by Joseph Kenny | 09/10/09

Bank regulators have now added closures in California, Maryland, and Minnesota to the total list of bank failures in the United States. In total, there have been 84 this year as a result of the global economic crisis.

The FDIC became the receiver for the Affinity Bank of Ventura in California, the Bradford Bank of Baltimore, and the Mainstreet Bank in Lake Forest, Minnesota.

The total number of assets collected from the three banks added up to $1.9 billion while deposits reached $1.7 billion. New lenders Pacific Western Bank of San Diego, Central Bank of Stillwater Minnesota, and Manufacturers & Traders Trust, assumed control of the banks and cost $446 million from the FDIC's deposit insurance fund.

Analysts have noted that regulators have been closing banks at the fastest rate in seventeen years and those figures continue to climb as the losses continue from mount because of bad real-estate debt.

With a combined asset number of $299.8 billion, the number of banks that failed the FDIC's grading system for asset quality, liquidity, and earnings in the second quarter totaled 416. It was the most since June of 1994 according to one regulator's report.

As the insurer for deposits at nearly 8,200 institutions, the FDIC protects about $13.5 trillion in assets and reimburses customers for deposits of up to $250,000 per account if a bank fails. The dramatic increase in failures has seriously diminished the regulator's deposit insurance fund. At the end of June, the fund dropped to $10.4 billion from $13 billion in the previous quarter. (This total reached the lowest since 1993.)

The agency has brokered the 6th and 11th largest bank failures in U.S. history this year in Birmingham, Alabama-based Colonial BancGroup Inc. and Austin, Texas-based Guaranty Financial Group Inc.