Scary econ. graph of the day, part 2

Ask and ye shall receive, even the anonymous amongst us. The above graph, based on FDIC data, shows the percentage of FDIC insured financial institutions to fail or receive assistance each year between 1934 and 2007. I could not find data on the number of institutions insured beyond 2007, when there were 7,283 institutions, three of which failed and zero of which received assistance. In 2008 thirty institutions failed or received assistance, and assuming the number of institutions did not change from 2007 this gives us a failure plus assistance rate of 0.412%. In 2009 so far twenty-three institutions have failed, and, using the same method of approximation as was used for 2008, this give us a failure plus assistance rate for this year (so far) of 0.316%.

To directly answer the two anonymous concerns:
1. Graph is now in terms of percentage and the trend remains. By the way, I totally agree with this critique. Thanks for reminding me to keep everything in relative terms;
2. I agree that the high failure rate in the late 1980s and early 1990s likely lowered the number of banks in existence, thereby lowering the absolute number of failures in future years. (Am I wrong in thinking that this could push the percentage of failures either higher or lower depending on other factors? If the remaining banks are healthier overall the failure percentage will decline in the future, but if there are still a bunch of unhealthy banks just waiting to fail then the failure rate will rise.) It also must be recognized that in the late-1980s and early- to mid-1990s there was a big push for de-regulation that significantly increased the likelihood of bank mergers and thereby pushed the number of existing institutions down. In fact, "From 1980 to 1994, there was an average of 423 mergers per year—a total of 6,347 mergers, which amounted to 43 percent of all banks in existence in 1980" (source). I don't have an answer as to the effect of each of these forces, but you can see the overall trend clearly in this graph: