NEW YORK - Nine subsidiaries of FBOP Corp., a multistate holding company that included California National Bank of Los Angeles, succumbed Friday to the nationwide banking crisis, bringing to 115 the number of banks closed by regulators so far this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the nine banks in California, Illinois, Texas and Arizona that made up the privately held FBOP were taken over by U.S. Bancorp (USB, Fortune 500) of Minneapolis. The banks, which had combined assets of $19.4 billion and deposits of $15.4 billion, will open Saturday as U.S. Bank branches.

The nine banks are Bank USA N.A. of Phoenix, California National Bank of Los Angeles, San Diego National Bank of San Diego, Pacific National Bank of San Francisco, Park National Bank of Chicago, Community Bank of Lemont in Lemont, Ill., North Houston Bank in Houston, Madisonville State Bank in Madisonville, Texas, and Citizens National Bank of Teague, Texas.

Together, the nine banks had 153 offices.

Customers of failed banks are protected, however. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which has insured bank deposits since the Great Depression, currently covers customer accounts up to $250,000.

Customers of the failed bank can access their money over the weekend by writing checks or using ATMs or debit cards. Checks will continue to be processed, and borrowers should make mortgage and loan payments as usual.

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The Obama administration on Thursday lashed out at a prominent critic of its Cash for Clunkers program, arguing that the popular trade-in initiative helped give the auto industry and the economy a much needed boost in the past few months.

In a blog post on whitehouse.gov, the administration argued that a report on Clunkers by automotive Web site Edmunds.com "doesn't withstand even basic scrutiny" and is based on "implausible assumptions."

On Wednesday, Edmunds.com released a study that argued Cash for Clunkers did not have a great impact on the auto industry. The report said that 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the program last summer, but that only 125,000 of them would not have been sold without the Clunkers rebates.

As a result, the report said, the administration's economic claims for the program "have been rendered quite weak."

The Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.

The Edmunds report also said that taxpayers shelled out an average of $24,000 per car sold as a result of the program.

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The yen rose and U.S. stock index futures declined on concern central banks around the world may be moving too fast to scale back measures designed to haul their economies out of the recession.

The yen advanced against all but one of the 16 most-traded currencies tracked by Bloomberg as of 10:16 a.m. in London. Futures on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index slipped 0.3 percent before a report that may show spending by U.S. consumers fell in September for the first time in five months.

The U.S. recession “might not even be over,” Paul McCulley, managing director of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund, wrote on the company’s Web site. “The time has come to begin paring exposure to risk assets, and if their prices continue to rise, paring at an accelerated pace.”

The Bank of Japan said today it will stop buying corporate debt at the end of the year and Germany’s Axel Weber indicated yesterday the European Central Bank may scale back its aid package. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet shrank 1.8 percent in the past week as companies reduced reliance on the central bank. The U.S. exited recession in the third quarter, official figures showed, fanning speculation policy makers will drop emergency measures taken at the height of the financial crisis.

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