Arraya: A good friend works at Wells Fargo and he was telling me how frantically they are working to modify various large commercial RE loans right now.

This, to me, is the “other shoe” about to drop and it looks like the banks will do anything to prevent that from happening, or at least minimize the impact when it does.

According to that FDIC report, the damage is extremely widespread and the FDIC is, in essence, resorting to shaking down the banks for additional funds to keep themselves solvent. The troubled banks list is exploding and yet all we’re hearing is that everything is fine and the recession is over.

At some point, fantasy and reality collide. Its been my experience that, invariably, reality ultimately wins.