BANKING FAILURES GOT YOU NERVOUS? DON’T BE.

The back-to-back collapses of Silicon Valley Bank in California and Signature Bank in New York in recent days — two of the three largest bank failures in U.S. history — no doubt unnerved millions of Americans who believed that safeguards set up after the U.S. financial meltdown in 2007-08 meant greater protections. Not-so-fun fact: There were actually about two bank failures a month between 2011 and 2020. It had been 868 days without one before Silicon Valley Bank’s failure; that’s the secondlongest stint on record, as Marc Rubenstein has noted in Bloomberg Opinion. But bad decisions by the two banks in question this month doomed them.

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board does not pretend to be experts on banking or financial regulations, but we have been publishing columns by actual experts like Rubenstein and economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. In his latest column, at right, Krugman laments the “apocalyptic rhetoric” in some quarters this week and downplays the downside of the Biden administration stepping in to guarantee all deposits — not just up to the $250,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) limit. There is little if any hard evidence to contradict Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s testimony Thursday that the U.S. banking system is in fundamentally good shape, with firewalls in place to protect healthy banks. The plunging shares of San Francisco-based First Republic Bank are certainly worth close attention, but the news Thursday that it was being shored up by 11 banks — including several U.S. financial giants — that voluntarily stepped forward to offer $30 billion suggests it is far more sound than the Silicon Valley or Signature banks.

So should individual Americans be deeply worried? Probably not. But if only for their peace of mind, they should take steps to see if their banks and credit unions have insured deposits and are competently managed with adequate reserves. Financial websites offer lists of FDIC-covered institutions and basic analyses that show the health and status of bank assets. The Federal Reserve also has a comprehensive, publicly accessible database chronicling its enforcement actions against companies for violating rules and statutes. A review of these resources will likely reassure most depositors.

Unfortunately, a new Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued Tuesday won’t do much for the peace of mind of everyday Americans worried about persistent, unusually strong inflation. Reassurances on that front are proving harder to come by for the federal government, but they are no less important.