Obama is Bush part 3

How Risk Aversion Is Evolving

Despite all the Wall Street weenies screaming that the sky is falling, there are plenty of regional / local banks that did not get involved in the mortgage securitization mess -- and they do not represent much of a credit risk, regardless of what the FDIC does.

If you are really chicken, you can buy US Treasuries directly via TreasuryDirect. Your Treasury holdings are put on deposit with your local Federal Reserve Bank. There are limits on the amount you can buy via non-competitive bids (these are designed to give small investors the highest rate of an auction) -- but you can do competitive bids for just about any amount that a typical consumer might have

Now is definitely a time to be extra careful about your investments -- but the panic implicit in most news coverage is really unwarranted