Financial analysts are projecting that as many as 150 banks could fail over the next eighteen months as the nation’s financial crisis worsens. On Monday, hundreds of bank customers lined up outside IndyMac Bank in Pasadena California to withdraw savings three days after the FDIC seized the bank.

Ben Betters, bank customer: “Well, I’m old enough to remember my grandparents talking about the fall and the Great Depression of 1929, so I was concerned about the bank totally closing, not being able to get the money. That was the main concern, because my wife and I are both retirees, and this is, you know, savings that we depend on monthly.”

IndyMac is the second largest bank failure in US history and the fifth bank to fail this year. Regulators expect the IndyMac takeover to cost taxpayers up to $8 billion. Meanwhile, on Wall Street, bank stocks plummeted on Monday in the steepest one-day decline in banking shares since 1989. Stocks of Washington Mutual dropped nearly 35 percent. A year ago, a share in the bank was valued at $43; yesterday, it was worth just over three dollars. Billionaire investor George Soros said Monday that the current financial market turmoil represents the most serious financial crisis of our lifetime.