Lots of banks that aren’t related to Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or Bank of America are biting the dust every day. Yesterday, nine more failed and were seized by government regulators:
U.S. authorities seized nine failed banks on Friday, the most in a single day since the financial crisis began and the latest stark sign that substantial parts of the nation’s banking industry are being crippled by bad loans.
The move brought the total number of failed banks in 2009 to 115 — their highest annual level since 1992 — with analysts expecting more to come. Among the lenders seized Friday was Los Angeles-based California National Bank, in what was the fourth-largest U.S. bank failure this year. […]
More lenders are expected to go under this year as the industry tries to get a handle on commercial real estate loans that will continue to worsen, as more strip malls go vacant and residential developments stall.
Banks held about $1.7 trillion in commercial real estate loans at the end of September, according to Federal Reserve data, or about 15 percent of their total assets. But to the extent these loans weaken, small banks are likely to be hit the hardest because larger banks were better diversified.
If anything Obama and the Democrats were too timid in their use of government funds to stimulate the economy. Instead they and the Federal Reserve poured billions into bailing out Wall Street and the “Too Big To Fail” institutions which was fine and dandy for those companies executives, but did little to spark lending to ordinary Americans and small to medium sized businesses, the lifeblood of our economy. As Wall Street resumes its efforts to securitize your life insurance policies and allow investors to gamble on when you live or die, the economy is still burning down all around us. Isn’t it time we stopped the welfare program for the people who created this mess, and use our tax dollars to benefit the rest of America?
