Regulators shut down banks in Nevada and Washington on Friday, marking the 21st and 22nd failures this year of federally insured banks.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of Carson River Community Bank, based in Carson City, Nev. and Rainier Pacific Bank in Tacoma, Wash.

Carson River Community Bank had $51.1 million in assets and $50 million in deposits as of Dec. 31. Rainier Pacific Bank had $717.8 million in assets and $446.2 million in deposits as of Dec. 31.

The FDIC said that Carson River’s deposits will be assumed by Reno, Nev.-based Heritage Bank of Nevada. Carson River’s lone branch will reopen Monday as an office of Heritage Bank.

Source/Full Story:   Yahoo! News

The Huffington Post has come up with a nice little protest movement. Let’s pull our money out the the bailed-out banks and put it in local banks that lend to locals. Who are the locals? People just like us.

This makes sense economically. If you ever want a loan, get it from your own banker. If it’s a local bank, you will be treated well.

The FDIC insures all accounts up to $250,000. Your money is as safe in a local bank as a bailed-out mega-bank.

The folks at Huffington are on the Left. But we can all agree when we see insider bailouts like the ones in September and October 2008.

They have produced a video. This video is biased, mean-spirited, and simplistic I love it! The more of these low-budget YouTube videos on the Big Bank bailout, the better.

Source/Full Story: garynorth.com

State and federal banking regulators seized three small lenders on Friday, lifting the total number of bank failures this year to 133.

Source/Full Story: WSJ.com

Nine more U.S. banks, all owned by the same Illinois holding company, were closed Friday by regulators, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said U.S. Bank of Minneapolis would assume their deposits.

The closings brought the 2009 total to 115 in 2009 — the first year since 1992 that more than 100 banks have gone under.
…
The deposit insurance fund will take an estimated $2.5 billion hit, the FDIC said.

All nine banks were subsidiaries of FBOP Corp., a holding company based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., according to the FDIC.

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch

Reporting from Washington – Despite signs of economic improvement, banks continue to fail at a brisk pace, forcing regulators to scramble to keep the industry-financed deposit insurance fund from running out of cash.

With the fund technically falling into the red today, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposed Tuesday to require banks this year to prepay $45 billion, or more than three years’ worth, of insurance premiums.

The move would allow the FDIC to avoid drawing on a $500-billion line of credit the agency has with the Treasury Department.

“It’s clear that the American people would prefer to see an end to policies that look to the federal balance sheet as a remedy for every problem,” said FDIC chief Sheila C. Bair. “In choosing this path, it should be clear to the public that the industry will not simply tap the shoulder of the increasingly weary taxpayer.”

Insured bank deposits continue to be “100% safe,” Bair emphasized, and analysts agreed.

Kevin Petrasic, a former special counsel at the Office of Thrift Supervision, described the FDIC’s decision, which is open for public comment for 30 days, “as the least objectionable of some not particularly good options.”

Source/Full Story: latimes.com
Technorati Tags: FDIC

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.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! Finance
Technorati Tags: FDIC

• InBank, the 14th bank to fail in Illinois this year

• Platinum Bank of Rolling Meadows was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision, which appointed the FDIC as receiver.

• Kansas City, Mo.-based First Bank of Kansas City also was closed by regulators.

• Sioux City, Iowa-based Vantus Bank

• In Arizona, First State Bank in Flagstaff

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch

U.S. regulators are set to buttress their defenses this week against a slew of sick banks still facing closure and the risks to the dwindling fund that protects depositors.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp has been looking at expanding the pool of potential bidders for distressed banks, providing some capital relief for troubled assets that will soon be brought back onto banks’ books, and charging further industry premiums to replenish the insurance fund.

All of these moves are geared to get the banking industry, and the agency charged with ensuring the industry’s safety, through a financial crunch that is coming to a head.

“We’re working through this problem. We’re not at the beginning, we’re not at the end,” said James Chessen, chief economist for the American Bankers Association. “We’re in the middle and it’s painful.”

Regulators have shuttered 81 banks so far this year, compared with 25 last year, and three in 2007. Analysts say the wave of failures is far from over. Richard Bove of Rochdale Securities said on Sunday that 150 to 200 more U.S. banks will fail in the current banking crisis, which started with a dramatic fall in housing prices that sent the economy into a recession and caused many borrowers to default on their loans.

Bove said the continuing failures will force the FDIC to turn increasingly to non-U.S. banks and private equity funds to shore up the banking system.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

Guaranty Bank of Austin, Tex. became the 81st bank failure of 2009 after it was closed by Office of Thrift Supervision, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as receiver, the federal agency said late Friday. The FDIC said it has entered into a “purchase and assumption agreement” with BBVA Compass of Birmingham, Ala. As of June 30, Guaranty Bank had total assets about $13 billion and total deposits of about $12 billion.

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch

Regulators have shut down Colonial BancGroup Inc. CNB-N , a big lender in real estate development that buckled under the collapse of the market. It was the biggest U.S. bank to fail this year, with about $25-billion in assets.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial. The agency approved the sale of Colonial’s $20-billion in deposits and about $22-billion of its assets to BB&T Corp. The failed bank’s 346 branches in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Texas will reopen at the normal times starting on Saturday as offices of BB&T, the FDIC said.

BB&T, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., operates throughout the Southeast and is considered among the nation’s stronger regional banks.

The failure of Colonial is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund an estimated $2.8-billion.

The bank was a major lender to developers in Florida and Nevada and was hit hard by the collapse of the real estate market in those states.

Colonial BancGroup shut by regulators – The Globe and Mail

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is gearing up to handle a large number of bank failures expected as a result of bad mortgages, both in residential and commercial real estate, an economist says.

“They know they’re going to take down a large number of banks and they can’t do it until they’re staffed up,” said Mark Dotzour, chief economist and director of research for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, at a real estate conference in Tampa, Fla., Tuesday.

Dotzour expects federal regulators to establish an agency, similar to the Resolution Trust Corp. that disposed of assets belonging to insolvent S&Ls in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“Once they start to sell [foreclosed real estate], we’ll find out what the market really is,” Dotzour said.

Dotzour blamed federal intervention for the lack of commercial real estate investment activity in recent months, as well as the failure of businesses to make major decisions.

“Nobody knows what to do so they’re doing nothing,” Dotzour said.

Government, in its quest to help the economy, is causing harm by propping up failing companies and regularly changing rules, he said.

“People are frozen. It’s not that they don’t want to invest in the future, the rules are unclear,” he said.

Source/Full Story: Baltimore Business Journal

Seven banks were shut down by authorities Thursday, pushing the tally of failed banks for 2009 to 52, more than doubling the failures in 2008.

Six regional banks in Illinois and one in Texas closed their doors, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The rash of Illinois failures are interlinked: All six banks were controlled by one family and followed a similar business model that “created concentrated exposure in each institution,” according to the FDIC.

The agency said that the six failures stemmed from the banks’ investments in collateralized debt obligations and other loan losses.

Source/Full Story: money.cnn.com

Five U.S. banks with total assets of about $1.04 billion were seized by regulators, pushing this year’s tally of failures to 45 as a recession drives up unemployment and home foreclosures.

Community Bank of West Georgia, in Villa Rica, Georgia; Neighborhood Community Bank of Newnan, Georgia; Horizon Bank of Pine City, Minnesota; MetroPacific Bank of Irvine, California; and Mirae Bank of Los Angeles were closed yesterday by state regulators, according to statements from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC was named receiver of the four banks.

Wilshire Bancorp’s Wilshire State Bank will take over all of Mirae’s $362 million in deposits, and will purchase $449 million of assets, the FDIC said in a statement.

Sunwest Bank of Tustin, California, acquired most of MetroPacific’s $73 million in deposits and $80 million in assets, the FDIC said. Stearns Bank of St. Cloud, Minnesota, bought Horizon Bank’s $69.4 million of deposits. Stearns will purchase $84.4 million of Horizon’s assets, the FDIC said.

The FDIC didn’t find a buyer for Community Bank of West Georgia, and said it will mail checks to reimburse insured depositors. The bank has deposits of $182.5 million. Charter Financial Corp.’s CharterBank will assume Neighborhood Community Bank’s $191.3 million of deposits and purchased some assets in a loss-share agreement with the FDIC, according to the agency.

“The loss-sharing arrangement is projected to maximize returns on the assets covered by keeping them in the private sector,” the FDIC said. “The agreement also is expected to minimize disruptions for loan customers.”

Regulators have seized the most U.S. banks this year since 1993. The U.S. economy has shed about 6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Foreclosure filings surpassed 300,000 for the third straight month in May, according to RealtyTrac Inc.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

Bank of Lincolnwood in Lincolnwood, Ill. became the 37th bank of the year to fail and the sixth Illinois bank failure in 2009, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Friday. Republic Bank of Chicago in Oak Brook, Ill. will assume all the bank’s deposits. As of May 26, Bank of Lincolnwood had total assets of about $214 million and total deposits of $202 million. Republic will purchase about $162 million in assets with FDIC retaining the remaining assets for later disposition

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch

Stockbridge, Ga.-based FirstCity Bank was closed by regulators Friday, marking the 18th U.S. bank failure of 2009. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said in a statement that it will mail checks to insured depositors Monday morning, and that FirstCity’s direct deposits from the federal government such as Social Security and Veterans’ payments will be transferred to SunTrust Banks Inc.  FirstCity had $297 million in assets and $278 million in deposits as of March 18, the FDIC said.

Source: MarketWatch