Is There an Important Economic Barometer that No One is Talking About?

This past Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) shuttered another four US banks. That makes 90 bank failures so far in 2010. If bank failures continue at the same rate for the rest of 2010, you can expect perhaps 200 in total to fail this year. That would represent a jump over 2009, when the FDIC closed 140 failed banks.  In 2008, just 25 US banks were closed by the FDIC. (To keep the number of failures in perspective, we need to remember that the US has about 8,000 banks in total.)Tracking the number of bank failures represents another way to count up the casualties of the Great Recession. The FDIC is working through a grim sort of financial triage, separating the banks that have been mortally wounded by the US real estate meltdown from the healthy ones.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Bank-failures-An-important-economic-barometer-that-no-one-is-talking-about-98173914.html#ixzz0tRdhVPVE

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