FDIC Needs Cash, Lots of Cash

I wonder if these two headlines have something in common:

FDIC Bracing for a Wave of Failures

and

Failed Banks May Get Pension-Fund Backing as FDIC Seeks Cash.

The FDIC is running out of money, is expecting many more bank failures this year, and is looking for “creative” methods of financing the mop-up.

With bank failures running at their highest level in nearly two decades, the F.D.I.C. is racing to keep up with rising losses to its insurance fund, which safeguards savers’ deposits. On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had placed 702 lenders on its list of “problem” banks, the highest number since 1993.

Not all of those banks are destined to founder, and F.D.I.C. officials said Tuesday that they expected failures to peak this year. But they also warned that the fund might have to cover $20 billion in additional losses by 2013 — a bill that could be even greater if the economy worsens. …

[W]ith so many banks failing, the federal deposit insurance fund has been severely depleted. At the end of 2009, it carried a negative balance of $20.9 billion.

The insurance fund is in better shape than such numbers might suggest, however. Officials estimate that bank failures would drain about $100 billion from the fund from 2009 through 2013. But of that amount, a total of roughly $80 billion in losses were recognized last year or projected for 2010. By that math, the agency is expecting an additional $20 billion of losses over the next three years.

Here is one of the creative ways they will finance the clean-up of failed banks:

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is trying to encourage public retirement funds that control more than $2 trillion to buy all or part of failed lenders, taking a more direct role in propping up the banking system, said people briefed on the matter.

Direct investments may allow funds such as those in Oregon, New Jersey and California to cut fees for private-equity managers, and the agency to get better prices for distressed assets, the people said. They declined to be identified because talks with regulators are confidential.

Oregon’s retirement fund may contribute $100 million as regulators seek “the support of state pension funds to solve the crisis surrounding ongoing bank failures,” Jay Fewel, a senior investment officer at the Oregon State Treasury…

Private-equity managed funds typically promise they’ll return funds to their investors in about 10 years. Pension funds are aiming to fund retirements that are decades away and thus can hold on to investments longer, which would help ease the FDIC’s concern, said one of the people.

But wait, there’s more:

FDIC guarantees may soften the risk of investing public pension money in distressed banks, Whalen said. When the FDIC sells a failed bank, it typically shares a portion of the loan losses.

And that, my friends, makes for some very sweet deals.