Not a Good Week For the Economy

So 2 more banks went under this Friday (19 YTD; those FDIC guys are sure busy these days), the second largest electronics retailer went BK, And AIG sucks up another $40 billion from the Fed.

Just another day at the office.

This cavalcade of failing banks makes me wonder what the ceiling might be. FDIC identified 76 "risky banks" at the end of 2007. They did not identify who these guys were presumably so as to not cause runs against them, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Having said that, I'm guessing that there is a large overlap between that "risky bank" list and banks that actually went under. Assume that not all the 79 risky banks fail- let's say 60 out of the 79 have and will ultimately fail, then FDIC is about a third through the process.

On the other hand, the economic prospect has worsened significantly since the end of 2007, I'm guessing that were FDIC to do a similar exercise 3 months ago, it would have a larger list of risky banks...