On a personal side note, I always wondered what a FDIC seizure looked like. My guess is agents in black jumpsuits propel down from emergency covert helicopters Jack Bauer style to save the day and continue business as usual.

Just hours after Florida’s BankUnited was seized by the FDIC to become the largest bank failure off the year, with some $13 billion in assets, regulators on shut down two more banks, boosting the number of federally insured bank failures this year to 36. The latest banks seized were Strategic Capital Bank (obviously their strategy was pretty terrible)  and Citizens National bank, both in Illinois.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which raised the limited on guarantees to $250,000 late last year, just voted to increase fees on member banks as its reserves have been depleted over the past year. The five-member FDIC board voted yesterday to collect an additional $5.6 billion from the industry, raising the total annual bill to $17.6 billion. That amounts to a 5 percent tax on industry profits, the FDIC estimated.

BankUnited is expected to cost the FDIC $4.9 billion; the closure of Strategic Capital Bank is expected to cost the FDIC $173 million, while Citizen National Bank’s closure will cost about $106 million.

As the economy nationwide has contracted amid rising unemployment, tumbling home prices and soaring loan defaults, bank failures have become much more prevalent, straining the resources of the FDIC. According to the most recent data available, the fund now stands at its lowest level in nearly a quarter-century, $18.9 billion as of Dec. 31, compared with $52.4 billion at the end of 2007.

The list of bank failures is growing as falling home prices and rising unemployment cause more individuals and businesses to default on their debt. The 36 bank failures this year in the U.S. compare with 25 in 2008 and just 3 in 2007.