The situation is much more complicated than credit union good, thrift bad. (Meridien Federal Credit Union and New London Security FCU failed in July, Port Trust Credit Union failed in August.)

Without going into ratios of nonperforming assets to tier one capital, access to captive or wholesale funding, and a bunch of other "stuff" that no one here should really care about, you should generally be more comfortable at banks that generate most of their liabilities from deposits and haven't loaded up the balance sheet with assets they don't understand. How can you find this? Short of paying a few hundred thousand dollars for bespoke research or spending eighty hours a week reading financial statement footnotes for a few months, you can't.

You may want to avoid banks on this list for starters. For what it's worth my money is at JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

More pew pew, less financial meltdown please.