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REPORT: Prepare For A Giant New Wave Of US Bank Failures Luke McKenna Febuary 1, 2012Forget Europe — the weak U.S. recovery puts more than 750 domestic banks at risk of failure, according to a report from Invictus Consulting Group (via Business Wire). Invictus, which stress tested all FDIC-insured banks, says 758 lenders could collapse in the next three years, forecasting a new wave of borrower defaults in the absence of a strong economic up-tick. A disaster in Europe would probably make things much worse. Invictus says the at-risk lenders — mostly regional banks or subsidiaries of the majors —...

Regulators on Friday closed two banks in Georgia and one each in Florida and Colorado, raising to 84 the number of U.S. banks that have failed this year. The number of closures has fallen sharply this year as banks have worked their way through bad debt. By this time last year, regulators had shuttered 139 banks. FDIC seized the four banks. The largest by far was Community Banks of Colorado, based in Greenwood ... Also shuttered were Community Capital Bank, Jonesboro, Ga. ... Decatur First Bank ... and Old Harbor Bank, Clearwater, Fla. Georgia and Florida have been among the...

U.S. regulators announced the biggest bank failure so far this year by assets, Birmingham, Ala.'s Superior Bank, as well as the most failures in a single day in 2011, as five other banks were closed in Alabama, Minnesota, Mississippi and Georgia. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in addition to Superior, Nexity Bank, also based in Birmingham, was closed, the first failures in Alabama this year. Minnesota and Mississippi also logged their first failures of 2011 with the closures of Rosemount National Bank and Heritage Banking Group, respectively.

Regulators on Friday shut down three small banks in Georgia and Illinois, bringing to 14 the number of bank failures in 2011 following last year's tally of 157 amid the sagging economy and mounting bad loans. ... The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem" list rose to 860 in the third quarter of last year from 829 three months earlier. The 860 troubled banks is the highest number since 1993, during the savings-and-loan crisis.

Regulators on Friday closed banks in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Colorado, bringing to seven the number of closures in 2011 following last year's toll of 157 bank failures amid the limping economy and mounting bad loans. The growing number of bank failures has sapped billions of dollars out of the deposit insurance fund. It fell into the red in 2009, and its deficit stood at $8 billion as of Sept. 30. The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem" list rose to 860 in the third quarter of last year from 829 three months earlier. The 860...

One bank failure in Pennsylvania and one in Michigan brought the year's tally of failures to 151, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Friday. Regulators closed Paramount Bank of Farmington Hills, Mich., and Earthstar Bank of Southampton, Pa.... The total cost to the FDIC deposit insurance fund is $113.1 million

U.S. regulators seized Ravenswood Bank of Chicago on Friday, bringing the number of closures this year to 109 as the community bank sector continues to suffer under the weight of bad loans. Small banks are collapsing at a faster pace this year compared to last, but the failures are expected to peak during this quarter. The FDIC ... updated its estimates of the cost of bank failures and now expects a $60 billion hit to its insurance fund from 2010 through 2014.

Basel III Gutted, Delayed As Even Existing Regulatory Regime Too Burdensome For An Insolvent Banking Industry Tyler Durden on 07/27/2010 03:56 -0500 In light of recent bombastic statements by priests of Keynesian fundamentalism that European banking is one big, non-dysfunctional, even healthy family, it would have been the logical thing that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision would if not tighten terms on proposed Basel III implementation, then at least keep them as is. Why is why news that the recently proposed adjustments to Basel III which not only delayed implementation of the "regulatory" framework by many years, allowing banks...

U.S. bank failures reached 103 so far in 2010 on Friday as regulators seized seven small banks, a faster pace of closures than last year when the century mark was not reached until October. The banks seized on Friday were Sterling Bank of Lantana, Florida; Crescent Bank and Trust Company of Jasper, Georgia; Williamsburg First National Bank of Kingstree, South Carolina; Thunder Bank of Sylvan Grove, Kansas; Community Security Bank of New Prague, Minnesota; SouthwestUSA Bank of Las Vegas, Nevada and Home Valley Bank of Cave Junction, Oregon... The largest of the seven banks was Crescent Bank and Trust with...

Citing what he believes are clear signs the economy is bouncing back from recession, Vice-President Joe Biden yesterday touted Barack Obama's 'stimulus package' and bailout of Wall Street. Time for yet another fact-check on the pathological liars of the Obama Administration. Banks are failing at double the rate of last year. During 2009, which the government claims was the peak of the recession, the total number of bank failures at this point in the year was 40. It is already 83 for this year. Yet the FDIC is running ads on radio stations across the country attempting to scare people...

U.S. regulators seized five more troubled banks on Friday, including three banks owned by Bank of Florida Corp, bringing the tally of banks closed so far this year to 78. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said Bank of Florida - Southeast; Bank of Florida - Southwest; and Bank of Florida - Tampa Bay had a combined $1.48 billion in assets and 13 branches between them. EverBank of Jacksonville, Florida, has agreed to acquire the banking operations, including a combined $1.32 billion in deposits, the FDIC said. In addition, regulators shut Las Vegas-based Sun West Bank. The bank had $360.7 million...

Scandal: Sometimes banks are too small to fail, such as when they are in the president's hometown, deal with the president's friends and serve the president's agenda. Or should we perhaps say too connected to fail? ShoreBank's Web site boasts: "Van Jones saves at ShoreBank so his money fights for green jobs just like he does." It proudly notes, "According to former Vice President Al Gore, 'Van Jones demonstrates conclusively that the best solutions for the survivability of our planet are also the best solutions for everyday Americans.' " That may tell us all we need to know about ShoreBank...

Regulators shut down 7 banks in Puerto Rico, Mo., Mich., Wash.; brings total to 64 this year. Regulators on Friday shut down three banks in Puerto Rico, two in Missouri, and one each in Michigan and Washington, bringing the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 64. The three failed banks together held more than one-fifth of the total bank assets on the U.S. Caribbean territory. They had struggled to stay afloat during Puerto Rico's grinding, four-year recession. It was Puerto Rico's largest bank consolidation in more than two decades as well as one of the FDIC's biggest resolutions...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Oakland, Calif.-based Innovative Bank was closed by regulators Friday, marking the 48th U.S. bank failure of 2010.

Regulators on Friday shut down a bank in South Carolina, marking 42 bank failures in the U.S. so far this year amid mounting loan defaults, especially in commercial real estate. There were 140 bank failures in the U.S. last year, the highest annual tally since 1992 at the height of the savings and loan crisis. They cost the insurance fund more than $30 billion. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008 and only three succumbed in 2007. The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem" list jumped to 702 in the fourth quarter from 552 three months earlier...

Politics: Another bank failure is nothing new these days — except if the bank is run by the family of a U.S. Senate candidate who profited handsomely and lent millions to a convicted felon. But then, that's the Chicago way. 'I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street," President Obama said in a recent interview with "60 Minutes." Speaking to those bankers, he said: "You guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in — in decades,...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is trying to encourage public retirement funds that control more than $2 trillion to buy all or part of failed lenders, taking a more direct role in propping up the banking system, said people briefed on the matter. Direct investments may allow funds such as those in Oregon, New Jersey and California to cut fees for private-equity managers, and the agency to get better prices for distressed assets, the people said. They declined to be identified because talks with regulators are confidential. Oregon’s retirement fund may contribute $100 million as regulators seek “the support of...

It is time for some painful plain talk on the economy. Rather than dancing around the issue, whistling past the graveyard as if things are not as bad as they seem, the only solution for our current financial woes is to cut government spending to the bone. Economists across the board are in near-unanimous agreement that the mind-boggling debt load of the United States is unsustainable and only adds to the ongoing problem in the economy. There can be no recovery when the nation carries a debt load that is nearly impossible for the human brain to comprehend.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators shut four banks from California to Florida on Friday, boosting to 20 the number of U.S. bank failures this year following the 140 closures last year in the worst financial climate in decades. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over La Jolla Bank, FSB, in La Jolla, Calif. The bank had 10 branches and about $3.6 billion in assets and $2.8 billion in deposits. Also seized was George Washington Savings Bank in Orland Park, Ill. It had four branches and about $412.8 million in assets and $397 million in deposits. The FDIC said OneWest Bank in...

WASHINGTON—Marco Community Bank, the only federally insured bank headquartered on Florida's Marco Island, failed Friday under the weight of bad real-estate loans, marking the 17th bank failure of 2010. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sold the state-chartered bank's $117.1 million of deposits to Mutual of Omaha Bank in Nebraska. Mutual of Omaha also purchased essentially all of the bank's assets.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has responded critically to a video that berates the sale of IndyMac Bank’s failed remains as a sweetheart deal. In the video “The Indymac Slap in our Face,” the website Thinkbigworksmall explains how the FDIC deal gave IndyMac’s buyers strong profit incentives to force foreclosures and short sales rather than to modify troubled mortgages. It’s a convincing tale and easy to follow.

Pursuant to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, SIGTARP (Special Investigator General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program) must report to Congress on its oversight activities and compile certain specified data and information about the operation of TARP. SIGTARP’s reports to Congress are due 60 days after confirmation of the Special Inspector General and quarterly thereafter. The Special Inspector General also testifies periodically before relevant Congressional Committees. The Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, delivered his quarterly report today and it does not paint a pretty picture of the Tarp program. In the 224-page quarterly report (embedded below) Barofsky acknowledged...

Regulators shut down a big bank in California on Friday, along with two banks in Georgia and one each in Florida, Minnesota and Washington. That brought to 15 the number of bank failures so far in 2010 atop the 140 shuttered last year in the punishing economic climate.

Washington has so thoroughly botched its supervision of the banking industry that 200 banks are likely to fail this year — easily surpassing last year’s 140 bank failures … inevitably involving the greatest bank losses in history … and already costing the FDIC ten times more than the great S&L and banking crisis of the 1980s did. I am not basing these conclusions on conjecture. They come straight from official sources. Specifically …

Even 60 Minutes forecasts a major second crash. The fake Obama "bailout" with massive debt, printing money, "cap and tax," healthcare takeover, increasing the debt limit, giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac another "open season" on taxpayer money ... are setting us up for even worse.

Bank failures will keep accelerating into 2010 and the worst isn’t over despite “some encouraging signs” that things are turning around for the battered banking industry, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair told CNBC. “There’s a lag generally with bank recovery from the overall economy,” she said. “We do think bank failures will continue to go up next year but will peak. Even at higher levels than we have this year, it’s still far below where we were during the S&L days.” Over the weekend regulators shut down 3 more banks in Florida, Arizona and Kansas; pushing up US bank failures to...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- AmTrust Bank, which opened with one office on Valentine's Day 120 years ago and grew to one of the nation's 100 largest banks, was seized by federal regulators Friday and bought by New York Community Bank of Westbury, N.Y. AmTrust is the first Northeast Ohio bank to fail since TransOhio Federal Savings Bank of Cleveland was seized 17 years ago. AmTrust, the latest calamity in the nation's 2-year-old banking crisis, became the 128th bank to fail this year, and the second in Ohio. Six banks in all failed Friday, bringing the year's total to 130. With assets...

Two Georgia bank failures brought the U.S. bank failure tally to 126, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Regulators closed the First Security National Bank of Norcross, Ga., and Atlanta's Buckhead Community Bank. State Bank and Trust Co. of Macon, Ga. will assume the deposits of both banks. As of Sept. 30, First Security had total assets of about $128 million and total deposits of about $123 million, and as of Nov. 6 Buckhead had total assets of about $874 million and total deposits of about $838 million. The failures also raise the number of bank failures in Georgia...

The cash reserves needed for the FDIC to keep paying depositors at failed banks has all been used up. Don’t panic (yet anyways), the FDIC has an open credit line to the Treasury Department (uh, that means us tax payers) that will keep the FDIC floating in cash to keep paying out money to Grandma and Grandpa at the failed banks. You see, the FDIC is supposed to be self maintaining, it charges banks a fee to have their deposits insured. Think of it as the banks paying an insurance premium. That money goes into the FDIC kitty and is...

Last Monday's change of plans by the Bridgeport, Conn., bank-holding company underscores a problem with the growing pile of terminally ill U.S. banks being wrestled with by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Some are in such bad shape that potential buyers won't touch them at any price, even if the government agrees to eat losses on the failed bank's bad loans. In addition to their depleted capital, many seized banks operate in areas with sluggish growth prospects, are puny and are loaded with expensive deposits gathered through brokers that are likely to leave when the acquiring bank reins in interest...

The government-administered insurance fund that protects depositors fell into the red for the first time since the fallout from the savings-and-loan crisis of the early 1990s as the pace of bank failures accelerated. The fund had a negative balance of $8.2 billion at the end of the third quarter, federal regulators said Tuesday. Bank customers, however, should remain confident that their deposits would be protected since most of the amount reflects money that Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation has already set aside to cover the losses from future bank failures. Officials of the F.D.I.C. said in October that the deposit

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will collect $45 billion from the banking industry to cover the rising cost of bank failures, an unprecedented assessment that reflects the agency's projections that the current round of failures will not peak until next year. The FDIC's board voted Thursday morning to authorize the special collection, which requires banks to pay now the amount that they would owe the FDIC over the next three years. The agency collects insurance premiums from all banks, which it uses to repay depositors in failed banks.

Five more banks, including a California-based institution that reportedly received federal bailout funds in 2008, were closed Friday by regulators, bringing the 2009 total to 120 failed banks. The latest banks to be taken over were United Security Bank of Sparta, Ga.; Home Federal Savings Bank of Detroit; United Commercial Bank of San Francisco; Gateway Bank of St. Louis and Prosperan Bank of Oakdale, Minn., according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. United Commercial, which had branches across the U.S. and also in Hong Kong and Shanghai, focused on the Chinese-American market in the U.S. and had obtained a very...

Sheila is apparently upset at the banks "pushing back" against reform: Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, said on Monday that some in the financial services sector are trying to argue that regulatory reform would stifle innovation and impede economic growth. "That makes me angry," Bair said in a text of remarks prepared for a lecture at Kansas State University. It does? You're not showing it. How hard is this Sheila? You have the authority, along with the OTS and OCC, to walk into any bank in the United States with your examiners, look at every asset...

The banks have taken some lumps since the economy went bad. But some believe their biggest headaches are yet to come. The pace at which U.S. commercial banks are adding to their loan loss reserves has slowed this year, while loans continue to go bad at a brisk pace. Despite the optimism of lenders like Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), some observers warn that banks aren't socking away enough for a rainier day.

Banks in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin, were shuttered, costing the FDIC an estimated $356.6 million. The tally of bank failures easily broke past the No. 100 milestone on Friday night, with regulators announcing the year's 106th closure. That's more than four times the number that were closed in 2008, and the highest total since 1992, when 181 banks failed. Earlier on Friday evening the dubious honor of the 100th failure went to Partners Bank, of Naples, Fla., which had $65.5 million in assets, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The 101st failure was American United Bank, of...

The government insurance fund designed to protect consumer bank deposits will likely stay in the red through 2012, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chief Sheila Bair said Wednesday. Testifying before members of the Senate Banking Committee, the nation's top commercial bank regulator stressed that her agency was taking immediate steps to replenish the dwindling fund. But she said those efforts would not put the rescue fund in the black until a little more than two years from now at the earliest.

With regulators warning that rising losses on commercial real estate loans pose risks for U.S. banks, senators asked Wednesday for greater attention to be focused on vulnerable smaller banks.

A year after Washington rescued the banks considered too big to fail, the ones deemed too small to save are approaching a grim milestone: the 100th bank failure of 2009. In what has become a ritual, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has swooped down on a handful of troubled lenders almost every Friday, seizing 98 since January alone and putting their assets into the hands of another bank.

Small Banks Fail at Growing Rate, Straining F.D.I.C. By ERIC DASH Published: October 10, 2009 A year after Washington rescued the banks considered too big to fail, the ones deemed too small to save are approaching a grim milestone: the 100th bank failure of 2009. In what has become a ritual, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has swooped down on a handful of troubled lenders almost every Friday, seizing 98 since January alone and putting their assets into the hands of another bank. While the parade of failures still represents a mere fraction of America’s small banks, it underscores a...

A government watchdog says federal officials weren't entirely honest with the public about the health of the first 9 financial firms that got federal bailouts, according to a report released Monday. Bailout special inspector general Neil Barofsky says in an audit that Treasury Department officials painted an overly rosy picture, creating "unrealistic expectations," when they called the first bailout banks "healthy" institutions that would be able to lend more with government help.

The government said the fund that protects consumer bank deposits has fallen into the red and will remain there into 2012, a pointed symbol of how the aftershocks of the financial crisis will reverberate for years as banks continue to fail at a high rate. The negative balance is a headache for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which runs the fund. On Tuesday, it proposed the unprecedented step of having the banking industry prepay $45 billion in fees by the end of the year to give the government more breathing room to handle future failures.

Regulators close subsidiaries of Irwin Financial Corporation in Kentucky and Indiana at a cost of $850 million to the FDIC. BY BEN ROONEY NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Regulators closed subsidiaries of Irwin Financial Corporation in Kentucky and Indiana Friday, bringing the total number of bank failures this year to 94, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says she is "considering all options, including borrowing from Treasury," to replenish the dwindling fund that insures bank deposits.

By most measures, the past year has been the worst financial crisis in a lifetime. But not by one significant measure: Bank failures. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has closed 92 banks so far in 2009, after seizing 25 ailing banks last year. By contrast, during the last banking crisis, 381 banks were seized in 1990, 268 in 1991, and 179 in 1992. Still, the pace of bank failures is accelerating. In recent days, three banks failed, including Illinois-based Corus Bank, doomed by $3.2 billion in construction loans, mostly to condominium developers. The relatively slow pace of bank failures during...

Regulators on Friday shut down banks in California, Maryland and Minnesota, pushing to 84 the number of bank failures this year amid the soured economy and rising loan defaults. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the three banks: Affinity Bank, based in Ventura, Calif., with about $1 billion in assets and $922 million; Baltimore-based Bradford Bank, with $452 million in assets and $383 million in deposits; and Mainstreet Bank, based in Forest Lake, Minn., with assets of $459 million and deposits of $434 million. Pacific Western Bank, based in San Diego, agreed to assume the deposits and assets of...

<p>Federal regulators have ordered Northern Star Bank in Mankato to improve its operations. It is one of a large number of small community banks in the state and nation that have received warnings for alleged lax oversight, operating without enough capital and "engaging in hazardous lending and lax collection practices."</p>

There’s good news and bad news in the FDIC’s quarterly profile of the banking sector. The good news is that FDIC has more resources than you think to handle the problem banks on its radar. The bad news is that the too-big-to-fail banks aren’t on it.

When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.

That's the supposition from this WAPO article. Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger. The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.