Bank Failures on This Day in History

 

The Case of Banking Crises

This Day in History: The Franklin National Bank collapsed due to fraud and mismanagement on this day in 1974, which was, at the time, the largest bank failure in US history. Now, 46 years later, it does not even rank in the top 30 of bank failures. Some of the bigger bank failures since then have been Washington Mutual (where I had an account), Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust, IndyMac and American Savings and Loan. On the flipside, Canadian banks have been relatively more stable and insulated from economic turmoil in comparison. For one thing, Canada has about 2 dozen banks, while the US may have thousands. Canadian banks have greater freedoms when it comes to investment banking, and the big 5 Canadian banks are exceptionally well managed banks and are far more conservative than their much larger US peers. In fact, it is not uncommon to find Canadian banks break into the US market in one form or another (TD Ameritrade, CIBC, RBC).

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