A look back at the bank failures of 2009

Well, the numbers appear to be in: The bank total failure for 2009 stands at 140. So what exactly does that mean? Let's take a look.

It was a bad year for banks, but it could have been worse. In fact, it could have been much worse. For instance, during the Great Depression, we lost approximately 9,000 banks, most of them collapsing in the first few years of the 1930s. And if you go back just 17 years to 1992, we lost 181 banks, thanks to the infamous savings and loan crisis, which was nothing compared to 1989 (also due to the S&L crisis) when we lost 531 banks.