Crickets.
Sheila is getting good at her job. She's managed to drag this bank failure parade on for so long that we've collectively become numb to it. Nobody cares anymore. For instance, last weekend (10/30/09), we lost a $19 billion BHC (nine separate banks!) and nary a word was written about it.
This weekend, we lost another five banks including an $11 billion San Francisco based bank that caters to Asian Americans called United Commercial Bank (as an aside, check this out from earlier this week for a good laugh!). In addition to being a good sized bank, it actually has an international presence with a Chinese partner and branches in Hong Kong and Shanghai. What will the press say about this?
More crickets.
The Fourth Estate does not seem capable of simple arithmetic, as they rarely (never?) report the aggregate losses incurred since the end of the prior quarter, instead preferring to lean on the FDIC's quarterly reporting as their crutch. These are some hawkshaw pressmen if we've ever seen them!
So we will do the math for you.
In the five weekends since the end of last quarter (i.e., beginning on Friday October 2nd), we have suffered 25 failures with a total estimated loss to the FDIC deposit insurance fund (DIF) of $4.8 billion. During that period, the FDIC has managed to place the vast majority of failed assets at acquiring banks by entering into expensive loss-sharing agreements. In fact, the FDIC has entered into loss-sharing agreements during those five weekends covering $23.8 billion of assets.
But it has not been able to put all of the assets of failed banks to the acquiring banks, even with the incentive of loss-sharing agreements. The FDIC takes ownership of these residual assets. As you might imagine, an asset that someone won't acquire even when virtually all of the risk of loss is taken off the table is a wee bit more toxic than your average bear. The FDIC has inherited $2.7 billion of these assets in the past five weeks alone.
But, who really cares?
Crickets.
