"I wouldn't trust the banks," said Carey, who keeps her savings at credit unions. "I'd be afraid of them. Look at the money they gave to the builders and the terrible situation we're in now."
It isn't easy for retail depositors such as Carey to move funds abroad. In Ireland, there has been some shift to units of foreign banks operating in the country. RaboDirect, the Irish online-banking unit of Utrecht, Netherlands-based Rabobank Group, saw deposits rise about 40 percent in 18 months, according to General Manager Roel van Veggel.
Tax Avoidance
While the implosion of Irish banks led the government to seek an EU bailout, in Greece the state's finances collapsed first. Now Greek lenders are feeling the pain because they own about 40 billion euros of their government's sovereign debt. If they have to take losses of 40 percent or more on those bonds, it would wipe out all the capital held by the country's banks, the European Commission estimated in July. Greek government bonds are already discounted by 60 percent in the secondary market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In addition to fearing a drachma conversion, some affluent Greeks are moving money out of the country to avoid having their bank accounts become targets for tax collectors, said Antonio Ramirez, an analyst at KBW Inc. in London.
"As the government starts looking for revenue, starts fighting tax evasion, wealthy families move their money out," said Ramirez, who covers Greek, Irish and Portuguese banks.
That dynamic is also at work in Italy, according to Carlo Alberto Carnevale-Maffe, a professor of business strategy at Milan's Bocconi University. Deposits at Milan-based Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, Italy's second-biggest bank by assets, fell 4.4 percent in the year ended in June.
'Under the Mattress'
"People are moving deposits into safe goods such as gold and safety-deposit boxes," Carnevale-Maffe said. "They're simply putting the money under the mattress to avoid taxes."
Intesa CEO Corrado Passera said on an Aug. 5 call that the decline was the result of a decision to discontinue some institutional funding and the sale of retail bonds.