1. Three more banks were shutdown today. They were TeamBank, National Association, Paola, KS , Colorado National Bank, Colorado Springs, CO and FirstCity Bank, Stockbridge, GA. The full list of failed banks in 2009 can be found at the FDIC page Failed banks list.

2. List of Banks by Country – from Wikiepdia

3. Get the latest business news from blogs: Via Newflashr – the all-in-one news search enging.

4. The Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, has passed controversial legislation enabling the state to seize control of ailing commercial lender Hypo Real Estate. German Parliament Approves Hypo Real Nationalization Bill

5.Finding a parking spot for your Mercedes or BMW on Greenwich Avenue, the main shopping strip of the U.S. hedge-fund capital, used to be a challenge. Not anymore. Greenwich’s `Rodeo Drive’ Abandoned by Customers as Hedge Funds Collapse

6.What Makes A Good Bank Good? As our Board Performance Scorecard show, high profitability, a strong balance sheet, and outstanding asset quality are what it takes to be become a high-performance bank.

7.It couldn’t always have been like this. No, the country today would be a far different place if across the span of American history had the nation constantly chosen to focus on the most picayune of arcane and unimportant irrelevancies, as it’s doing currently with the AIG bonus controversy, instead of on matters with some actual import.US Fed’s move is the bigger problem

8.While the world talks about new ways to save struggling banks, there are a handful of economists who think some banks shouldn’t be saved at all. American economist James Galbraith told Manager Magazin that it might make more sense to break them up and start over. Financial Crisis Caused by a ‘Culture of Complicity

9.Investors can improve their odds by learning how to assess the fundamentals of the gold exploration companies. A good tool for this job is what I call “The Five M’s.”

By using the Five M’s, an individual investor can build a simple but powerful model to initially sort through the many hundreds of upstart gold companies to find better opportunities.The “Five M’s” for picking gold stocks

10. An excellent site for researching UK and other market stocks: http://www.Digitallook.com

1.Despite major stimulus packages announced by advanced economies and several emerging markets, trade volumes have shrunk rapidly, while production and employment data suggest that global activity continues to contract in the first quarter of 2009, the IMF says in a new assessment of the global economy. Advanced Economies to Contract Sharply in 09, Upturn Next Year–IMF

2.The economic recession and financial crisis have a ‘devastating’ effect on the automotive industry with serious implications for the wider economy.“The crisis is devastating” — Global Insight Research

3.As the banking industry descends into ever-deeper gloom, the more ethical, risk-sharing approach offered by the Islamic finance industry is attracting an increasing amount of attention. The Banker’s Top 500 Islamic Financial Institutions ranking lists the sector’s key players.Top 500 Islamic Financial Institutions

4.Photo -An auto elevator lifts a Volkswagen to its appointed parking space in the VW Autostadt “car tower” in Wolfsburg, Germany.

1.With unemployment soaring, many European Union countries want the migrant workers they once attracted to go home as quickly as possible. They are sparing no expense or effort to encourage them to leave. Europe Falls Out of Love with Labor Migration

2. Interactive Map: How is the economic crisis affecting the European Union? This map shows the figures for all the member states by year and quarter and let’s you compare budget deficit, unemployment rate, national debt and economic contraction. Economic crisis in European Union

3. Housing Starts: Is this the Bottom? -The title to this post would have been laughable in 2008 or 2007, but as I noted in Looking for the Sun, there is a reasonable chance housing starts will bottom sometime this year – so I suppose it is not too early to start looking.

4.The International Monetary Fund has predicted that the downturn in the UK will be deeper than anyone previously feared – and that it will last through 2010. IMF: UK recession ‘will be worst of all’

5.Lower debt levels and comparatively low rates of bad loans mean that even the poorer Latin American countries are faring better than their developed counterparts when it comes to exposure to the financial crisis. Latam rides high as debt remains low