If America’s bankers celebrated the end of 2009 exuberantly you could hardly blame them.

After all, new Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data analyzed by the Investigative Reporting Workshop confirms that last year was one of the worst in memory for the industry.  The data show:

• Bank failures, rose from 26 in 2008 to 140 last year (there were three failures in 2007 and none in 2006). By the end of the year, the FDIC had 702 banks on its official troubled list, up from 252 a year ago. At the end of 2007, only 52 banks were on the ...

Methodology of Investigative Reporting Workshop’s BankTracker

Each quarter the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. requires every bank in the nation to submit detailed reports about its financial condition. This data is public and contains hundreds of data points for each bank. The Investigative Reporting Workshop downloads the data files from the FDIC Web site. Using experienced computer-assisted journalists, we extract several key variables of bank performance. These include:
*    Total Assets
*    Total Deposits
*    Loans (net of allowance for loan losses)
*    Net Income
*    Provision for loan losses (the charge to earnings for realized loan losses)
*    Tier 1 Capital
*    Loan Loss Reserves (the ...

The headlines in the banking industry in recent weeks have focused on the recovery that has permitted the nation’s biggest banks to repay the federal financial assistance they received late last year and early this year through the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

But an analysis of the third quarter reports banks filed with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shows that many banks still are swamped with a large – and still growing – collection of loans that are not being repaid on time and repossessed properties. As a result, 369 of the nation’s 8,108 banks had more troubled loans ...

The methodology for compiling the "troubled asset ratio" for credit unions is basically the same as that the Investigative Reporting Workshop uses to calculate the ratio for the nation's banks, with some differences because credit unions report somewhat different data.

We downloaded the quarterly data file from the National Credit Union Administration, the chief regulator for credit unions and imported the data into a database manager. Based on consultations with NCUA analysts, we selected the following fields to include in our analysis:

• Assets
• Deposits
• Loans
• Loan Loss Reserves
• Provision for Loan Losses (the charge to income for bad loans ...

Question: If my bank has a high troubled asset ratio, what should I do?

Answer: The short answer is “nothing.” The FDIC covers all deposits up to $250,000 and no investor has lost any insured deposits since the FDIC went into business in 1935. The FDIC is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

Question: Are you saying that a bank with a high “troubled asset ratio” is going to fail?

Answer:   No. Each bank must be evaluated separately. In some cases, the owners of banks are able to inject additional capital in order ...

The tide of bad loans and foreclosed properties just keeps rising at the nation's banks and credit unions, according to an analysis of the most recent federal banking records conducted by the Investigative  Reporting Workshop.

At the end of June, troubled assets at the nation's 8204 banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. totaled more than $323 billion, up from $237 billion six months ago and just $170 billion a year ago.

The much smaller credit union sector also has seen large increases in bad loans and foreclosed properties. A year ago, credit unions had about $6 ...

Despite the infusion of nearly $200 billion worth of federal bailout money into the banking system since last October, the nation’s banks had another rough quarter in the first three months of this year. And, according to an analysis of federal bank data, it appears that mid-size banks are suffering more than the largest banks.

From the data, it is difficult to find the effects of the Treasury Department’s so-called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), either on bank capital or on bank lending activity.

The analysis is based on quarterly condition reports filed with the Federal Deposit Insurance ...

For millions of Americans their “bank” is not a “bank” at all, but rather a credit union, a cooperative financial institution owned by its depositors and loan customers, rather than stockholders.

There are nearly as many credit unions – 7,909 at the end of March, compared with 8,255 banks. But most of them are small and as a group, they hold only $869 billion in assets, compared with more than $13 trillion for the nation’s banks. The largest credit union, Navy Federal, based in Merrifield, Va., with $38.7 billion in assets would be just the 45^{th ...}

The unprecedented bet that many banks made on mortgages, real estate development and other real estate-related lending during the middle part of this decade has produced a payoff no one imagined just a few years ago -- a huge increase in loan defaults, a soaring number of foreclosures and a plunge in bank profits. And now, an analysis of bank financial statements by the Investigative Reporting Workshop and msnbc.com, sheds new light on just how dangerous conditions have become in many banks across the nation.

The analysis is based on reports every bank is required to file each quarter with ...