"Banking should not be exciting. If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it."

These are the words of Clay W. Ewing, president of retail financial services at German American Bancorp, a community bank in Jasper, Indiana, defending the simple certainty of small town banks in an article in the New York Times.

Community banks have been caught in the public backlash against the collapsing megabanks and their billion-dollar bailouts, but the small banks have not been failing. In Indiana, according to the Times, the last bank failure was in 1992.

These banks are run by people who grew up in the town where they now work, and respect for the community drives them to be steady, safe places for their neighbors' money, according to the article.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in the 4th quarter of 2008, there were 3,131 banks with less than $100 million in assets, and 4,499 with between $100 million and $1 billion. That's more than 10 times the number of mega banks holding more than a $1 billion which have been all over the news. Despite that, these banks hold less than 10 percent of the $13.8 trillion in assets nationwide, according to the Times.