Paying attention to the banks lately?

From Yahoo! News and the Associated Press this morning: Regulators shut banks in Florida, Washington state WASHINGTON – Regulators on Friday shut down small banks in Florida and Washington state, bringing to 127 the number of U.S. bank failures this year on a wave of loan defaults and economic distress. But here's the clincher for me: With 127 closures nationwide so far this year, the pace of bank failures exceeds that of 2009, which was already a brisk year for shutdowns. By this time last year, regulators had closed 95 banks. And whereas last year most of the bank failures were due to home mortgage loans that went sour, this year it's gone commercial and so, likely, possibly much more expensive and damaging: The pace has accelerated as banks' losses mount on loans made for commercial property and development. Many companies have shut down in the recession, vacating shopping malls and office buildings financed by the loans. That has brought delinquent loan payments and defaults by commercial developers. I took this last note to be somewhat positive--the proverbial "silver lining to the cloud": The number of bank failures is expected to peak this year and be slightly higher than the 140 that fell in 2009. Anyway, for now, we're not "out of the woods" by a long shot, yet. Here's hoping things get better. And the sooner the better, too, of course. Try to have a great weekend, y'all. Link to original story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100925/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bank_closures/print

Do you know who Phil Angelides is?

If you don't, you'd better learn.

Do you know what the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is? (Hopefully it's self-explanatory).

The thing is, this commission has started meeting already. They began this week.

Mr. Angelides heads up the commission.

They're looking into the banking/mortagae/loan/investment nightmare that led us down the path to a near collapse of our economic system, both here in the US and around the world.

And I'll tell you, this is going to go on for some time and we'd better all be checking in virtually daily on this thing, to see what new revelations there are.

We need to know what happened in this crisis.

We need to know who did what.

We need to find out what was done illegally.

We need to find out what was done that should be illegal.

And we need to find out how we can avoid this greedy, stupid mess so we don't do it again.

To hell with catharsis. We need information, laws, regulations and solutions.

Ayn Rand be damned.