by Calculated Risk on 10/31/2008 09:33:00 PM

Just to put the 17 bank failures this year into perspective, here are insured bank failures by year since the FDIC was founded:

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

Of course the size of the failed banks, and the cost to the FDIC, also matter.

The failure today, Freedom Bank, was a small bank by asset size ($287 million). Still the size of the cost to the FDIC is pretty amazing compared to the size of the bank (cost estimated at between $80 million and $104 million). Many analysts expect over 100 bank failures. Dr. Roubini expects "hundreds of banks" to fail in the cycle. If so, we are just getting started.

Note: there are 8,451 FDIC insured banks as of Q3 2008.