Good will losses: "Things continue to get worse"

So says Feng Gu in this article: Losses in Good-Will Values Compound Bank Troubles

Some pretty amazing bits that leap out:

Banks wrote down more than $25 billion in good will in 2008, up sharply from $790 million a year earlier, according to data compiled by Frank Schiraldi of Sandler O’Neill & Partners. By the end of the year, banks still had $291 billion worth of good will on their books. An incomplete tally of write-downs from the first quarter showed that banks had taken a $3.5 billion hit to good-will values

....The value of good will represents intangible qualities like the value of a company’s brand name, its customer base and reputation. Every year, companies that list good will as a leftover asset from mergers have to test its value to see whether it has held up

In light of the ongoing and long-lasting consumer re-trenchment, does anyone really think most 'brand names, customer bases, and reputations" will retain their pre-recession values - or anything close to them? Save for a small few - Apple, WalMart, come to mind - it's gonna be hard to find a consumer brand that doesn't get hammered....(or whose good will has 'help up')