Bank failures have been too common since the financial crisis heated up in 2008. Fortunately, it looks like things may be cooling off.
Ken at DepositAccounts.com did a nice study of bank failures in 2011, and he notes that there appears to be a trend toward a stronger banking system. While there are still problems out there (92 failures last year are a sign of that), we're headed in the right direction.
Ken notes that most customers with plain old checking and savings accounts were did not lose money -- even if they were above FDIC insurance limits. The main problem with bank failures has been the loss of high CD rates. See Ken's article at DepositAccounts.com for more on this, along with everything else you'd want to know about last year's bank failures.
Further reading: