One thing that stood out to me was that all of these relatively small-time "rich by Kansas standards" farmers lost a huge chunk of their wealth when one institution went insolvent. I was wondering, why didn't they diversify their investments?

There's this line:

> In 2012, Hanes returned as president of Heartland, which adopted an ownership structure that has become common across America: The bank was controlled by a group of roughly 35 local investors, including Hanes and his wife, as well as Jim Tucker and his father. No one outside Elkhart would dictate the bank’s future, and all the profits would flow back into the area.

Ahh, ok, so they probably couldn't just sell their shares on the open market. And this is not to blame the victims, of course. I guess this is a downside of this business structure. I wonder if there are ways to mitigate this risk - some sort of insurance?