Dustbiters (Updated) 0

I missed the unemployment figures because I had somewhere to go and something to do (no, it was not remunerative). Atrios caught them here.

Lots of dust getting bitten today. This is a big one:

Colonial Bank, Montgomery, Alabama.

Bloomberg has more:

Colonial BancGroup Inc., the Alabama lender facing a criminal probe, had its banking operations closed by regulators and taken over by BB&T Corp. in the biggest bank failure since Washington Mutual Inc. collapsed last year.

Branches and deposits of Colonial, Alabama’s second-largest bank, were turned over to Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T in a deal brokered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the regulator said today. The failure of Montgomery-based Colonial followed a Florida expansion that saddled the lender with more than $1.7 billion in soured real-estate loans.

BB&T pretty much stayed out of the real estate orgy, concentrating on, like, banking.

Biting more dust:

Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Betcha without mark to market, they could still claim they were solvent.

Aside: A friend of mine was telling me about a friend of hers in Florida whose house was foreclosed a couple of years ago. Her friend had a 30-year straight mortgage. As the real estate bubble expanded, the assessment went up. As the assessment went up, the real estate taxes increased, upping the annual escrow amount that was added to the monthly mortgage payment. The PITI payment eventually became so large that the homeowner, who could still afford the PI, could no longer afford the PITI. She now lives in Rhode Island and has a foreclosure on her credit record.

And thus the innocent are punished.

Addendum:

More blanked banks:

Community Bank of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada

Community Bank of Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona

Union Bank, National Association, Gilbert, Arizona