Three big banks now hold $3 of every $10 on deposit in the U.S. while the little fish continue to die off

the "too big to fail" banks are, gosh and golly sports fans, now even BIGGER thanks to the strategy pursued by those who supposedly have the common good of the citizenry at heart... HA...!

check the stats in the last paragraph...

When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.

The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.

J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street's most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.

leapin' lizards, batman...! that essentially means that you and i are now officially wholly-owned subsidiaries of the banksters...

meanwhile, the smaller fish continue to die off...

Regulators seized 45 firms during the first half of the year. In the past two months they have closed 36 more, including regional powerhouses Colonial Bank of Alabama and Guaranty Bank of Texas. The FDIC said Thursday that it counted 416 banks at risk of failing as of the end of June, a 36 percent increase from the first quarter. As with the cost of failures, the number was the highest since the early 1990s, when regulators were dealing with the aftermath of the savings and loan crisis and excessive lending for commercial development.

In recent quarters, the failures have forced the FDIC to spend more money than it collects. Banks use money from depositors to make loans. As a result, when a bank fails, much of the depositors' money is no longer in the vaults, and some of it is tied up in loans that will never be repaid. The FDIC was created by Congress to replace the missing money -- up to $250,000 in each account, under current rules.

The insurance fund held $45.2 billion at the end of June 2008. It held $13 billion at the end of March. The agency has warned that the balance could reach zero by the end of the year.

oh, but never fear... between you and i and our deep pockets, the treasury can always print more money to hand out...

Should the FDIC need even more money, the agency can borrow from the Treasury Department, then repay the government with fees collected from banks in years to come.

and what about the economic recovery that all the punditocracy is crowing about...? not so much...

[I]n an indication that the industry has not turned the corner, the share of troubled loans increased even more quickly. A trend that began with distressed mortgage lending has long since spread to other categories including credit card lending, loans to small businesses, and -- now deteriorating most rapidly -- loans for commercial real estate development.

kinda warms your heart, doesn't it...? in the mad dash of our controllers and handlers to preserve the status quo - the status quo of the super-rich and powerful elites, that is - we've ended up not only preserving the status quo, we've significantly bolstered it... heckuva job, tim... heckuva job, ben... heckuva job, larry... heckuva job, hank...

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