The decision of federal regulators to close Topeka’s Columbia Bank & Trust Co. brings to nine the number of bank failures this year, generating more worrisome headlines. But the real story isn’t the vulnerability of America’s banks; it’s their resiliency. However many banks ultimately founder in the present financial storm, it’s likely the number will be conspicuously lower than during the last banking crisis, which occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Most banks are exposed to the real estate market. As lenders became increasingly aggressive, fueling a housing bubble, it was not in and of itself surprising that the consequences would prove fatal for some institutions. Yet the nine banks that have succumbed so far represent but a tiny fraction of the banking industry. The financial debacles that created the banking crisis in the late 1980s, by contrast, claimed more than 2,000 of the nation’s approximately 14,000 banks. As we quoted the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s spokesman, Andrew Gray, as saying in a dispatch on August 7, the number of bank failures this year represent, if anything, a return to historic norms.

Certainly there are differences between today’s banking crisis and the previous one. The principal source of the troubles of the late 1980s was commercial real estate with a heavy overlay of junk bonds; today banks are facing a nationwide downturn in residential real estate. That so many American home owners have been willing to walk away from their over-mortgaged residences is one of the shocks of the present crisis. But the collateral of the single family American house may yet — when the cyclical dust settles — prove itself bank-worthy again.

Today’s banks are much better capitalized than they used to be. Ironically, the much-maligned complexity in financial markets is, in some measure, what has made this new abundance of capital possible. Whatever their faults, esoteric financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations disperse risk, though by dispersing risk, these instruments also obfuscate where it resides. But beware of the regulators who would freeze financial innovation.

So far the FDIC has managed to mitigate the present crisis by identifying troubled banks and steering much needed capital their way. Many of the bank failures that occurred in the late 1980s might have been avoided were regulators as adept then as they are today at identifying and salvaging troubled banks. Regulation is always backwards looking, and so regulators are generally more successful when trying to react rather than anticipate. In other words, though regulators may mitigate problems in the banking industry once they appear, they have a harder time preventing problems before they arise. Cycles, troubles and even crises, there will always be. The innovative and resilient — and, yes, imperfect — American financial system is a gift.