By JANE J. KIM

As the financial system reels from one disaster after another, financial planners, estate planners and bank officials say they’ve been receiving calls from panicked savers concerned about the safety of their deposits.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. guarantees bank deposits up to $100,000 per person, per insured institution. But what if you have a lot more cash than that?

For years, savers have gotten around the FDIC’s $100,000 limit by spreading their cash across multiple institutions. It’s certainly safe, but it’s an onerous process. Now, growing numbers of people are turning to other means that allow them to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars safely stowed away under FDIC protection.

One product that has been attracting attention lately is an informal trust account known as a “payable on death,” or POD, account. To set up a POD account, depositors must name a beneficiary or beneficiaries who will receive money if the primary account holder dies. For each qualified beneficiary, the FDIC will boost insurance coverage by up to $100,000.

Other strategies include:

Brokered CDs. Buying multiple certificates of deposit at once through a brokerage firm provides a fast way to spread out money across different institutions, capturing the full FDIC protection.

In recent weeks, Dan Kohn of New York started using brokered CDs through Vanguard Group’s Vanguard Brokerage Services as a way to quickly spread out his money across different banks. He could probably find higher yields by searching for local deals, but brokered CDs provide a “mixture of convenience and safety,” says the 35-year-old Mr. Kohn, the chief operating officer of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of the Linux computer operating system. “I don’t want to set up eight new accounts.”

CDARS. This deposit-placement service, short for Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service, disperses deposits into different individual CDs of up to $100,000 each, up to a maximum covered amount of $50 million. Customers deposit their money with a participating bank, and CDARS — which is run by the Promontory Interfinancial Network LLC in Arlington, Va. — disperses the deposit in individual CDs up to $100,000 in 2,350 member banks across the country.

Retirement accounts. Money deposited in IRAs, Roth IRAs and certain other retirement plans is insured up to $250,000.

Joint accounts. Deposit accounts owned by two or more people are insured up to $100,000 for each account holder listed.

Credit unions. Deposit insurance for credit unions works in much the same way as FDIC insurance does for banks and thrifts, except that the funds are insured by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund.

Revocable trusts. Under this estate-planning strategy, the owner assigns beneficiaries but retains control of the assets during his lifetime. The FDIC insures the interests of each beneficiary up to $100,000 each. Some are formal trusts, which are typically set up by an estate attorney. Others, such as POD accounts, can be created when the account owners add certain terms and the names of the beneficiaries to the bank’s account records.

William Wright, a financial planner in Wichita, Kan., says he’s working with one client who has over $1 million at a local bank to move the money into other types of deposit accounts, such as trust and joint accounts, and products such as annuities.

On the basis of ease alone, POD accounts appear to be finding a larger audience lately. The FDIC doesn’t publish data on the number of these accounts, but the agency confirms it is getting more questions from consumers about how to set them up and has been seeing more of them on the books when it takes over banks after they fail. So far this year, there have been 11 bank failures, and 117 banks that were on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s “watch list” at the end of the second quarter.

Last spring, Robert Ring of Boise, Idaho, added his three children as beneficiaries to a money-market deposit account at IndyMac Bank. That meant his account, which totaled $300,000 at the time, was fully insured.

Thanks to that move, “it was a total nonevent for me” when IndyMac collapsed in July, says the 39-year-old software engineer. “I heard about the closure on a Friday afternoon, and all my money — about $150,000 at the time — was there the following Monday.” He’s also using PODs to protect money he’s parked in a savings account at Alliant Credit Union in Chicago.

For savers, PODs can be a quick way to extend their FDIC coverage without the hassle and paperwork of opening multiple accounts across several institutions. “It’s a convenience factor,” says Mr. Ring. “You can get your FDIC coverage by setting up accounts at six different banks, but that’s just a headache, come tax time, with all the extra paperwork and 1099s you have to wait for.”

POD accounts do come with certain limitations. For starters, only certain relatives count as qualified beneficiaries. Spouses, children, grandchildren, parents and siblings are OK. Nieces, nephews and grandparents aren’t. The depositor retains control of the account until his death, in which case the money is distributed to the beneficiaries.

When the POD account contradicts the depositor’s will, it can send family members to court to fight over the estate. Austin Frye, a financial planner and estate attorney in Aventura, Fla., says he’s seen cases where clients inadvertently disinherited their children in a POD account.

Mr. Frye recalls one case in which one of his clients had been added to his father’s CD to help manage the account. When the father died, the money in the CD went directly to that son — even though his will had specified that the money was to be split equally between the custodial son and another son who lived out of state.

“You could ruin your estate plan,” Mr. Frye says. “The courts are loaded with these cases.”

Geoff Sauter of Dover, Mass., says he got some conflicting advice on how to set up a POD account. Based on the advice of one representative at T. Rowe Price Group Inc., he decided to add his wife and three children to a CD to make sure his $400,000 was fully covered. A few days later, after his wife’s broker questioned that strategy, he called back the firm and spoke with a different person who told him his deposits weren’t fully covered. “So I panicked and started calling other people,” he says.

The 58-year-old engineering-firm salesman says T. Rowe Price eventually got back to him and told him that his money was, in fact, fully covered. “Apparently, there is some confusion in the industry,” he says.

“It’s unfortunate that in the course of several conversations, Mr. Sauter was given some conflicting information,” says Brian Lewbart, a spokesman for T. Rowe Price. “But in the end, we’re certainly pleased he ended up with the correct information.”

Despite the multitude of options, many savers still choose to spread their risk around by simply opening accounts at different banks. D.C. Harris, a retired accountant who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, had her money parked in a CD at Wachovia Corp. But worries about the solvency of that bank and others, such as Washington Mutual Inc., recently prompted her to put her savings in CDs at other banks, including Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank.

“I’m more scared than I’ve been in my life about our economy and our banks,” says the 65-year-old. “I’m thinking about moving my money to United Bank of the Mattress.”

Write to Jane J. Kim at jane.kim@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1

By JOSEPH DE AVILA

Michele Wallace had worked for Medialink Worldwide Inc. for 18 years when the New York video-distribution company laid her off last May. When the company’s information-technology staff quickly shut down her computer and her BlackBerry, the senior vice president of client services lost family photos and every personal and business contact on her cellphone and computer.

“I couldn’t even call my sister because I don’t know her number off the top of my head,” says Ms. Wallace, now a 47-year-old managing director at Mega Media Worldwide and living in Asbury Park, N.J. “I know you shouldn’t even have that stuff on the computer,” she says. But in the course of working 10- to 12-hour days for several years, “you don’t pay as much attention as to how much is personal on your computer.”

She’s still piecing together her contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn. (Medialink did not return calls for comment.)

As layoffs sweep across industries, employees’ personal information is winding up in the dustbin, as well. Most workers know better than to store personal files on their office computer. But employees who spend the majority of their time at the office often treat the company PC as their personal gadget, filling it with music, photos, personal contacts — even using the computer’s calendar to track a child’s soccer schedule. That makes it all the more distressing when a newly laid-off worker learns that his digital belongings are company property.

Most companies today have new hires sign electronic communications policies that generally state they have no rights to privacy or rights of ownership over the content on company computers. It doesn’t matter if those files are wedding photos or family phone numbers. “It still belongs to the company if it’s stored on a company-issued computer,” says Allison Brecher, director of information management and strategy and senior litigation counsel at consultants Marsh & McLennan Cos.

After someone quits or is laid off, a company will typically just delete those files, wiping a computer clean. In professions where communication between clients is important, like in sales or finance, companies might keep email correspondence for their records, says Jonathan Hyman, a partner at law firm Kohrman Jackson & Krantz PLL in Cleveland.

Earlier this year, Katie Morse was caught off-guard when she was laid off from a telecommunications company in Charlotte, N.C., where she worked in the marketing and communication department. After filling out paperwork and being briefed by her supervisors, she was escorted to her desk to collect her things. “Anything that was on my computer I didn’t have access to,” Ms. Morse, now living in Brooklyn, N.Y., says. “I honestly wish I was able to take my contacts with me.”

Companies often lock down computers and restrict access to email as soon as an employee is let go. “That could vary, but I think it’s safer to expect a harsh response,” says Janine Yancey, chief executive for emTRAiN, a human-resource training company.

Whether laid-off workers are allowed to retrieve personal files depends on the industry and the size of the business. “If you go into a bigger organization, they are going to implement a standard across the board,” which tends to be more restrictive, Ms. Yancey says. Smaller organizations may be more lenient. Some professions — brokers or financial advisers, for example — may be constrained by regulatory requirements with regards to the access they can give laid-off workers, Ms. Brecher says.

Companies often go to extreme lengths to protect themselves during layoffs. Some pore over their former employees’ emails, says Mr. Hyman. “If they think an employee has stolen anything, they will look for that,” he says. Companies fearing lawsuits from disgruntled former employees may have their IT department or an outside firm search through the emails, too, Mr. Hyman says.

From a business standpoint, companies that give laid-off workers access to work computers and email risk exposure to data theft, computer viruses and lost contact lists. “You don’t want somebody going in and downloading their whole contact base,” Ms. Yancey says. “That contact base belongs to the employer.”

A recent survey by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research group in Traverse City, Mich., found that nearly 60% of employees who lost or left jobs in 2008 stole company data. The survey polled 945 adults from several industries who were laid off, fired or changed jobs in 2008. Data that was taken included non-financial business information, customer contact lists and financial information.

While human resource consultants advise businesses to use caution when dealing with laid-off employees, some are more lenient. Michelle Liro had five weeks’ notice that she was being let go as director of marketing at a telecommunications company. This gave her time to hunt for a new job and move email contacts of friends and colleagues to Facebook and LinkedIn. She was also able to take digital copies of banner ad campaigns and Web site graphics she designed.

The company even let Ms. Liro keep her work laptop after they wiped clean all of the files and software. “It only makes sense for companies to work with their employees,” says Ms. Liro, of Holliston, Mass. “You really do want to leave on a positive note.”

At Laughlin Constable, a marketing company in Chicago, laid-off or fired employees have their computer access limited and email restricted as soon as they are notified that they will be let go, says Joyce O’Brien, executive vice president of human resources.

“About 70 percent of our employees ask to have something off of their computer” when they are laid off, Ms. O’Brien says. Requests for personal files are reviewed by the IT department, human resources and the chief financial officer, she says. The company tries to give back personal information to laid-off workers as long as it isn’t a sensitive termination, Ms. O’Brien says. The personal files are retrieved by the company.

Employees are better off assuming that their company will take a conservative approach, says James Bucking, an employment lawyer for Foley Hoag LLP in Boston.

Employees worried about their job security should review the forms they signed when they were hired. They should look at the company’s electronic communications policy, employee guidelines and non-compete agreements to make sure they understand everything properly. When employees sign these agreements, they should also make copies to save at home, too, Ms. Yancey says. Those that break these agreements risk being fired or sued by their employer, she adds.

You should also be aware that the contact information for business associates made during employment and stored on an office computer — or even a Rolodex — usually belongs to the company, Mr. Bucking says.

When Tony Scida was laid off recently from his proofreader position at a small advertising agency in Richmond, Va., he didn’t take any email contacts from his computer because he signed a non-compete agreement. That didn’t much matter. He found most of them on Facebook and LinkedIn, and can contact them there.

Write to Joseph De Avila at joseph.deavila@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1

By KAREN WILKIN

Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums/Artists Rights Society

Diego Rivera’s ‘Agrarian Leader Zapata’ (1931)

New York

In December 1931 a Diego Rivera retrospective opened here at the Museum of Modern Art, then just two years old and not yet located in its signature modernist building on 53rd Street. Rivera (1886-1957) was, at 45, a heroic figure, the best known of the “Mexican muralists” involved in the ambitious public-art program developed in the 1920s, following the Mexican Revolution. His fame apparently consoled museum trustees troubled by his leftist politics, but there were other challenges. Rivera’s most important works were immense, site specific and immovable. How to represent this acclaimed artist fully in a New York museum?

The solution: MoMA brought Rivera to New York six weeks early, to execute a specially commissioned group of “portable murals” in an improvised studio space in an unused gallery. He worked round the clock with three assistants to paint five large frescoes on blocks of plaster. (“Portable” is relative; backed with concrete and steel, measuring up to 6 feet by 8 feet, the largest commissioned murals weigh half a ton apiece.) For speed, and perhaps for recognition, Rivera excerpted images from his most celebrated Mexican murals—the Spanish conquest, a sturdy native population, ardent revolutionaries, the nobility of labor—all embodied by his customary tight-packed, swelling forms. After the retrospective opened, he added three frescoes inspired by the many buildings under construction in Depression-era New York: machines, the skyline, more nobility of labor.

One fresco from this remarkable cycle remained in MoMA’s collection: the bold, Renaissance-inflected “Agrarian Leader Zapata,” with the mustachioed, white-clad figure holding an elegant white horse whose rider he has just vanquished. Now, “Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art” reunites this iconic image with four of the other original “portable” works. They are accompanied by lively, full-scale preparatory drawings—some of them stand-ins for absent frescoes—and related works. There are also watercolors from Rivera’s 1927-28 trip to Moscow, documenting an interminable parade celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

The Emiliano Zapata portrait is the most familiar and potent of the frescoes, with its Paolo Uccello-inspired simplifications and luminous whites glowing against tropical greens and browns. The other Mexican-themed murals verge on illustration, but the New York images, while no less engagé, are more inventive. Their reduced palette evokes black-and-white documentary photographs (or the Cubist paintings Rivera studied during his long sojourn in Paris). “Electric Power,” on loan from the collection of Vicky and Marcos Micha Levy, frames skilled workers with steel girders. “Frozen Assets,” from the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco, Mexico, presents a literally stratified society: a fantastic panorama of identifiable skyscrapers (constructed with the cheap labor made available by the Depression) above an eerie scene of a homeless-men’s dormitory, above a bank vault. “Frozen Assets” leaves no doubt about Rivera’s political sympathies, but its play of deep and shallow space, flatness and illusion, overrides polemics. It makes us wish that the painter’s notorious mural for Rockefeller Center—the aborted project is documented at MoMA—had survived.

***

Washington

By chance, MoMA’s showing of Rivera’s “portable murals” overlaps with a special installation at the National Gallery of canvases by Joan Miró (1893-1983) that could be described the same way, although there the resemblance ends. Over three days in May 1962, the Catalan Miró, in his Mallorca studio, worked on Mural Painting I, II and III, each about 9 feet by 12 feet. Far from working round the clock, like the leftist Mexican, Miró, the good bourgeois, took the weekend off between I and II. Unlike Rivera’s frescoes, Miró’s vast works are private, not public; abstract, not illusionistic or narrative; and devoid of overt political content—something forbidden, in any event, to an internationally acclaimed artist working in Francisco Franco’s Spain. Instead, they are miracles of economy, each an expanse of a single intense color—yellow-orange, green, red—punctuated with sparse, fragile lines. With their subtly modulated fields and tremulous drawing, they reprise the qualities of Miró’s ravishing, ethereal works of the 1920s.

Until they join the retrospective “Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape,” at the National Gallery on May 6, the three Mural Paintings, on loan from a private collector, are installed on a balcony space in the East Wing where we can view them as a series, from a distance, and then come close to savor surface nuances and eloquent drawing ref. From afar, the generously scaled floating lines—vertical and parallel, richly curved, delicately touching and retreating—almost disappear. As we approach, their refinement and adroitness become visible, evidence of a virtuosity honed over more than four decades of experimenting with materials and methods. As a total configuration, the sequence of exquisite lines propels us across the three fields, until we are arrested by two levitating black dots on the upper left of the orange panel; slightly unequal in size, apparently weightless, a unique incident in the ensemble, the dots stare back, like eyes, shifting the weight of the whole.

Then we start remembering that even the most “abstract” of Miró’s inventions are part of a complex, personal shorthand for maleness and femaleness, birds, animals and other elements of his environment. The drawn configurations start suggesting personages, flight, openness and more, while the very colors of the canvases take on allusive overtones. The red and golden orange become the emblematic colors of the Catalan flag and coat of arms, once banned, now ubiquitous in the post-Franco era “nation.” Is the lush green an equivalent of landscape? Perhaps the two cycles of “portable murals” are less different than we thought.

Ms. Wilkin writes about art for the Journal.