This week has just one bank failure, this time in Seattle Washington. This one will cost the deposit fund $158.4 million. FDIC:

Washington First International Bank had approximately $520.9 million in total assets and $441.4 million in total deposits. East West Bank will pay the FDIC a premium of 0.5 percent to assume all of the deposits of Washington First International Bank. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, East West Bank agreed to purchase approximately $501.0 million of the failed bank's assets.

The FDIC is unloading the bad mortgages and other assets by requiring the banks which take over the deposits to take on the bad stuff too.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. closed down three more failed banks last week, pushing the total amount of dud mortgages and other assets the regulator must dispose of to more than $600 billion.

Rather than try to sell most of the assets itself, as the U.S. government did during the savings and loan crisis two decades ago, the FDIC is passing a large majority of the commercial mortgages and other delinquent debts on to the private institutions that it signs up to take over the failed banks.

For the small percentage of assets it must sell itself when it cannot find a buyer for a failed bank, the FDIC is using a variety of approaches--from hiring auctioneers to creating its own asset-backed bonds--as it tries to wring out the best prices it can.

$600 billion of bad debt so far. The Federal Reserve bought $1.25 trillion dollars in mortgage backed securities too.