The Fed would earn 25 basis points on the deposits (by avoiding interest payments on bank reserves), although the FDIC would lose 20 basis points of deposit insurance premiums.

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Since mid-2004, American interest rates have risen by three percentage points, while Chinese deposit rates have barely changed.

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Risking stock ownership for a 1.90 dividend yield does not look so bad when bank deposit rates are in single digit basis points.

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To make up for the lost revenue, banks will need to improve their deposit margins by only 0.3 percentage points, Mr Meleis calculates.

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In morning media coverage, CNBC points out that this is below the deposit insurance threshold and that senior bondholders were skipped.

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CreditSights, a research firm, points out that the bank's deposit growth has been stagnant: deposits at its checking accounts grew only 1% in the second quarter compared with the year before, even though the bank has expanded hugely in the meantime.

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On Thursday, the European Central Bank cut its official deposit rate for overnight lending to the central bank by 50 basis points, to 1.0%, below its 2.5% benchmark rate, in an attempt to wean banks off the safety of its vaults and thus stimulate interbank lending.

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