English Grammar's Slow Death

I was listening to NPR this evening on my ride home and, in the span of 5 minutes, heard three examples of an unclear antecedent. This particular problem caused me many lost points on English compositions in high school. Here is one of the quotes:

From "Marketplace" ...

Continuing with the theme here, you remember the phrase toxic assets from the good old days of the credit crisis? They are still around, and every time the government seizes a failed bank, we taxpayers own more of them.

So, do we own more toxic assets or more banks?

I don't expect perfect grammar in everyday use of the language, but one might expect that journalists, trained in writing, would spot such a simple error that can cause confusion and diminish the impact of the story by having listeners, such as I, focused on the structure of the phrase and not the content of the phrase.