Since the introduction of federal deposit insurance

From 1921 to Present

Over at Calculated Risk, they have the numbers for bank failures since the creation of federal deposit insurance:

In 2016, five FDIC insured banks failed. This was the lowest level since 2007.

Most of the great recession / housing bust / financial crisis related failures are behind us.

The first graph shows the number of bank failures per year since the FDIC was founded in 1933.

………

The second graph includes pre-FDIC failures. In a typical year – before the Depression – 500 banks would fail and the depositors would lose a large portion of their savings.

The late 1980s bank failures were caused by corruption and control fraud.

The 1990s bank failures would have been far larger if we hadn’t bailed them all out.

Pre FDIC is just f%$#ing scary.