A consolation of failure should be lessons learnt from the experience. So it is troubling that bank collapses in this cycle are proving more expensive than in the past. Big bank busts, as a rule, cost relatively less than small ones. Estimated losses, say, from last week's failure of Colonial, the Alabama-based lender with $25bn in assets, were unusually low at 11 per cent of assets. Its sale also included the first “clawback” allowing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to share in a buyer's potential gains. Yet analysis from Ely & Company, industry consultants, shows that across all failures in the past two years, the FDIC estimated its losses at a quarter of failed banks' assets. That is much higher than between 1980 and 1995, when failures cost an average of 11 per cent.
對于失敗的一個慰藉，應該是人們從中所汲取的教訓。因此，本輪危機中銀行倒閉的代價要高于以往的事實，令人深感憂慮。一般說來，與小銀行相比，大型銀行的破產成本相對較小。例如，上周倒閉的Colonial銀行的估計損失就異常低，僅占資產的11%。該行總部位于阿拉巴馬州，擁有資產250億美元。其資產出售還首度啟用了“追回”條款，使聯邦存款保險公司(FDIC)能夠分享買家的潛在收益。然而，行業咨詢公司Ely & Company的分析顯示，FDIC估計，過去2年內所有銀行倒閉案給其造成的損失，高達倒閉銀行資產總額的四分之一。這一比例遠遠高于1980年至1995年間11%的倒閉成本平均水平。