国际英语新闻：U.S. bank failures set 18-year high in 2010

NEW YORK, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The number of U.S. banks gone into bankruptcy this year reached the highest level since 1992, according to media report on Wednesday.

Washington Post reported that 157 U.S. banks failed in 2010, up from 140 in 2009, and it is the highest level since 1992 when the savings-and-loan crisis broke out.

According to the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), number of banks whose weaknesses "threaten their continued financial viability" stood at 860 as of September 30, the highest since 1993. Based on historical record, about a fifth of the banks on FDIC's watch list would end up in bankruptcy.

Analysts believe that as the economy gradually comes out of the crisis, 2010 would mark the peak of bank failures.

Despite rising numbers of failed banks, their average size is much smaller than those in 2009. The banks that failed this year had assets totaling 92.1 billion U.S. dollars, 45.7 percent lower than the 169.7 billion dollars in assets of the banks that failed last year.

Among those failed banks, about half of their headquarters are based in California, Florida, Georgia and Illinois. The loans that brought them down were predominantly commercial loans.