Six banks were put out of their misery today. Here is the link to the FDIC home page. I don’t know why I kept posting a link for each bank when this works just as well and you can go and figure out exactly which failure interests you. Slow learner, I guess.

Anyway, the big daddy this week is AmTrust Bank out of Cleveland. It’s not exactly small potatoes and the FDIC puts its resolution cost at a cool $2 billion. The peculiar thing about this one is that AmTrust’s holding company filed for bankruptcy earlier this week. That’s right, the holding company folded but the bank kept on operating until this evening. I’ve got to believe that the FDIC got caught with its pants down on this one.

AmTrust’s problems are the usual suspects. Residential mortgages and commercial real estate. What else is new. Just one more in a long line of brain dead institutions that need to be put out of their misery.