage: FDIC Rumors

It appears today's market activity and the news regarding Merrill, Lehman and AIG has spiked an interest in my earlier post about the safety of financial institutions.  I read on the tape today that one economist was emphasizing bank failures and the possibility of the FDIC running out of the reserves used to insure deposits up to $100,000.  Let us examine this possibility from a rational perspective:

What is Money?

I had an exchange with a commenter in the thread after my post about the Fed.  Seems he saw a video (the link is in the thread, I don't really recommend that anyone waste 47 minutes of their valuable time watching the thing) called 'Money as Debt' by Paul Grignon, a Canadian gentleman who is all up in arms about the concept of fiat money, especially of the type known as credit money.