Staggering FDIC Losses Being Hidden from Public

109 U.S. banks have failed so far this year, 23 in this quarter alone. These failures may not cost depositors, but they do come at a steep cost to the FDIC. As discussed here with ValuEngine’s Richard Suttmeier, the FDIC Deposit Insurance has already spent $18.93 billion this year, “well above the $15.33 billion prepaid assessments for all of 2010.”
The situation is likely even worse than the FDIC portrays, says William Black Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
“The FDIC is sitting there knowing that it has both the residential disaster and the commercial real estate disaster [and] knowing it doesn’t have remotely enough funds to pay for it,” he says.
What the FDIC should really be doing, Black argues, is raise its assessments to better reflect the true state of the banking system. However, that would turn an already precarious position into crisis as it would cause more banks would fail. The other option, though not politically plausible, would be to ask the Treasury Department or Congress for more funds.
Therefore, we’re left in our current situation. “That also means we’re following a Japanese type strategy of hiding the losses,” he says. “This is a really stupid strategy and it’s ours.”
It’s also not a money-making strategy for stock investors. Black reminds us Japan’s Nikkei is still worth about 75% less than it was before their bubble burst in late 1989.

partial interview transcript:
AAron Task: Should we be surprise there are not more bank failures?
William Black: Not Surprised,we should be upset there are not more bank failures. The industry has used its political muscle to get Congress to extort the financial accounting standards board to gimmick the accounting rules so that banks do not have to recognize their losses.

Aarron Task: In practical terms, what does the gutting of that rule mean for the banks?
William Black: Capital is defined as assets minus liabilities. If I get to keep my assets at inflated bubble values that have nothing to do with their real value, then my reported capital will be greatly inflated. When I am insolvent I still report that I have lots of capital.

Aaron Task: You are saying the FDIC is intentionally keeping foreclosures down because it knows it does not have enough money to pay off depositors who are insured by the FDIC?
William Black: That is correct and that is going to make ultimate losses grow. It also means we are following a Japanese type strategy of hiding the losses and we know what that produces - a lost decade, which is now two lost decades. Your listeners and viewers if they are stock types, look at the Nikkei. It lost 75% in nominal terms and has stayed that way for 20 years. I real terms it lost 85% of its value. This is a really stupid strategy. And it's ours.

Aaron Task: You can just keep kicking this down the road and have stagnant economic growth?
William Black: Geithner's original estimate was $2 trillion and of course things got much worse that their original estimates. The IMF estimates were in the $3 trillion range. So, there are trillions of dollars of unrecognized losses under these guy's scenarios. There is a huge slug, far more than they can pay for. What they are doing instead is these stupid subsidies for the biggest banks, with essentially no political oversight. It works, for the banks but it's really bad for the economy. It diverts moey from small businesses, large businesses, and entrepreneurs.

Aaron Task: What does it say to you that Tim Geithner and Larry Summers are still on the job?
William Black: Well I said it from the beginning, Geithner and Summers were selected and promoted, and the same is true with Bernanke, because they are willing to be wrong and have a consistent track record of being wrong. That's useful for senior politicians but disastrous for the country.

FDIC Admits "We're BROKE!"

from CNNMOney:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- 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.
The fund has come under severe strain in recent months amid the recent surge in bank failures. Ninety-eight banks have failed so far this year, which has reduced the fund's value to $10 billion from $45 billion a year ago.
Last month, the agency painted an even more dire picture, estimating that the fund is currently in the red after taking into account future bank failures it anticipates will happen.
That would not be the first time the fund has had a negative balance. During the S&L crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it slipped into the red.

0:00 /2:50FDIC insured deposits are secure

With bank failure costs expected to reach $100 billion over the next four years, regulators have been looking at ways to raise quick cash.
"The problem we are facing is one of timing," Bair said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks.
One proposal currently under consideration would have banks prepay their deposit insurance premiums for the next three years. Under FDIC guidelines, bankers and others have until the end of October to comment on the proposal before it becomes a rule.

Sheila Bair: Even More Bank Failures Coming

FDIC Is Broke, and Fixing It Will Be Both Costly and Painful!

from Yahoo:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is weighing several costly -- and never-before-used -- options as it struggles to shore up the dwindling fund that insures bank deposits.
The agency is considering borrowing billions from healthy banks. Alternatively, it may impose a special fee on the banking industry.
Each option carries risk: Drawing money from healthy banks would take dollars out of the private sector, making that money unavailable for investment in the weak economy. But charging the whole industry a fee to replenish the fund could push weaker banks toward failure.
A third option -- borrowing from the Treasury -- is politically unpalatable, since it would resemble another taxpayer-financed bailout.
A fourth option would be to have banks pay their regular insurance premiums early. But this idea wouldn't solve the fund's long-term cash needs.
"The bottom line is, there's no good solution," said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with the research firm Concept Capital. "This is a fight over which option is least bad."
The FDIC is expected to propose a solution, possibly combining two or more of the options, at a board meeting next week.
Bank failures since the financial crisis struck have drained the fund to its lowest level since 1992, at the peak of the savings-and-loan crisis. The fund insures deposit bank accounts of up to $250,000.
Officials have approached big, healthy banks about making loans to the agency, said two industry officials familiar with the conversations, who requested anonymity because the plans are still evolving. Doing so would help the agency avoid tapping a $100 billion credit line with the Treasury -- something FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair is reluctant to do.
But taking billions from large, healthy banks would remove that money from the private sector and prevent it from being invested. That could slow an economic recovery, analysts said.
Industry and government officials said Tuesday that plan was still on the table. But FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray downplayed its likelihood, saying, "It's an option, but it's not being given serious consideration."
The FDIC also could levy a special emergency fee on the industry. That would allow the healthiest banks to keep more capital for investment. But it could drive shakier banks toward failure -- further depleting the fund. Losses on commercial real estate and other loans are causing multiple bank failures each week.
Banks already have paid one extra fee this year. And Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, who holds one of the FDIC board's five votes, has cautioned against saddling them with another.
Discussing the option last week, Bair acknowledged, "We don't want to stress the industry too much at this time, when they're still in the process of recovery."
Bair also said then that the agency might collect banks' regular insurance premiums early to infuse the fund with cash. An exemption would likely be provided for banks that are too weak to pay in advance.
This plan would solve the fund's immediate cash needs. But Seiberg called it "a one-time gimmick" that would merely delay another special assessment.
Because the FDIC expects bank failures to cost the fund around $70 billion through 2013, a short-term boost may not be the answer, Seiberg said.
The banking industry and lobbyists oppose another fee. They also want Bair to avoid tapping the Treasury credit line, because it would lead to higher insurance premiums for banks as the FDIC repays the money.
In a letter Monday to Bair, American Bankers Association CEO Ed Yingling endorsed borrowing from the banks or collecting regular premiums early as alternatives to charging another fee.
The special fee imposed earlier this year is hurting banks, already stressed from depressed income and increased loan losses, Yingling said. Another one "may do more harm than good," he said.
One advantage of having big banks lend to the insurance fund would be to give healthy banks a safe harbor for their money and limit their risk-taking, said Daniel Alpert, managing director of the investment bank Westwood Capital LLC in New York.
It also would let the industry's strongest players -- which still rely on FDIC loan guarantees and other emergency subsidies -- help weaker banks avoid paying another fee, he said.
"Lots of banks are going to require more capital, and (Bair is) trying to rob from the rich and give to the poor," said Alpert, who supports the plan as a creative way to avoid another bailout.
Bair's priorities for the industry are different from the Treasury's, analysts said. She is focused on stabilizing the many banks still at risk of failure. Such collapses could further deplete the insurance fund.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has taken a more hands-off approach to the industry. He wants to wind down government assistance quickly.
Bair and Geithner have sparred on key decisions throughout the financial crisis, including whether to bail out Citigroup Inc. with taxpayer dollars last fall.
In an interview with The Associated Press in December, Bair acknowledged that she and Geithner "have different perspectives frequently," but added, "I think that's a healthy thing."
"You don't want to get everybody in the room nodding," she said.
Ninety-four banks have failed so far this year. Hundreds more are expected to fall in coming years largely because of souring loans for commercial real estate.
The FDIC's fund has slipped to 0.22 percent of insured deposits, below a congressionally mandated minimum of 1.15 percent. The $10.4 billion in the fund at the end of June is down from $13 billion at the end of March, and $45.2 billion in the second quarter of 2008.
Congress in May more than tripled the amount the FDIC could borrow from the Treasury if needed to restore the insurance fund, to $100 billion from $30 billion.
The FDIC then adopted a new system of special fees paid by U.S. financial institutions that shifted more of the burden to bigger banks to help replenish the insurance fund.
That move cut by about two-thirds the amount of special fees to be levied on banks and thrifts compared with an earlier plan. The earlier plan had prompted a wave of protests by small and community banks.
Bair had earlier promised a reduction in fees charged to banks if the Treasury credit line could be expanded.

FDIC Is Penniless

from Reuters:

Sheila Bair has moved with impressive alacrity to shutter failed small and medium-sized banks. But she is still held hostage by the too-big-to-fail four.
Over the last eight days, her agency has been particularly busy, handling the two largest bank failures of the year. Last Friday it was Colonial Bank, today it will be Guaranty Bank.
With $25 billion and $14 billion of assets respectively, Colonial and Guaranty are the sixth- and 10th-largest failures in the history of the FDIC. Still, they pale in size compared to the biggest banks.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which had $2.3 trillion of assets at the end of the second quarter, is nearly 100 times larger than Colonial. JPMorgan Chase, with $2.1 trillion, and Citigroup, with $1.8 trillion, are nearly as big. Wells Fargo had $1.3 trillion, 100 times more than Guaranty. These amounts don’t include hundreds of billions of dollars of off-balance sheet assets.
Yet even Colonial and Guaranty are large enough to give the FDIC indigestion. Its deposit insurance fund had just $13 billion as of March 31. The 56 failures since then will cost it an estimated $16 billion, including nearly $3 billion for Colonial. (That amount excludes Guaranty – the FDIC should provide an estimate for those losses later today.)
It’s an unsettling thought if you have money in a bank. Officially, FDIC backs $4.8 trillion worth of deposits. If you include “temporarily” insured deposits, the total is $6.3 trillion. Yet the insurance fund protecting these deposits is going broke. Soon, the FDIC may have to draw on its credit line at Treasury.
It’s not surprising, given the sorry state of the Deposit Insurance Fund and the gargantuan heft of the big four, that FDIC is taking a bifurcated approach to bank resolutions.
Bair has moved decisively to close small and medium-sized banks. With the monsters, she not only assisted in their bailouts — providing federal insurance for their debt even as she already insures their deposits — she also sponsored their continued growth — putting WaMu in the hands of JPMorgan and pushing Wachovia into the arms of Wells Fargo.
Not that she had much choice. The biggest banks are far too big for her to resolve. One way to measure this is deposits in failed banks as a percentage of GDP.

(Click chart to enlarge in new window)

In 1934, the worst year for bank failures during the Depression, the total was 6.4 percent. In 1989, the most expensive year for the FDIC during the S&L scandal, it was 2.5 percent. Last year, the figure was 1.6 percent.
But the 2008 figure excludes Citi, BofA and Wachovia, which properly should be dumped in the failure bucket. Citi and BofA were goners without bailouts while Wachovia failed and fell into the arms of bailout recipient Wells Fargo. When you include those three, deposits in failed banks jump to 15.7 percent of GDP for 2008.
The FDIC, which was created to protect society from deposit runs, is no longer able to fulfill its mission because the biggest banks have grown far beyond its grasp.
That’s why these banks need to be downsized dramatically. A tax on assets is a good idea, but not enough. To break them up, Washington should limit the deposits in any single bank to a threshold far below what the big four currently hold.

FDIC Is Penniless

from Reuters:

Sheila Bair has moved with impressive alacrity to shutter failed small and medium-sized banks. But she is still held hostage by the too-big-to-fail four.

Over the last eight days, her agency has been particularly busy, handling the two largest bank failures of the year. Last Friday it was Colonial Bank, today it will be Guaranty Bank.

With $25 billion and $14 billion of assets respectively, Colonial and Guaranty are the sixth- and 10th-largest failures in the history of the FDIC. Still, they pale in size compared to the biggest banks.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which had $2.3 trillion of assets at the end of the second quarter, is nearly 100 times larger than Colonial. JPMorgan Chase, with $2.1 trillion, and Citigroup, with $1.8 trillion, are nearly as big. Wells Fargo had $1.3 trillion, 100 times more than Guaranty. These amounts don’t include hundreds of billions of dollars of off-balance sheet assets.

Yet even Colonial and Guaranty are large enough to give the FDIC indigestion. Its deposit insurance fund had just $13 billion as of March 31. The 56 failures since then will cost it an estimated $16 billion, including nearly $3 billion for Colonial. (That amount excludes Guaranty – the FDIC should provide an estimate for those losses later today.)

It’s an unsettling thought if you have money in a bank. Officially, FDIC backs $4.8 trillion worth of deposits. If you include “temporarily” insured deposits, the total is $6.3 trillion. Yet the insurance fund protecting these deposits is going broke. Soon, the FDIC may have to draw on its credit line at Treasury.

It’s not surprising, given the sorry state of the Deposit Insurance Fund and the gargantuan heft of the big four, that FDIC is taking a bifurcated approach to bank resolutions.

Bair has moved decisively to close small and medium-sized banks. With the monsters, she not only assisted in their bailouts — providing federal insurance for their debt even as she already insures their deposits — she also sponsored their continued growth — putting WaMu in the hands of JPMorgan and pushing Wachovia into the arms of Wells Fargo.

Not that she had much choice. The biggest banks are far too big for her to resolve. One way to measure this is deposits in failed banks as a percentage of GDP.

(Click chart to enlarge in new window)

In 1934, the worst year for bank failures during the Depression, the total was 6.4 percent. In 1989, the most expensive year for the FDIC during the S&L scandal, it was 2.5 percent. Last year, the figure was 1.6 percent.

But the 2008 figure excludes Citi, BofA and Wachovia, which properly should be dumped in the failure bucket. Citi and BofA were goners without bailouts while Wachovia failed and fell into the arms of bailout recipient Wells Fargo. When you include those three, deposits in failed banks jump to 15.7 percent of GDP for 2008.

The FDIC, which was created to protect society from deposit runs, is no longer able to fulfill its mission because the biggest banks have grown far beyond its grasp.

That’s why these banks need to be downsized dramatically. A tax on assets is a good idea, but not enough. To break them up, Washington should limit the deposits in any single bank to a threshold far below what the big four currently hold.

Original article.

FDIC List of Problem Banks Continues to Grow

from WSJ:

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. put out its quarterly profile of the banking industry on Wednesday.

Among its highlights:

• The number of “problem” banks rose from 252 at the end of the fourth quarter to 305 at the end of the first quarter.
• The 21 bank failures in the first quarter is the most since the fourth quarter of 1992 (15 have already failed in the second quarter).
• The average size of problem banks grew as well, up from an average of $631 million in assets to $721 million in assets per bank.
• The deposit insurance fund fell from $19 billion to $13 billion in the quarter, and it is expected to continue falling through 2009. The fund backstops roughly $4.8 trillion in deposits.
• Higher trading revenue at large banks pushed the industry to an aggregate profit of $7.6 billion in the first quarter.
• Banks charged off $37.8 billion in the first quarter, slightly less than the $38.5 billion charged off in the fourth quarter.
• Noncurrent loans and leases grew by $59.2 billion (or 25.5%), and the percent of loans that were bad rose from 2.95% to 3.76% during the quarter.
• FDIC officials said they did not believe losses to commercial real estate and construction and development loans had peaked yet.

The Ominous Lesson We Learn from the FDIC's Largest Bidder

from Zero Hedge:
For all those who feel like punching their monitor or TV every time the administration says that the legacy loan program is fair and equitable at a transaction price in the 80-90 cent ballpark, we have some news for you (that will likely make the half life of said monitor or TV even shorter).

But first, there has been a lot of speculation about where banks have marked their commercial loan portfolios. Zero Hedge had previously discovered and disclosed interpretative data from Goldman, which concluded that the major banks were still stuck in a fairytale world where these loans were marked in the 90+ ballpark, a far, far cry from where comparable loans would clear in the market. Of course, FDIC's head Sheila Bair (who many WaMu shareholders lately do not feel too hot about) had some interpretative voodoo of her own, claiming the bid offer disconnect is purely due to a lack of liquidity and access to financing:

"It has been clear for some time that troubled loans and securities have depressed market perceptions of banks and impeded new lending. Difficult market conditions have complicated efforts to sell these troubled assets because potential buyers have not had access to financing. The Legacy Loans Program aligns the interests of the government with private investors to provide financing and market-based pricing, and is a critical step forward in the process of restoring clarity to the markets. While there are inherent challenges to implementing a program of this magnitude quickly, the framework announced today provides the foundation upon which the FDIC will begin to build immediately."

So it came as a big surprise that none other than the FDIC keeps a track of where commercial loans clear in its own internal auctions. In a relatively obscure part of the FDIC's website, there lies a little gem of disclosure, which exposes all the rhetoric by Sheila Bair and by other members of the administration as hypocrisy on steroids. We bring you: FDIC's closed loan sales database. Zero Hedge took the liberty of compiling some of the data for the benefit of our readers: we picked a data sort of all closed commercial loan auctions from January 1, 2009 to February 28, 2009, to see just at what level these would close. Of course, we highly recommend our readers recreate these results.
|The results: 43 commercial loan auctions, of which 39 were for exclusively performing (so not non-performing, or lower quality auctions, and by implication free cash generating), consisting of 331 total loans, representing $206 million in face value, ended up clearing for a $103 million price, a 49.3% discount, or a 50.7% clearing price! That's right, the FDIC itself clears performing commercial loans at 50 cents on the dollar on average in its own regulated, orderly auctions. One would assume the chairman of the very agency that conducts these loan auctions would be aware of them and would at least reference or mention these results in her numerous public appearances.

Curiously, the FDIC also discloses the winning bidders. The surprising recurring result: a little known (but deserving much greater attention) company known as Beal Bank (and its LNV Corporation subsidiary). In the first two months of the year alone, Beal Bank, and more specifically its owner Andy Beal, has won $73 million face value of auctions, for a price of $43 million- a clearing price of 59%. Another way of looking at it is that Beal accounts for 35% of all FDIC auctions.

Just who is Andy Beal, aside from a prolific and profitable poker-playing, college-dropout of course? A great question, which Forbes goes into great detail answering this weekend. We paraphrase the key points from Forbes:

Standing outside the glass-domed headquarters of his Plano, Texas, bank in March, D. Andrew Beal presses a cellphone to his ear. He's discussing a deal to buy mortgage securities. In just a few minutes, the deal's done: His Beal Bank will buy $15 million of face value for $5 million. A few hours earlier he reviewed details on a $500 million loan his bank is making to a company heading into bankruptcy--the biggest he's ever done. A few floors above, workers are bent over computer screens preparing bids for chunks of $600 million in assets dumped by two imploded financial firms. In the last 15 months, Beal has purchased $800 million of loans from failed banks, probably more than anyone else.

It is amusing that Beal Bank, which is not large enough to qualify for the FDIC's zombie bank life-support program known as TLGP, is beating the FDIC at its own game, gobbling up assets (at fair market prices, which is what auction outcomes are by definition). Beal is such a non-mainstream individual that Project Zero will hold a honorary bunk in his favor, (he will have to decide who gets top with Chuck Bowsher) until such time as he decides to stand outside ZH headquarters for 24 hours to gain admission:

It's hard to imagine Beal fitting in at a bankers' convention. He walked into the Las Vegas Bellagio in 2001 and challenged the world's best poker players to games with $2 million pots--the highest stakes ever. Donning large sunglasses and earphones, Beal held his own against the poker stars, once winning $11 million in a single day, although he shrugs that he lost more than he won. At the track he'll drive one of his nine race cars (costing as much as $100,000 each) at 150 mph. On city streets he cruises in a huge Ford Excursion, the vehicle that has made him feel safe since a drunk driver punctured his lungs in 2000.

However, the main reason why Beal is prophetic beyond his years is the following:

He thinks the government is going to be "disappointed" by its various programs to revive lending. He says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's new plan to guarantee loans to buyers of toxic assets won't lead to many sales because the problem isn't liquidity but price. They are not low enough. Half the country's banks--4,000 in all--would be bust, he says, if they marked their loans to what the loans would fetch in an auction. He says banks are fooling themselves by refusing to mark busted assets down.

"Banks are on a prayer mission that somehow prices will come back and they won't have to face reality," Beal says. And that reality, according to Beal, is going to get a lot worse. "Unemployment is going over 10%, commercial real estate hasn't even begun collapsing and corporate credit defaults are just getting started," he says. His prediction: depression, without bread lines this time, thanks to the government safety net, but with equal cost to society.

It is a fitting conclusion that Beal himself is the winning bidder in FDIC's commercial loan auctions (which no other major bank with a $ trillion+ balance sheet has any interest in participating in - why is this if the loans are worth 90 cents as Citi et al have them market internally?), and thus the true market test of what all these toxic legacy loans are really worth. Zero Hedge wholeheartedly agrees with Beal that the CRE situation is headed for a cliff at 120 mph, and that no matter how much hypocritical posturing and rhetoric the administration spouts, or how many more trillions in debt the U.S. incurs to revive the financial zombie on the morgue dissection table, there is nothing at this point that can be done to change the final outcome.

Unbelievable! Fed, FDIC Pledge 2/3 of Last Year's GDP to Unknown Recipients -- With NO Oversight!

Fascinating and mind-boggling story in Bloomberg today. Here are small excerpts:

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages...

Only the stimulus package to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates approved in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion in commitments are lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the authority of the Fed and the FDIC. The recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

The pledges, amounting to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the U.S. last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up about 18 months ago. The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid.

The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

Here is the full story.

FDIC Woes! Hedge Funds Collapse!

More from John Mauldin:

"The FDIC recently announced that the institutions it insures had only $1.7 billion in earnings in the third quarter, down from $28.7 billion a year earlier. And financial troubles aren't confined to banks. Many hedge funds have suffered huge losses on their highly leveraged positions this year. And their sales of securities to limit further losses and to meet investo redemptions are adding downward pressure on many markets. In some, assets are down 50% while others are folding their tents and still others are limiting redemptions, only adding to investor restiveness. Redemptions are expected to jump early next year."

Note: If the banks that the FDIC insures slide further and begin to lose money as a group, instead of the meager $1.7 billion in profits they earned in Q3, then they will be undercapitalized once again, despite the injection of $350 billion of taxpayer funds into the system. They won't be able to resume lending because their reserve requirements will still force them to raise additional capital and hold onto their cash instead of risking it by lending it out.

Hedge fund redemptions were the primary cause of the plunge in the stock market during the fall of 2008. If Mauldin is correct in forecasting additional redemptions in early 2009, this could precipitate the plunge in the stock market the he forecasts in my later post.

Bank Failures Continue

The FDIC has shut down another bank, this time a small one in Florida.