Power Breakfast: Troubled banks quietly protect customers, Georgia jobless, water ruling, Supreme Court, health care

Here’s another interesting story out of the banking crisis — some institutions in danger of failing quietly helped customers protect their cash.

As Atlanta’s RockBridge Commercial Bank tumbled near collapse last fall, bank officials had more to worry about than saving their company, AJC reporter Paul Donsky writes.

The bank didn’t survive, but virtually all of its customers’ money did.

It’s a pattern that has held throughout Georgia’s banking crisis, Donsky reports. The state leads the nation in bank failures since 2008 with 30, but depositors have emerged relatively unscathed.

The biggest reason, of course, is that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures deposits up to $250,000 per account.

But even accounts exceeding that limit have largely escaped harm, Donsky writes. In many cases, all it took to insure all of a customer’s cash was for a second account to be opened, perhaps in a spouse’s name.

Also in the AJC:

• Georgia jobless rate at record high
• Court allows Georgia to appeal water ruling
• Census to hire 10,000 in area
• Delta expands private jet operation
• Georgia expects $608 million Medicaid deficit
• Bill planned to ease in-home care restrictions
• Bed Bath, Stein Mart coming to Alpharetta

In other media:

• Lobbyists get potent weapon in Supreme Court campaign finance ruling
• A new search for consensus on health bill
• Obama’s proposed bank rules sink stocks
• Google posts robust fourth quarter