Bank collapse is pretty rare. Even accounting for 2008, there’s now a de facto government insurance plan for banks. i.e. Too big to fail.

Banks collapse often in the US. There have been 63 since 2008 with over a billion in assets.

28 since 2010.

In germany unless you're with DBAG it's not clear the government would step in and save you.

8 US banks collapsed in 2017, as another example.

Wikipedia has a list of the specific banks, and most of the recent ones have been quite small.

e.g. The Farmers and Merchants State Bank of Argonia with about $34M in assets.

The FDIC has stepped in as expected with all of these, I believe.

Yes, but the FDIC equivalent in Germany is 100k, which doesn't help you if you're in the business of buying 30 year bonds (usually that's institution buying >10MM)

No one buys a 10 million dollar, 30 year bond from a bank with 34 million in assets.

It’s disingenuous to claim that all banks are equal in terms of capabilities, assets, or risk.

Agreed, but you certainly do it from a bank in Germany that isn't dbag. And if you're not dbag it's not such a sure thing that the government will come and save you.

Or say in the US, you'd buy that from US Bank, which isn't in the big 4 consumer, or top few commercial, and it could be let to fail.

It's still safer than a tiny bank, but it's not as safe as government bonds.

That's all it really boils down to - you pay a bit extra to get more safety.

You may be comfortable depositing $10MM in a US Bank reg D account, but I would not be.

Well actually for US Bank specifically I might because I know their business model is incredibly conservative. But replace that with another large but not big4 bank.