Tens of millions of dollars in loans have gone bad at Southwest Florida banks during the real estate slump.
Are those banks ready to handle them?
Federal regulators are worried that some banks in Florida and across the nation may be ill-prepared to deal with their battered loan business.
U.S. banks have set aside just 89 cents to cover every $1 in nonperforming loans, or loans that borrowers are no longer paying off, said Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.