Georgia Banks Face More Pain

A growing number of Peach State banks are the pits.

Few states have been hit harder by the economic crisis over the past seven months than Georgia, where many banks are now paying for large bets made on construction loans during the building boom in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Omni National Bank of Atlanta on Friday became the state's ninth since the beginning of 2008, the most in the nation during that time.

All nine Georgia bank failures have taken place since Aug. 29. The nine failed Georgia banks had $4.7 billion total assets and the estimated cost to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s insurance fund for the failures was $1.4 billion. ...