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Ryokurin t1_jbxlw2m wrote

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7505042&page=1

This article explains why it was so bad in Georgia. TLDR: Until 1996, a bank couldn't open branches across county lines and there's 159 counties in the state, so there were a lot of banks. And three of the top 10 fastest growing counties were around Atlanta back then, so when the financial crisis hit, it really hit the state hard.

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half_integer t1_jbynie8 wrote

So, as I suspected this is an example of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy - there were simply more banks to fail in GA/FL/IL/CA?

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TheBirminghamBear t1_jbzbuvs wrote

I think it's a different fallacy but not one I know the name of.

In essence it's a count problem. Georgia had a bunch of smaller banks and this is only counting the bank entity, not the size of the bank itself.

If you changed the chart to show magnitude based on total $s of banks that busted by state, you might see a different result

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mikamitcha t1_jbziz8a wrote

Base rate fallacy is correct if you are analyzing the original point of Georgia being the worst. Its the issue of Georgia having a much larger number of banks and the graphic here is only showing the number of bank failures, not the percentage of banks that experienced a failure.

That is why both CA and FL are darker as well, you need more banks for more people. Its also pretty impressive how light TX and NY are when you realize they, alongside CA and FL, are the leading states by population by a wide margin.

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Scrappy_76 t1_jbzjwdd wrote

This is a just a hunch but I imagine TX is lower here since the banks in TX consolidated a lot after the savings and loan crisis in the 80s.

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Whiterabbit-- t1_jbzp6rh wrote

What’s up with MN?

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lazyFer t1_jbzwcrq wrote

As a Minnesotan in the twin cities, I really haven't seen any failures. I wonder if smaller rural banks failed.

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carlitospig t1_jbzx66j wrote

Ameriprise. Would they be considered ‘bank’? Though, I’m pretty sure they grew through the crisis through a well timed purchase of a trading arm.

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lazyFer t1_jc07cf3 wrote

Yeah, they were personal investment advisors, not a bank.

Coincidentally, they were the place I interviewed at one time with a group that wanted a data person to help solve their performance problems. When I told them they should let the database handle auto incrementing key generation rather than having a single component be called every time they needed a new key in any table in their database, they said they needed their performance fixed but not that way.

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carlitospig t1_jc0ble9 wrote

‘Not that way’ is always code for ‘Ack! Change?!’

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lazyFer t1_jc0ikxx wrote

Yeah, I never took jobs at places with that attitude.

When I interview people now, I always ask how they feel about throwing away code... Because if you aren't throwing away code, you're not learning from your mistakes. You never have perfect knowledge of how shit will be used until its being used.

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mikamitcha t1_jbzwlcz wrote

What do you mean? They look to be pretty much the same as the rest of the country, just at ~30 instead of ~20. Not really that much of an outlier.

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TitianPlatinum t1_jc16mbi wrote

Could also be Simpsons paradox? The confounding variable being bank size.

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Pjpjpjpjpj t1_jc20env wrote

If this map was the percentage of banks that went bankrupt, that would eliminate the base rate issue that some states have far more banks.

But I suspect Georgia’s issue would remain, even as a percentage. It’s banks were all smaller, which I suspect would make them more susceptible to failure. But it would be interesting to see that map to see if it is true.

As you suggest, dollars might be another way, or number of accounts (to level out the impact of wealth differences across regions).

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iamthemosin t1_jbyb1pf wrote

How are there 159 counties in Georgia?

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KingTemplar t1_jbycfwr wrote

Well when they divided it up and got around to counting it turns out they had created 159 counties.

That’s not even the craziest state. KY has more counties per square mile than any other state.

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CuttingTheMustard t1_jbz34vx wrote

An additional fun stat - Texas has 254 counties - more than any other state.

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Master_of_Rivendell t1_jbzfcl1 wrote

Yeah but the size of Texas completely negates that "fun" fact, making it quite boring.

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CuttingTheMustard t1_jbzfw58 wrote

And then you consider Alaska, which is more than twice the size with only 29 counties or California which is 3/5th the size with only 58 counties.

Lots of interesting decisions were made when subdividing our states.

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HobbitFoot t1_jbzjawe wrote

Also, Alaska merged the municipal and county functions into boroughs.

Also also, Alaska has land that doesn't belong to any borough but is unincorporated, which makes Alaska the only state to have land within its state that isn't in a county.

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WartyBalls4060 t1_jc0dllv wrote

Who handles LE in the unincorporated areas? State Troopers?

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HobbitFoot t1_jc1w2e2 wrote

State Troopers. This is starting to become a political issue as some communities are now populated enough to become their own borough, but are choosing to stay unincorporated for tax reasons.

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CrispyRussians t1_jbzg2o6 wrote

Some of the best county and city names ever. Bacon County and my fav city Cumming

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bigjaydub t1_jbyn8op wrote

The story I’ve heard is that back in the olden days, they wanted the court house to be a day’s ride away from wherever you lived. Thus many smaller counties and court houses.

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GoblinCaptain t1_jbz8z1q wrote

I'd believe it, my county courthouse is a little more than 15 minutes away from me and around 30 from the furthest point in the county, not terrible honestly. Used to work in the jail that was connected to it so it was nice leaving only about 30 mins before my shift started

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Mehhish t1_jbzhccs wrote

TIL the largest Hindu Temple in the US, is in Georgia, and honestly, it looks pretty cool.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAPS_Shri_Swaminarayan_Mandir_Atlanta

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bigjaydub t1_jbziqxd wrote

Haven’t been, but would love to go myself.

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Lemon_bird t1_jc0bgcd wrote

wow that’s beautiful. I’m learning way more fun facts here than usual

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vapidusername t1_jc0b17k wrote

That’s part of it. The other part, like a lot of things in Georgia, is politics.

https://cviog.uga.edu/news/061319-counties.html

From the article, “Until 1962, Georgia used the County Unit System to choose many elected officials. The system gave more political muscle to urban counties, so it benefited rural Georgia to create more counties and therefore more muscle.

“Another rural county, that’s two more rural votes there, off-set those interests in Atlanta,” Charles Bullock, Political Science Professor at the University of Georgia explained.

In 1945, the Georgia Constitution capped the number of counties at 159.”

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Ocksu2 t1_jbym86q wrote

We have tiny counties. I am roughly 15 minutes from 6 different counties not including the one I am in.

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TehWildMan_ t1_jbzdiun wrote

Early Georgia really wanted a local government/county seat to be within about a day's journey by whatever means of travel was available at the time.

As the state grew, that meant creating a bunch of counties.

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half_integer t1_jbynvpm wrote

Being from a state with relatively few counties (24), it seems like these states with ~100 counties but similar population (VA, KY, etc.) must have relatively cost inefficient local government - there must be a minimum staff to handle lawmaking, permits, etc. whether you're servicing 10,000 people or 100,000, right? Regardless of land area, I think I would rather have the economies of scale.

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WhileNotLurking t1_jbzax4y wrote

True but you have to ask two questions:

  1. when was it created. Things on the east coast are older and the administration of a county the size of Delaware would have been difficult in 1770s. They also took on a lot of historical boundaries that existed during colonial times.

  2. A state like Nevada with big counties might make sense as it was a state that developed much later, and is much less dense.

  3. even with the changes in advancement of transportation - who's going to vote to get rid of their own autonomy and be merged into a larger entity with neighboring counties that could have differ goals, budgets, etc.

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mixduptransistor t1_jbzq31a wrote

Counties do different things in different states (and sometimes different things even within the same state, depending on the county)

In Georgia, cities often take on a lot of the tasks of a county, and counties provide a lot of city services in unincorporated areas that in some states just wouldn't have those services. It all tends to balance out

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johrnjohrn t1_jbyctq9 wrote

I have had to enter sales tax by county data related to these states before. I thought the exact same thing every month.

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gsfgf t1_jbzk4y1 wrote

Our counties originally had to be small enough that you can ride a horse from anywhere to the county seat and back in a day. (Note: Fulton County is actually three original counties combine, hence its size)

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Sleep_adict t1_jbye88d wrote

Corruption and old boys network.

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DominiqueTrillkins t1_jbz5bt5 wrote

It was to have the ability to get to the courthouse or center of business in one days horse drawn carriage ride. Notice that flatter, more navigable areas have larger counties and the mountainous areas have smaller ones

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majestic_failure t1_jbz964x wrote

I love reading about stuff like this in politics. It's easy to assume that politicians only act on their own opinions and biases, and that there's always a really easy solution if you just pick the "correct" side of a debate. But no, sometimes well intentioned laws are just bad. The same way some game mechanics are just bad. Because understanding how a gazillion rules interact and play out in the real world is actually hard and unintuitive. And it's so wholesome when we can actually learn from mistakes like this, and be better for it.

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ValyrianJedi t1_jbzoa73 wrote

It honestly blows my mind that that many people are able to get banks up and rolling to begin with... I had an old boss who tried to open up a bank with 3 friends of his friends a while back. They had all moved to Jackson Hole or something and apparently saw a need for one... He'd been founder and CEO of a large Venture Capital firm for 25 years, and 2 of the other 3 had similar backgrounds. And I'd guess that between the 4 of them they had a net worth of $500 million or more... Last I heard they were 6 years in and still didn't have a light at the end of the tunnel... Then I hear about places like this where there is basically a new bank on every corner and wonder how on earth so many people are able to make that happen when those guys weren't.

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SUMBWEDY t1_jc03m6z wrote

Survivorship bias. You only see the banks on every corner in places where that type of thing can succeed.

A county with only 20,000~ people in the middle of nowhere where everyone who lives there is rich so likely has strong relationships with a big bank is just a dumb place to set up.

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ValyrianJedi t1_jc053iv wrote

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 4 people with a combined century running financial institutions are able to judge the market. The entire reason they wanted to open one was because they thought there was very much a market for it

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SUMBWEDY t1_jc0aofd wrote

and i'm gonna go out on a limb and say they didn't judge the market correctly. Otherwise there'd be a bank there.

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ValyrianJedi t1_jc0gi0t wrote

The market there has nothing to do with how many regulations there are and how much red tape you have to go through to get a bank open... But by all means, keep thinking that you understand the market better than someone who own and runs a financial firm with a multibillion dollar portfolio.

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SUMBWEDY t1_jc0ki3w wrote

But regulations are part of the market and should be taken into account when making business decisions.

I don't understand the situation but I can say there wasn't room in the market for the venture otherwise it would've worked.

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ValyrianJedi t1_jc0led4 wrote

> I don't understand the situation

The fact that you can start with that then go on to make a statement about the situation is mind blowing. Think thats my cue to stop responding to you.

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SUMBWEDY t1_jc0m4u1 wrote

How is it mind-blowing, if something doesn't work doesn't take a genius to say it didn't work.

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the_snook t1_jbzapjg wrote

> Until 1996, a bank couldn't open branches across county lines

I'm beginning to understand why the US banking system is still such a mess today.

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gsfgf t1_jbzkz2v wrote

It also meant that until 1996, every county had a bank.

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righthandofdog t1_jc03qg2 wrote

FWIW, my wife is a certified regulatory compliance manager, with her practice based in Atlanta. The bank failures in Georgia were overwhelmingly state charters, not federal and we had one of the hottest sub-prime real estate markets in the country. The state of Georgia has/had remarkably lax state regulators.

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x888x t1_jc1llc3 wrote

Yup. These 'comparisons' are worthless because these types of things are so heavily influenced by regulations.

By way of a similar example, if you looked at anything related to credit cards, almost all of them are based out of Omaha Nebraska or Wilmington Delaware..

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foo-jitsoo t1_jbxlhd9 wrote

The devil went down to Georgia, he was lookin' for a bank to fail

He was in a bind 'cause he was way behind

And he was willin' to make a deal

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phred_666 t1_jbxyldf wrote

The Devil went down to Georgia… saw Marjorie Taylor Greene and realized he already had a representative there and went back home.

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_toodamnparanoid_ t1_jbzr19c wrote

Failed in

🍑

Georgia

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grahamk1 t1_jc1y9hq wrote

Yeah I lost about 20 million left to me by my grandfather when McIntosh bank went under. At the time I was young and my father sat me down and explained the situation. I didn’t earn it so strangely It didn’t bother me sure would be nice to have now though. I thought about it quite a bit when my own company was nearly bankrupted in 2018. Sometimes life’s funny

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PP7fromgoldeneye t1_jc3v7jb wrote

Damn that's terrible, wasn't a certain amount of money still insured? Also what kind of business that sounded like a sizable operation

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grahamk1 t1_jc43uwe wrote

No it was not cash it was shares in the bank itself so I got nothing. My grandfather had made his money in the textiles industry. My company was HR software. I have since sold it though and retired.

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PP7fromgoldeneye t1_jc52e7h wrote

Oh I understand now, still unfortunate situation. It's an eye opener on how situations like this happen, just like the recent news with SVB bank, many shareholders are likely to take a hit. In addition there could be other banks that crumble which makes me wonder how who is going to pay for the mistakes made for billions of dollars.

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RegularFinger8 t1_jbycsns wrote

First chart I’ve ever seen where Mississippi isn’t dead last in the category.

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MrFoxHunter t1_jbyiigp wrote

Ohio is still acceptably average, so proud of my boy

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Lost-My-Mind- t1_jbzg43j wrote

Been a long time since I heard someone say they were proud of Ohio....

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CaptCurmudgeon t1_jbznxyu wrote

Mississippi has the lowest rate of homelessness in the United States.

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Deep90 t1_jbzpg66 wrote

Number 1 in poverty though. Unless you throw in Puerto Rico.

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paaaaatrick t1_jc02pp6 wrote

They also have by far the highest percentage of black people. I always assume people who trash Mississippi have just a hint of racism

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Deep90 t1_jc04m9z wrote

With Mississippi so low on pretty much every 'good' criteria, I'm not sure racism would be the reason.

Black people don't even have majority representation in the state legislature, so they aren't even running the state.

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45Hz t1_jc08ze8 wrote

I'm from Mississippi, the state is racism. If you think people from CA hate MS because of black people, you're lost.

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miianwilson t1_jc00y9c wrote

So they’re last in having homeless people. Yet another category they’re dead last in smh

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123xyz321Z t1_jc02r4c wrote

Unfortunately, Mississippi doesn’t have banks.

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BehindEnemyLines8923 t1_jc11cff wrote

I mean if you look at US News, Mississippi is only dead last in one category (granted it’s a big one in healthcare and I don’t see something like poverty or median income on here, these categories are broader.) (there are some sub categories where the state is last as well.)

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi

And Louisiana now holds last place overall as well.

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ClutchBiscuit t1_jbykbwi wrote

Could you change this to failure rate? This would probably provide some more interesting results.

Also, total lost value from those failures would be interesting to see.

For example, There might just be a tone of banks on Florida, or some really big failures cali which just isn’t well highlighted

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Lord_Silverkey t1_jbzevkl wrote

I'd like to see lost value per capita in each state.

That'd actually show us something resembling the stability of the banking systems in each state.

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SuteSnute t1_jbyefk0 wrote

Feels like this data is pointless without normalizing for the number of banks that have opened or existed in each state

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Lord_Corlys t1_jbyj8gc wrote

Also size of bank matters. Lots of tiny banks in GA failing is different than one big one somewhere else

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PandaMomentum t1_jbyjaax wrote

Nice. And, when doing US state level data viz, consider using a shortcut like plotly_express instead of a true GIS -- allows inclusion of Alaska and Hawaii, and uses a nice conical projection instead of Mercator or unprojected cylindrical. https://link.medium.com/8C9QYeO96xb

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pm_me_jupiter_photos OP t1_jbyvxut wrote

Ooo thanks for this, this was my first time doing something like this and it was fun. Ill def use this next time.

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majestic_failure t1_jbzb53y wrote

Someone I play card games with makes charts like this for a living. And it's honestly amazing how good people can get at making this stuff. It's like a legit skill.

Also great job making this OP. Everyone seems really interested with the data, there's minimal confusion about what's being shown, and you're taking feedback really well.

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JerryVand t1_jbykezx wrote

Would be interesting to see this adjusted by state population.

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PhoenixEnigma t1_jbzaw0j wrote

Agreed, though my immediate reaction was "hey, a data map of the US that doesn't just look like population data!"

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crimeo t1_jbzhhvi wrote

That would just make Georgia even more ridiculous and wash out everything closer to white

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stillmeh t1_jbzjig6 wrote

I would also like to see what kind of mortgage loans the banks did as well. ARMs and people trying to get into the vacation homes in Florida was a bad combination.

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NoMansSkyWasAlright t1_jbyd1ee wrote

So basically the shoebox method is still a valid way to store your money in Georgia.

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jbarlak t1_jby9pv6 wrote

There were plenty of Florida banks that popped up in early 2000 to help with that real estate boom then crashed. The big name ones were Washington mutual suntrust just recently

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serial_mouth_grapist t1_jbyni40 wrote

Suntrust merged with BB&T to become Truist, they didn’t crash. I also don’t believe the WaMu crash was Florida-specific just single family residential exposure nationwide.

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mvw2 t1_jbxxgku wrote

By fail, you mean what exactly?

Like the bank just closed?

Or like an entire company failed and no longer exists?

I'm trying to figure out what "failure" means here as it's defined on the graph.

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AdvisedWang t1_jby8bc7 wrote

As the source is FDIC "failed" would mean "couldn't get the cash to pay withdrawals", which means the FDIC takes over, pays out insured balances, sells remaining assets, and then closes the bank.

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back_from_exile28 t1_jbxf39w wrote

Non American here, What's the country with burning red?

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sanfran54 t1_jbxfxl4 wrote

The three on the right are Illinois, Georgia and Florida.

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tedweird t1_jbz1bg1 wrote

I feel like the quantity of banks isn't terribly important compared to the amount of money, or really the financial impact

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pm_me_jupiter_photos OP t1_jbxec4u wrote

Source: FDIC Website https://www.fdic.gov/resources/resolutions/bank-failures/failed-bank-list/

Shapefile Source NWS: https://www.weather.gov/gis/USStates

Tool Used: Python / Jupyter Notebooks / matplotlib

See the full source on my github https://github.com/Apollorion/bankmap

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JanitorKarl t1_jby74ui wrote

What Happened to Alaska and Hawaii?

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pm_me_jupiter_photos OP t1_jbyg0f3 wrote

They are on my github but felt strange to include on this post because alaska specifically is huge, so it took over 50% of the graph and they have 0 failures.

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ArkGamer t1_jbzb5t1 wrote

The number of banks doesn't mean much to me. There's a massive difference between a small town bank and Wachovia or Washington Mutual.

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FIicker7 t1_jbz83yy wrote

Georgia has 100? Does anyone know why?

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majestic_failure t1_jbz9zqb wrote

Georgia has a LOT of counties, regardless of population. And it used to be a law that banks couldn't open across multiple counties (both systems raise more questions than they answer I think). So when there was a financial crisis, they had a lot of banks, none of which could hold up well.

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ExiledToTerminus t1_jbzgtpd wrote

Feel like this needs to be adjusted by number of banks in the state or some sort of per capita metric. California and Florida are going to have a lot just by virtue of having massive populations.

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boe_d t1_jc0iynx wrote

Stop saying recession - it is a market readjustment!!!!

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atjones111 t1_jc0mjni wrote

This is why I never felt right giving my money to some smaller not well known bank, I’ll just continue keeping in chase… I hope

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Sea_Goat7550 t1_jc0vg3w wrote

Come on Florida! Be number one! We believe in you!

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youself20 t1_jc0zfi6 wrote

My state just had a bank failure a few days ago

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raff7 t1_jc17gbw wrote

Wyoming be like: you gotta have banks to have bank failures

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pattyG80 t1_jc1rvsw wrote

Number of Canadian bank failures in the last 100 years: 0

Fix your fucking system guys.

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toyfreddym8 t1_jbzj4nz wrote

Illinois pretty high, glad I live here :-)

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SQUIRTISPEE t1_jbzlk6c wrote

I thought Delaware would have, well, all of them. But the state didn't implode in 2008 so duh.

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Whitealroker1 t1_jbzn7ze wrote

“I’m going to take you to the bank Senator Trent. The blood bank.”

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lysy404 t1_jbznlfq wrote

May want to see doc for that appendage, something awful is happening in FL

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[deleted] t1_jbzxz9e wrote

[deleted]

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figgotballs t1_jc1687h wrote

And Alaska is on the continent. 'Contiguous 48' is the correct pedantry

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Susitna_Strong t1_jc02jph wrote

I think the most common term is "Continental US" or "contiguous US". The term "lower 48" is used pretty much only by Alaskans afaik. Why do we call it that? No idea, probably because it sounds better than "lower 49" and everyone around here knows what it means. I've never heard "Continental 48" before.

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graphguy t1_jc00rmd wrote

This data is 'interesting' and thought provoking ... but far from beautiful (and you really need the range of years to be on the graph somewhere).

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pm_me_jupiter_photos OP t1_jc0dsya wrote

This was the first time I've ever done something like this. Im proud of it.

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812warfavenue t1_jc0o04n wrote

Pride is good, but don't let it keep you from hearing constructive criticism.

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Bevester t1_jc040jc wrote

I keep seeing maps like these comparing states to states, and i'm seeing a pattern

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coronaflo t1_jc13tth wrote

California's banks suffered both during the dot com bubble crash and housing bubble crash.

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123xyz321Z t1_jc033y7 wrote

I’ll be darned. Y’all didn’t blame it all on Desantis. I’m shocked.

0

Anxious_Jellyfish216 t1_jbzwmhh wrote

Damnit Chicago! You don't speak for the whole state. Now you are making us look bad.

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boogrit t1_jbxkxjg wrote

I assume Florida/Georgia are related to storms that cause disasters which cause general panic & lots of withdrawals?

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Tuxxbob t1_jby7jub wrote

Georgia at least had massive restrictions on outside backs establishing new branches which instead incentivizes the creation of new banks in each county. As a result, Georgia has many tiny failures in times of economic headwinds, each of which counts as one on this infographic, when other states might just have one that is much larger. In terms of asset size, the failures are as would be predicted with population. This method of display over inflates by treating one independent small town bank as the same as an SVB.

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historycat95 t1_jbxmrg9 wrote

I assume Florida and Georgia because they have corrupt governments run by puppets of business.

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eskimobrother319 t1_jbzkper wrote

No, Georgia has 159 counties and laws restricting the formation of banks across the state. That means instead of a few large bank closures you get a ton of tiny ones

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Hey_cool_username t1_jbys3pr wrote

Florida couldn’t even be number 1 in that but at least they came close.

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Psidom t1_jbywf6r wrote

Is Chicago red because it has way too many banks so higher chance of failure?

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sexy_silver_grandpa t1_jbz3txo wrote

Chicago is a city, my dude. You mean "Illinois".

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crimeo t1_jbzhemj wrote

Functionally synonyms

Edit: The 25% of Illinois that isn't Chicagoland are over-represented in reddit malding, at least, I see.

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Affectionate_Pay_391 t1_jbymnmv wrote

No Cayman Islands included in this?

−10

vrenak t1_jbymwcl wrote

Have the US annexed the caymans without anyone noticing recently?

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[deleted] t1_jbyn0kq wrote

[deleted]

−7

vrenak t1_jbyo1lk wrote

While interesting indeed, the post does specify US states, not even territories, and even leaves out AK and HI.

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Affectionate_Pay_391 t1_jbyo75a wrote

I know. I would just love to see the Cayman Islands thrown in there. Probably more failed banks with “headquarters” there than in all states combined.

−7