Thank goodness for safe and boring. New Hampshire's community banks are in good financial shape, and many of them are having banner years, Banking Commissioner Peter Hildreth says.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world of finance, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 508 points yesterday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that the economic downturn and financial crisis could take a long time to resolve and said that he was considering a cut in interest rates. The index has now dropped 2,590 points since this time last year, and its stocks, on average, have now lost about 20 percent of their value, when factored for inflation, from their 2007 peak at more than 14,000. Retirement accounts are shrinking daily and have lost an estimated $2 trillion in value. State and local governments and businesses are canceling projects and shedding workers.

So far, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion bank bailout bill has failed to end a credit crisis that's gone global. In response, the Federal Reserve has announced that it plans a second, massive infusion of taxpayer-backed capital. It will buy an unlimited amount of the estimated $2 trillion in outstanding commercial paper, short-term loans used by banks and business to finance ongoing operations. The exposure to taxpayers now and perhaps long into the future, has grown enormous.

Against that national and global backdrop, the health of the state's community banks seems odd - mice thriving while the dinosaurs of finance are writhing in agony and going extinct. It's a lesson in thrift and prudence that was lost on much of the financial world and investors who looked not for slow and steady gains but casino-style rewards. This time, they literally broke the banks that held their fortunes.

Institutions like Merrimack County Savings Bank, Laconia Savings, Ocean Bank, credit unions, and larger institutions like Citizens Bank, TD BankNorth and Sovereign Bank are advertising heavily to tell customers that depositors' money is safe and that they have plenty of it to lend.

A good credit record and a down payment was always required by the state's banks. They passed up the big, short-lived profits that could be had by investing in sub-prime mortgages and other shaky financial instruments. So, though borrowing will take a better credit rating than before the bust, there's money available and plenty of homes on the market.

New Hampshire's banks were decimated in the late 1980s and early '90s when the last real estate bubble burst. Five of the state's six biggest went out of business. This time, the state's banks played it safe, and it paid off for both them and the local economy.