In this post, I provided a good deal of background about the banking crisis in Georgia.
At some point soon I’ll update the statistics in that post. We are obviously having another busy year for the FDIC in Georgia, primarily because of over-exposure to residential and commercial real estate in the years leading up to the housing bust and the recession.
Citizens Bank of Effingham in Springfield was closed last evening by the FDIC:
The four branches of Citizens Bank of Effingham will reopen on Saturday as branches of HeritageBank of the South. [. . .] As of December 31, 2010, Citizens Bank of Effingham had approximately $214.3 million in total assets and $206.5 million in total deposits. [. . .] The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $59.4 million. [. . .] Citizens Bank of Effingham is the twentieth FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the sixth in Georgia. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Habersham Bank, Clarkesville, earlier today.
The Habersham Bank in Clarksville, btw, was never the subject of a public release of action by the FDIC. 51 Georgia banks were closed in 2010, and we’ll likely see about that number closed this year, unless there’s a dramatic recovery in real estate values (not a chance of that, but worth noting).
According to the unofficial problem bank list maintained by surferdude808 and published here by Calculated Risk, there are 62 Georgia banks currently under FDIC orders. That’s down from 64 at the end of 2010, a very slight improvement, but it’s troubling that the six closures did not reduce the number of troubled banks by more than two.
As I have said repeatedly, Georgia’s banking crisis, arguably the nation’s worst, needs to be examined frankly and forthrightly by out elected officials and state bureaucrats charged with overseeing the industry.