Banking: Setting a Dubious Record

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American financial institutions will remember 1984 not as the year of Big Brother but as the year of living dangerously. Last week the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation closed down the insolvent University Bank of Wichita, bringing to 76 the number of insured banks that have folded this year. That is the largest crop of bank failures since the Depression year of 1938 but far short of the 4,000 bank collapses in 1933, when Congress set up the FDIC to restore confidence in the financial system.

While FDIC officials were shuttering the failed Kansas bank, regulators from the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, the thrift-industry counterpart to the FDIC, were in California to liquidate the San Marino Savings and Loan Association, whose failure the previous week threatened to cost the FSLIC $193 million, a record loss. So far this year, nine S and Ls have failed, and an additional 17 have been merged with stronger competitors. FDIC Chairman William M. Isaac, who has told the White House that he would like to leave office early next year, warns that if interest rates head back up and the economy weakens, next year could be just as bad.