Bank vaults have been secure throughout the ages. But what about the banks themselves?
The Canadian press can’t seem to get enough of telling us that Canadian banks are far more regulated and therefore much less likely to ever get into the dire situation that is affecting many of the bank in the U.S. Though I’m no expert, I can see evidence of this very simply. All the big banks are virtually indistiguishable from one another when it comes to their offerings to consumers (feel free to nitpick on this point, I’ll stand by it).
On the other hand, I also have a business bank account in the United States. When I was doing my research as to which bank would best suit my needs, I was stunned by the wide range of offerings and packages available. Now, well established with my bank in North Dakota, I started to worry a bit about whether or not it was in the same financial trouble as some of the other banks.
The Internet to the rescue!
The Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication has put together a database where you can search for a bank and see its “total troubled assets” as well as its “troubled asset ratio.” Each of these numbers are available for 2007 as well as 2008.
There is more financial information than you can shake a stimulus package at, and all of it is terribly fascinating. You can also see which companies have received money through TARP (the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program).
You’ve seen them talking about the toxic assets held by banks on the news, now you can see which banks actually hold them and how much of them they have on the books.
T. Keith Edmunds
