The FDIC seized 4 more banks, raising the totaled number of failed U.S banks in 2010 to 26. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has said in the current banking crisis, failures will peak in 2010.

According to the FDIC bank failures from 2009 to 2013 is expected to cost $100 billion. Small(regional) banks are failing due to the loan losses from the credit boom. Many losses are result of the collapsed commercial real estate projects.

Brief Rundown;

Bank                                                                   Assets                                            Deposits

Centennial Bank (Utah)                              $215.2 million                              $205.1 million
Bank of Illinois (Illinois)                            $211.7 million                               $198.5 million
Waterfield Bank (Maryland)                      $155.6 million                               $156.4 million
Sun American Bank (Florida)                    $535.7 million                              $443.5 million

Unemployment Report BLS:

Nonfarm payroll employment was little changed (-36,000) in February, and the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction and information, while tem- porary help services added jobs. Severe winter weather in parts of the country may have affected payroll employment and hours; however, it is not possible to quantify precisely the net impact of the winter storms on these measures.

The Department of Labor reports unemployment (initial claims) statistics as follows.

” In the week ending Feb. 27, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 469,000, a decrease of 29,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 498,000. The 4-week moving average was 470,750, a decrease of 3,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 474,250.”

The 4 week moving averaging of unemployment claims is at its lowest level since September 2008. However, that figure is still high and continued job losses may still be on the horizon.

The graph below shows the stock market’s growth, stagnation, and decline with respect to U.S Presidents.

You be the judge!

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ADP Press Release
Nonfarm private employment decreased 20,000 from January to February 2010 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from December 2009 to January 2010 was revised down, from a decline of 22,000 to a decline of 60,000. The February employment decline was the smallest since employment began falling in February of 2008.
Two large blizzards smothered parts of the east coast during the reference period for the BLS establishment survey. The adverse weather had only a very small effect on today’s ADP Report due to the methodology used to construct it. However, the adverse weather is widely expected to depress the BLS estimate of the monthly change in employment for February, but boost it for March. Therefore, it would not be unreasonable to expect the BLS estimate for February (due out this Friday) to be less than today’s ADP Report even though the BLS estimate will include the hiring of temporary Census workers not captured in the ADP Report.

The FDIC seized 2 more banks, raising the totaled number of failed U.S banks in 2010 to 22. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has said in the current banking crisis, failures will peak in 2010.

According to the FDIC bank failures from 2009 to 2013 is expected to cost $100 billion. Small(regional) banks are failing due to the loan losses from the credit boom. Many losses are result of the collapsed commercial real estate projects.

Brief Rundown;

Bank                                                                                    Assets                                            Deposits

Carson River Community Bank (Nevada)                $51.1 million                                $50 million
Rainier Pacific Bank (Washington)                          $717.8 million                             $446.2 million

The Department of Labor reports unemployment (initial claims) statistics as follows.

” In the week ending Feb. 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 496,000, an increase of 22,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 474,000. The 4-week moving average was 473,750, an increase of 6,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 467,750.”

The 4 week moving averaging of unemployment claims is at its lowest level since September 2008. However, that figure is still high and continued job losses may still be on the horizon.

Here is an interesting graphic based on data from Linkedin, it shows where collapsed bank employees went during the economic crisis.

From Linkedin:
One hypothesis is that many of the employees left the financial industry. According to the LinkedIn data set, that just isn’t true. There are a handful of people that did transition to other industries and start new careers, but most stayed in the financial space. To be specific, other than two acquiring companies (Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch and Nomura acquired Lehman Brothers’ franchise in the Asia Pacific region), Barclays was by far the biggest beneficiary, scooping up 10% of the laid off talent, followed by Credit Suisse at 1.5% and Citigroup at 1.1 %.

New home sales in the U.S fell to a record low in January.

The Census Bureau report:
Sales of new single-family houses in January 2010 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 11.2 percent (±14.0%)* below the revised December rate of 348,000 and is 6.1 percent (±15.1%)* below the January 2009 estimate of 329,000.
Homebuilders are facing tough competition given that the market is flooded with foreclosed homes. To add to there problems unemployment remains high at 9.7% and companies are slow to hire.

New home sales break down by regions:

Northeast: declined 35%
West: declined 12%
South: declined 9.5%
Midwest: rose 2.1%

Here is an interesting chart from Visual Economics showing GDP vs Expenditures. However, inflation doesn’t seem to be represented in this data.