This Week's Busted Banks

Another Friday passes, another pair of banks end up dragged out on the pile of bodies by the FDIC.

Banks in Nevada and Illinois were seized by regulators, bringing this year’s tally to 16, as tumbling home prices and surging unemployment caused more borrowers to fall behind on loan payments.

Security Savings Bank of Henderson, Nevada, and Heritage Community Bank of Glenwood, Illinois, with combined assets of $471.2 million, were shut by state regulators and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver, the FDIC said yesterday. Bank of Nevada in Las Vegas is assuming Security Savings’ $175.2 million in deposits, while Heritage Community’s $218.6 million will go to MB Financial Bank of Chicago.

“Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage,” the FDIC said.

As regulators wrap up the busiest month for bank failures since 1993, they’re preparing to replenish the FDIC’s insurance fund, which dwindled by 45 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months to $18.9 billion. The FDIC said it will charge U.S. banks a one-time assessment and increase other fees amid estimates that bank closures could cost the fund $65 billion through 2013.

The FDIC shuttered 25 banks in 2008, including Washington Mutual Inc., the biggest U.S. bank to fail last year, and IndyMac Bank Inc., the second-largest. The 10 banks closed in February were in Oregon, California, Florida, Nebraska, Illinois, and Georgia and Nevada as foreclosures rose across the country.

10 banks a month is not exactly a really good thing here. The happy-face financial media says it's no big deal, but the FDIC is raising fees on banks in order to get cash for its emergency bank fund.

Facing a cascade of bank failures depleting the deposit insurance fund, federal regulators on Friday raised the fees paid by U.S. financial institutions and levied an emergency premium in a bid to collect $27 billion this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. now expects that bank failures will cost the insurance fund around $65 billion through 2013, up from an earlier estimate of $40 billion. The bank failures, 14 already this year following 25 last year, reflect the ravages of rising unemployment and falling home prices that have sent loan defaults soaring.

The FDIC said the economic crisis, which has caused the insurance fund to drop to its lowest level in nearly a quarter-century, also warranted extending the plan to rebuild the insurance fund from five years to seven.

The emergency premium, to be levied on the roughly 8,500 federally insured institutions on June 30, will be 20 cents for every $100 of their insured deposits. That compares with an average premium of 6.3 cents paid by banks and thrifts last year.

So yes, triple the fees charged to banks to keep customer deposits insured. That doesn't exactly strike me as a sign the FDIC isn't worried. Quite the opposite: the FDIC is expecting many, many more banks to fail in 2009 and well beyond.

We may be on a tad slower pace than two weeks ago, but we're still shooting for 96 bank closings in 2009, 8 banks a month. I honestly think that rate will rise, and it will rise soon.