DON’T BE MISLED by the collapse of GM and Ford’s credit ratings and market shares–or the impending bankruptcy of Delta Airlines–or America’s trade and budget deficits. Or even by the turmoil in America’s financial markets, so worrying that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, felt it necessary to assure investors, “The U.S. financial system seems less vulnerable to financial specific shocks.”

Of course, as reassurances go, this one was more than a little diluted by Geithner’s accompanying warning, “Changes in the structure of the financial system and an increase in product complexity could make a crisis more difficult to manage and perhaps more damaging.” Now there’s something for Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s successor to think about.