These companies are afraid the banks will steal there money. Wow pretty scary stuff. Guess they think Obama and Barney Frank will take it. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aUKEnvfqLumY
I think that this article was illustrating the problem of finding safe places to put a large amount of cash. What are you going to do, spread your 40 billion around to different banks, with the low FDIC insurance limits? That would be 160,000 different financial institutions, each insuring a 250K chunk of your massive wad. Not a reality. Properly illustrates the proplem of finding safe places to put huge amounts of money.....they're too few and far between. Alot of people will gladly take a paltry yield on US govt securities, as a safe spot to park large amounts of cash.
XOM has its cash in govt securities??? You know they gotta be squirming with all this money-printing, dollar-devaluing, foreign countries raising concerns, going on. If, (and its a big IF), the US actually defaulted as a country, would the cash reserves be wiped out ? That is a very scary thought.