2009 Failed Bank list and Depression,depressing stats

Here is a list of banks that have failed this year alone.
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

There are 20 banks in all. We are only 81 days into the year so far, that means that every 4.05 days a bank fails (so far). Gee that's only a possibility of 90 bank failures this year. Whew and I was worried. Only 25 banks failed in 2008, 3 in 2007, none in 2006 and 2005, 2004 had 4, 2003 had 3, 11 in 2002 and 4 in 2001 according to the FDIC.

At the above rate of one bank every 4 days we will beat 2008 in 24 days or so. The rate for 2008 was 1 bank every 14.6 days.

Now of course that does not compare to the great depression or does it? Information below is by George Marvin on iREPORT.com. The entire article can be read at http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-95272.

First, before the Great Depression, there were 25,568 banks in the country. Many of them were mom and pop operations with just one office. While the number of banks was reduced from that level to only 14,771 banks in 1933, a total of 10,797 banks lost, the demise of majority of them happened the same way that it is happening now: The stronger ones are taking over the weaker ones for a few cents on the dollar. There were a TOTAL of 2,489 actual bank failures during the entire Great Depression, as would be defined by the period in which the economy was in recession (late 1929-1933. The economy actually grew by over 10% in 1934, as unemployment dropped and the recovery began. The number of bank failures was miniscule for the rest of the 1930s.) That is an average of 622 bank failures per year at the worst of the depression. To put that into perspective, there were 924 bank failures in 1926, and 636 bank failures in 1927, at the height of the Roaring 20s. The banks that failed back then were mostly small banks, with fewer than a dozen employees. The TOTAL deposits of all of the banks that failed from January, 1921 through december, 1933 was $5.3 billion. The total loss to all depositors was $1.1 billion after the banks were liquidated. According to the CPI, that would be about $86 billion in deposits and $18 billion that the depositors lost due to the liquidations of the banks.

On the other hand, WAMU by itself had 3,150 branches, about the same number as all of the banks that failed during the Great Depression, combined, and over 43,000 employees, more than the entire number that were unemployed by all of the bank failures of the Great Depression combined. Likewise, it held almost as many mortgages as all of the banks that failed during the Great Depression, combined. The one bank had $309 billion in assets, FOUR TIMES THE TOTAL OF ALL OF THE BANKS THAT FAILED DURING THE ENTIRE GREAT DEPRESSION! If there had not been a buyer for its assets, the depositors who were not covered by FDIC insurance may have lost as much as the final losses of every customer of every bank that failed during the entire great depression, combined.

Just more to think about.