Shutting the Doors: A Decade of Bank Failures

It’s no secret that the last few years have been brutal for the banking industry. Sure, the “too big to fail” institutions slugged through the recession with the help of several bailout rounds and are doing quite nicely this year. But what about the little guys? Take a look at the FDIC’s list of failed banks for 2009 and you’ll get an idea. A whopping 140 banks closed doors in 2009 — the highest number since 1992. (That compares with 25 failed banks in 2008 and four in 2007.) You won’t see any household names there, in large part because those numbers don’t include mergers – and, of course, because those banks received quite a bit of help from the government.

But nothing paints a better picture of the industry’s carnage than our latest infographic on bank closures over the past 10 years. Click the play button and check out as the trickle of red dots slowly builds up over the first half of the decade — and quickly turns into a blood bath as we roll into 2008, 2009 and 2010.