The big question on the minds of federal regulators is: Which is the next bank to fail? The second question is whether many of the banks which have failed were
closed due to real estate loans that were in default or foreclosure. Over the past weekend regulators closed five banks, pushing the 2009
total to 69 failures. According to CNN Money, the total losses relating
to closed banks for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is $15.13 billion for 2009 so far,
compared to $17 billion for all of 2008. This year a total of 69 banks
have been closed by regulators compared to 25 in 2008 and a mere three
banks in 2007. [more]