Washington Leads the Country in Troubled Banks

Economics blog Calculated Risk has been keeping track of the banks nationwide that are operating under heightened regulatory oversight. Washington State leads the country in troubled banks: a whopping 26.3% of banks in the state are either troubled or have outright failed. Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon round out the top five. (This doesn't include those states with less than 15 banks headquartered in their borders, though.)

A detailed version of the list is available--unfortunately, it's not sortable by state. That list is growing too. It's up five this week, bringing the number of "problem institutions" in the country to 505.

The official unemployment rate in WA is only 8.8%, though, so take some comfort there. We're only the 19th worst-off in joblessness.The highest unemployment in the US right now is Michigan, with a mind-boggling 14.8% of their workforce idle.

Via the Puget Sound Business Journal.

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By Regis Lacher in News on November 9, 2009 5:00 PM

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jdavin

Unfortunately that is a somewhat misleading analysis from Calculated Risk. The percentage of banks in a state that are in distress is not a good yardstick. If a state only has 2 banks and 1 is in distress would we say that state is the worst off because 50% of their banks are in distress? Of course not. Yes Calculated Risk filtered out states with fewer than 15 banks, but that doesn't really solve the problem. Georgia for instance has hundreds of different banks and has had dozens go bankrupt or be forced into acquisitions by the FDIC. Many of their banks had terrible balance sheets built upon reckless real estate speculation.

It's hard to believe that we're worse off than them. And perhaps Washington has more problem banks now because all the much worse ones in other states like GA and FL have already gone bankrupt and been taken into receivership.