by Calculated Risk on 5/31/2008 03:36:00 PM

On Friday, the FDIC announced the 4th bank failure of 2008, and the 2nd failure in May. The FDIC estimates that the failure of First Integrity of Staples, Minnesota will only cost the FDIC Insurance Fund $2.3 million. This is a small amount compared to the estimated cost to the fund of $214 million - announced earlier in May - associated with ANB Financial in Bentonville, Arkansas.

It appears bank failures are starting to become more frequent, and some analysts are estimating between 150 and 300 banks will fail over the next couple of years.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

To put these failures into perspective, here is a graph of bank failures since the FDIC was created in 1934. There were 3 bank failures in 2007, and 4 already in 2008. This hardly shows up on the graph.

The huge spike in the '80s was due to the S&L crisis.

Note: thousands of banks failed during the Depression, and bank failures were very common even before the Depression, with about 600 banks failing every year during the Roaring '20s.

I suspect bank failures will become much more common (although nothing like the late '80s), and we will be on Bank Failure watch every Friday afternoon.