The FDIC Goes Broke; Guaranty Bank Find Its Way To The Dustbin Of History (And Three Other Banks Fail)

The FDIC is trickling bank deaths at its New Normal steady state of four or five per week. As we predicted a ways back, at least 250 banks would die before the end of September 2010.

Our bank death scoreboard on the July 1st, 2009 through September 30, 2010 period stands at:

36 down: 214 (minimum) to go

Should be fun.

We also had our second $10+ billion asset bank fail in as many weeks.

This week, Guaranty Bank of Austin Texas took a Glock single shot to the dome...and the FDIC dragged its feet long enough on reforming its rules that govern private equity ownership of banks that We The People ended up placing Guaranty in the hands of Spain's second largest (and probably best run) bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA). Technically BBVA's Birmingham, Alabama based subsidiary BBVA Compass is the acquiror (the South(ern banking capital of Birmingham) will rise again!).

This transaction cost the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) a cool $3 billion on Guaranty's $13 billion asset base (23%). As a citizen guarantor of the DIF, aren't you comforted by the FDIC's desire to keep private capital bidders out of these auctions? Nothing like suppressing capital to get a full and fair price on our behalf!

Jackasses...

Of the other three banks that failed, two were in Georgia (numbers 17 and 18 for the year) and one was in Alabama (its second in two weeks). And for the fourth time in less than three months, Stearns Bank of Minnesota acquired a failed bank (this time an internet bank ostensibly located in Atlanta, Georgia called eBank). This puts the Red Jersey of Shame leaderboard at: Georgia 18, Illinois 13, California 8, Florida 6.

Weekly Failure Summary:

eBank, Atlanta, GA
Assets: $143mm, FDIC Losses: $63mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 44.1%

First Coweta, Newnan, GA
Assets: $167mm, FDIC Losses: $48mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.7%

CapitalSouth Bank, Birmingham, AL
Assets: $6170mm, FDIC Losses: $151mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 24.7%

Guaranty Bank, Austin, TX
Assets: $13,000mm, FDIC Losses: $3,000mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 23.1%

Straight Average Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 30.1%
Weighted Average Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 23.4%

...another brutal week.

Per the FDIC's own estimates, since July 1st alone the DIF has lost $10.5 billion! Mind you, at March 31st the DIF stood at $13 billion and while the FDIC has taken in rich TLGP guarantee fees during that period, when the 4/1/09 - 6/30/09 losses (which we don't have at our fingertips but are substantial) are taken into account we can safely state that the DIF is, for all intents and purposes, broke.

Now, now, we know the US Treasury guarantees the DIF, so depositors need not fear, but hopefully this recognition of functional insolvency allows us to get past the ruse that the FDIC has fulfilled its duty of charging appropriate insurance premiums and providing capable regulatory oversight. In fact, the FDIC's has been an abject failure at these core functions. If the FDIC DIF were were an actual insurer, the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund itself would have been taken over and killed by the government.

Keep that track record in mind when the FDIC "experts" espouse their opinions on the "solutions" to our current ills.

As an aside, the FDIC continues its rampant and unrighteous theft from its US citizen guarantors by providing deposit insurance to accounts over $250,000!

Memo To Sheila:
As if your horribly managed insurance "business" was not screwing us all enough, you have decided to insure depositors that - in essence - have not paid for insurance! What the deuce?! For the love of all that is holy, this gift to certain rich depositors is a regressive tax to end all regressive taxes. You are providing free deposit insurance to rich people paid for by the deposits of the portion of the population that does not happen to have two hundred fifty thousand dollars cash on hand. Are you kidding me? At least stop pretending like you don't insure these deposits and charge banks for this insurance. Otherwise, stop violating your mandate and stealing from U.S. citizens out of some sense of unfounded paranoia.
-TILB

The below video is intended to deliver TILB's message to the FDIC. Anytime it refers to Arthur, his cohort, or the English just substitute The Sheila Bear, her cohort, or the FDIC. Yes, we accept the roles as the French guys. It can be summarize as, "I fart in your general direction, your mother was a hamster and you father smelled of elderberries...you fuckers."

Seven More Failures; FDIC On A Bank Failure Treadmill

Seven banks were closed today.

The FDIC almost cannot shut banks down fast enough these days.

Earlier this week, TILB predicted that the FDIC would shutdown 250 or more banks over the next 15 months (equating to 4-5 failures per week). One week into our prediction, the FDIC has not let us down.

That said, as with the last time we had seven failures, this week comes with a big caveat: six of the failures were sister banks in Georgia: Security Bank of Gwinnett County, Security Bank of Bibb County, Security Bank of Houston County, Security Bank of Jones County, Security Bank of North Metro, and Security Bank of North Fulton. Collectively these six banks had a pretty good sized asset base at $2.8 billion.

The seventh bank was the tiny Waterford Village Bank in Williamsville, NY with $61.4 million of assets.

As has been true in the majority of cases, no depositors took losses as all deposits were absorbed by acquiring banks (including deposits over the FDIC minimum). Someday in the future, we will talk about how the FDIC is basically subsidizing non-insured depositors despite this clearly being outside their legal mandate. In our opinion, the FDIC's action on this front is dishonest, illegal and immoral. This undeserved gift to uninsured depositors, of course, comes at the expense of the tax payer and the dollar-based saver (the latter resulting from our suspicion that printing money is the Occam's Razor answer that will be pursued to handle the enormous debts our government is issuing, including the debt it will take on in order to replenish the FDIC deposit insurance fund, which is virtually empty).

Unlike most weeks, the FDIC did not break out its estimate of losses for each of the different bank failures. Instead, the Security Bank failures were aggregated together. As such, we've assumed that each bank is allocated a pro-rata share of losses based on its asset base (collectively, the Security Banks are estimated to cost the FDIC insurance fund 28.8% of their assets). Here's this week's analysis (spoiler alert: things still suck for the FDIC):

Waterford Village Bank, NY
Assets: $61.4mm, FDIC Losses: $5.6mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 9.1%

Security Bank of Gwinnett County, GA
Assets: $322mm, FDIC Losses: $92.8mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.8%

Security Bank of Bibb County, GA
Assets: $1,200mm, FDIC Losses: $346mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.8%

Security Bank of Houston County, GA
Assets: $383mm, FDIC Losses: $110mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.8%

Security Bank of Jones County, GA
Assets: $453mm, FDIC Losses: $131mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.8%

Security Bank of North Metro, GA
Assets: $242mm, FDIC Losses: $64.6mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.8%

Security Bank of North Fulton, GA
Assets: $209mm, FDIC Losses: $60mm, Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.8%

Straight Average Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 26.0%
Weighted Average Losses as a Percentage of Assets: 28.4%

For those keeping score at home, you may recall that last week we applauded California and Georgia for making a contest of the failure championship. Illinois, on the backs of the Campbell family, seemed to be running away with the 2009 Red Jersey of Shame (mistakenly referred to as black last week).

What a difference a week makes! Georgia now leads the competition and has posted sixteen bank failures in 2009. Third place California has eight bank failures and current runner-up Illinois has twelve. Those three states represent 36 of the 64 failures this year.

Noticeably absent from the list is meaningful failure volume from Nevada, Florida or Arizona based banks. We suspect California banks have a good chunk of Nevada and Arizona risk, but there is no way local banks in those states are not getting obliterated. As an email from a friend of TILB at BTIG said today:

*LAS VEGAS AREA HOME PRICES FELL 41.3% IN JUNE FROM YR EARLIER

*LAS VEGAS HOME SALES INCREASE 44%, MDA DATAQUICK SAYS

--- so homes are starting to clear = good, but the clearing prices are still 45% lower than they are now = bad ....... i wonder if they have a break down of speculators vs real family buyers

This does not auger well for the FDIC's bank failure pipeline. When you're levered 12:1 or 15:1, collateral value declines of 50% (peak to today) have a particularly upsetting impact.