October 20, 2009 - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. failed to enforce its own guidelines to rein in excessive commercial real estate lending by at least 20 banks that later collapsed, reports by the agency's watchdog show.
The FDIC's Office of Inspector General analyzed 23 lenders taken over by regulators from August 2008 to March and found that for 20, the agency's examiners didn't identify the issue early enough or should have taken stronger supervisory action after recognizing the banks had dangerously high levels of the loans before they failed. The findings are in separate reports posted this year on the inspector general's Web site....
