The Seattle Times has put together an interactive website to help you gauge the health of your bank.

Rate your bank

Select you bank for the pulldown menu and check out the three graphs. The first two graphs should be trending down, while the third graph should be flat or trending upwards. For fun, click on Sterling Bank. You don't want your bank's graphs to look like their graphs. They are headed in only one direction.

Source article here. Times article

Very cool quick reference database. Thanks for sharing.

Sterling does indeed show some poor figures. Did you happen to check out Frontier? Yikes.

Question for you. Is it feasible to assume that most of these banks have not taken any federal money in either the TARP program or had any non-performing assets purchased from their balance sheet by the Feds?

Another question. What qualifies a bank to borrow at the discount window?

I bank at a credit union, and CUs aren't listed. I have no idea how safe my money is there, but I got fed up with banks nearly 20 years ago. Oly CU doesn't do home loans, so I have my mortgage thru Oly Fed, and they aren't on the list. They're pretty conservative, or so I'm told, so I think they're doing OK.

Sg

HA! My bank's too big to fail!!

Suckas!!


Thanks Andy!

OMFG click on City Bank.

My guess is that of the banks in a determined tail spin, it wouldn't have mattered if they took TARP money or not, as money doesn't fix everything. Banks on the edge certainly have been helped, but there was a stigma attached to those funds.

As to whether or not the FEDS have purchased non-performing assets, that probably hasn't happened. We sold off some of our non-performing assets to investors, loans and real estate, but we are pretty clean compared to a number of those folks on that list. I have a few crappy deals I'm working out, about 4% of my portfolio. My guess is that these troubled banks have had some luck in selling non-performing loans, as a few are showing improvement over last quarter. While still relatively weak, Anchor has shown some improvement, which is good for them.

Eligibility: Primary credit = Depository institutions in generally sound financial condition; essentially the same as eligibility for daylight credit.

Secondary credit = Depository institutions that do not qualify for primary credit.

I think we pledged a portion of our loan portfolio to get access to those funds if needed, but right now we don't have a need to borrow. $47MM in excess funds at the moment, looking for loans to invest in. I'm just a soldier on the front lines, so while I know the basics, I let the higher ups handle those transaction.

With restrictions on brokered CD's and such, banks in trouble have limited means to attract capital and liquidity. Liquidity is the key today, and 12% is the new 10%. With the regulators focus in increased capital ratios, they have effectively dried up 20% of the lending capacity in the market. Add in lower loan demand (C&I and Owner Occupied RE), and you have a situation where banks in trouble have a hard time raising additional capital, and decreasing earnings as their loan portfolio goes to crap, and no pipeline of new loans to replace the stuff they are charging off.

Also add in increased FDIC premiums, $200M in 2007 and over $1.3MM in 2009, and even relatively healthy banks are seeing hits to their bottom lines.

Thanks for the explanation. You've helped confirm some of my worst suspicisions. Most notably the effect of stricter capital ratios coupled with a lack of demand.

I see at least a few new closures come across the FDIC wire every week.

It is good to see Anchor making some strides in the right direction.

Sorry ta say it but me thinks Frontier will be gone come mid April.

Frontier has been teetering on the edge for some time now and it has been widely speculated that they were to be gone some time ago.

Some of my contacts here were in negotiations to aquire working pieces of their operations but were outbid in the end.

They are a larger organization than some of the other banks listed. In banking it seems the bigger they are, the slower they fall.

I think the issue with Frontier and Sterling is that the FDIC is having issues trying to find someone to buy them. They are both pretty large local/regional banks. Folks that are large enough already have a similar footprint, banks in the same cities, etc. Those two will be interesting.

Small banks under a billion aren't that much of an issue, as regional banks like Umpqua will use them to expand their market.

Must a competing bank buy the institution as a whole?

Does the FDIC have a problem selling them in pieces? Wouldn't that dispurse any potential risk exposure?

That would allow smaller banks to enter into the arena and consider the purchase of portions of the institutions. Essentially expand your buyer market and take more of the burden off the FDIC.

The bank that has our companies line of credit was in the other day and said that the feds new rules were squeezing them some. I'm sure what they would like to do is lower our credit limit to help their exposure.

They generally like to sell as a whole. Simpler and cleaner. That may not be possible with these "tweener" banks.

I forget who it was, the old Rainier bank or Secuirty Pacific, but when that bank was purchased, they required some branches to be divested, or split up, so some became First Interstate while others became Key Bank. You might see something similar to this happen, or you might see a "major" from out of the area use one of those "tweener" banks to gain a foothold in the NW.

Richard,

If your company is healthy, there should be no issues having a line. Commercial loans that are performing are a high priority for banks to maintain and keep in their portfolios.

This was an interesting interview on 60 minutes:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/12/60minutes/main6292458.shtml

Nice article in an obscene way. Reminds me of the woman who headed the agency that tried to regulate those CDS. Goldman Sachs was mentioned, whom SW refers to as blood sucking vampire squid, or something like that.

The sad thing is that there are a number of small banks that played no part in that fiasco who are going down, while most of those who created the mess are still plugging along.

Not only sad but should be criminal, but hell no they just keep on gettin richer.

Rather disingenuous I thought. To say that people like Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke were clueless as to what was going on is laughable at best. Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison is where those guys should be.

That some part-time, one eyed hedge fund manager was at the forefront of the CDS market was where the article lost me. The timing in the article didn't even match up. This guy made all his money by betting on and helping to develop CDS products in 2007 yet it was Goldman Sachs who convinced AIG to insure 20 billion worth of suprime paper in 2005??? C'mon.

Blood sucking vampire squid is exactly right

Seems to me this was a piece designed to deflect the attention from where it is truly deserved and to justify wage controls in the industry. If they weren't bailed out to the tune if trillions they would have never been able to afford all those bonuses.