FDIC and Real estate corrections and update

So I just wanted to comment on a couple of things that have taken place recently, and nothing huge, but observations that you may not hear about in the news.  Friday the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) shut down 7 more banks costing the fund yet another $1.8 billion.  Pretty much par for the course these days, as the FDIC is getting pretty good at turning lights out.  Well, that is not exactly true, they do not turn the lights out.  They sell the bank to another bank and eat the losses in the process, and the depositors simply see new stationary the following day when they show up at their branch.  But this past Friday was different.  Three of the seven banks had no takers.  No one.  That is a first for this "crisis".  Since it is a first, no need to get alarmed, but I strongly suspect it will not be the last.  In 2 of the cases the FDIC set up a temporary bank for now and will run the operations, and in the third case, they are turning the lights out and sending checks.  And to finish off the holiday cheer, there are roughly 550 banks on the FDIC's list of "troubled banks".  Total number of failures this year stands at 140.

Above is just a re-publish of the number of banks per month that have failed.  I added a 6 month average trend line to make it clear where things are headed.

Now, back to a post from a couple months ago about housing.  Someone asked about figures and I spent a rainy Sat collecting the data and putting it into Excel.  It is nice of these guys not to put it into a format that requires one to transfer it bit by bit.  That said, anyone wanting the data from any chart I publish need only ask.  So here is the new graph with some suggestions from Josh, my usability expert, and added clarity.

So I am going to go thru this one bit by bit.  First, in purple are the new residential home sales.  Please note that I tend to focus on these stats, but look at them in comparison to the existing sales.  Now I will focus on the existing home numbers, and you can simply transfer all of what I will say between the two.  So, the highest line (blue dotted) is what you see in the press releases.  This is a clever number that honestly fooled me.  So, it is a monthly sales number very creatively multiplied by 12.  Why would anyone do this you ask?  Either confusion, or to make things seem better than they are.  Either way, it is a bogus number.  So, the real number to look at is the blue dashed line.  That is what is actually sold each month and the solid blue one is the number that are currently for sale (no hooky poky with that one).  From here on I will likely wipe out the annually adjusted stuff, but for now, just so you know what you are looking at.