Americans’ confidence in banks declines after failures, new poll finds
WASHINGTON — Only 10 percent of U.S. adults say they have high confidence in the nation’s banks and other financial institutions, a new poll finds. That’s down from the 22 percent who said they had high confidence in 2020.
Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank this month, the poll from the Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds that a majority say the government is not doing enough to regulate the industry.
The underwhelming assessment of America’s banks and bank regulation comes after a series of shocks brought back disturbing memories of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th-biggest, failed March 10 after making risky bets in the bond market. Two days later, regulators closed New Yorkbased Signature Bank, which had gotten involved in cryptocurrencies. Across the Atlantic Ocean, long-troubled Credit Suisse was acquired by rival UBS on Sunday in a deal designed to restore confidence in global financial institutions.
In the United States, the tumult has raised questions among policymakers about 2018 legislation that rolled back strict regulations put in place after the financial crisis.
The poll suggests the U.S. public shares that concern: 56 percent say the government isn’t doing enough to regulate banks and other financial institutions, while 27 percent say it’s doing the right amount and 15 percent say it’s regulating too much. The worry about under-regulation is bipartisan: 63 percent of Democrats say current bank regulation is insufficient, as do 51 percent of Republicans.
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Philip Metscher, 53, a stay-athome father of seven in Sacramento, Calif., said he has little faith in bankers or the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them.
“It’s like they have free rein to do whatever they want with money,’’ said Metscher, a Republican.
The poll finds that in addition to the 10 percent of Americans saying that they have high confidence in the nation’s banking institutions, 57 percent do have some confidence; 31 percent have hardly any.
Though confidence in banks and financial institutions has decreased even since the last time that question was asked on an AP-NORC poll in 2020, low confidence among Americans in their public institutions is nothing new — the General Social Survey, which has tracked trends in public opinion for decades, shows that confidence in institutions ranging from the financial industry to organized religion has declined substantially since the 1970s. The new poll shows few Americans have high confidence in any branch of the U.S. government.
There’s been little change in the already glum assessment of the U.S. economy since a month ago, the poll shows. Only a quarter say national economic conditions are good.
But 43 percent of Democrats call the economy good, versus just 7 percent of Republicans.
About half of U.S. adults describe their personal financial situations as good, a drop from last year when about 6 in 10 said that. About 6 in 10 Democrats and about half of Republicans give positive assessments of their current finances.
With a Democrat in the White House, Republicans are more likely than Democrats (36 percent versus 15 percent) to say their finances will get worse over the next year.
Overall, about half of U.S. adults expect U.S. economic conditions to deteriorate over the next year.
The poll of 1,081 adults was conducted Mar. 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.