According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on Friday, 3/27/09 Omni National Bank in Atlanta became the 9^th bank in the state of Georgia to fail over the last 12 months as a result of non-performing loans – specifically tied to the real estate crisis.

This was the 4^th Georgia bank to go under in 2009 and cemented Georgia as the state with the largest number of bank failures over the last year.  California has had 8 to earn the #2 spot.

Clearly these are not the stats that any state wants to be known for and it’s hard to think about these failures without thinking about them in terms of job loss as well as customer headache and heartache.

Apparently this bank was carrying some $114 million in non-performing loans.  We don’t know the mix of those – but it’s probably not too hard to make the leap that a significant number were risky home loans.  The real estate crisis rears its ugly head yet again.