I Can Guess Where More Bailout Cash Is Going

To the FDIC, of course.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said that the list of banks it considers to be in trouble shot up by 46 percent, to 171, during the third quarter.

Total assets held by troubled institutions climbed from $78.3 billion to $115.6 billion -- a figure that suggests that the nation's top 20 banks aren't on the list, even though they also are getting slammed by the ongoing credit crisis. The FDIC does not reveal the names of institutions it deems troubled.

On average, about 13 percent of institutions on the FDIC's list end up failing.

Nine banks failed during the third quarter, decreasing the FDIC's deposit insurance fund to $34.6 billion from $45.2 billion in the second quarter.

And of course these are far worse than average times.

It's that last paragraph that bothers me the most. Nine banks failed at a cost of $10 billion. More will fail this quarter, indeed some already have.

The $34.6 billion that's left in the FDIC won't make it through spring. Billions will be fed into it. Billions more will be paid out as more and more banks fail.

But it's okay, Bloomberg says Obama's a smart guy for putting some of the same folks responsible for this mess in charge of it.

After all, that philosophy worked so very well for Bush and America over the lest 8 years. It's not like Obama ran on "change" or anything.