Banks and Banking

• 1"There Are Still 'Zombie Banks' Around"
• 2"Small Business Loans and Bank Rage"
• 3"Dead Banks Walking: Eliminating Zombie Banks from New Business Financing"
• 4"Derivatives: Bailed-Out Banks Still Making Billions off Risky Bets"
• 5"Problem Bank List at 20 Year High as Regulators Let Zombie Banks Remain Open"

Small Business Finance Services in Particularly Short Supply from Most Banks

Finding "Good Banks" and other Business Lenders is a Realistic Option

• 1Working capital financing
• 2Low-cost credit card processing for merchants
• 3Construction financing
• 4Refinancing commercial real estate loans

One More Thing About Banks

When Should We Really Start To Worry? (Or Stop Worrying?)

• 1When the first symptoms of a banking crisis appeared (2003 to 2005, several years before the bailout), one number that a lot of us were looking at involved the percentage of bank mortgage loans that were delinquent. Every time that an analyst or other independent observer noted a brewing problem when this number kept growing, the banks kept pushing back that everything was fine and that such fluctuations were normal. The "acceptable" delinquency rate is probably in the 1-2% range (or less). A totally different number that I have been watching closely during the last 5 years is the percentage of all banks which are carried by the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) on their Problem Bank List. Before the recent banking crisis, this list included about 50 banks. This number now stands at about 850 banks, or seventeen (17) times as many. This represents close to 11% of all banks and I don't care how positively the banks or bank lobbyists try to spin this number, I won't stop worrying until the number is back to under 50.