We business journalists are suffering from an acute shortage of crisis metaphors. Or so it appears from this morning’s newspaper, in which Fannie Mae’s accounting scandal, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) solvency problems and the growing demographic pressures on Social Security are all likened, in different articles, to the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s.

I like a good metaphor as much as the next guy (as long-suffering Worth readers can confirm). But while all three of these problems arguably have something in common with the sorry S&L spectacle—they all demonstrate what happens when government regulations and institutions fail to keep pace with structural changes in the financial markets—the specter of impending disaster is overbought.

Fannie Mae remains solvent; its ability to increase its capital reserves to levels the government now demands without flinching demonstrates the depth and liquidity of its asset base. The PBGC’s growing deficit will be a mounting burden to taxpayers as healthy companies continue to opt out of its insurance, leaving it to tend to the walking wounded. But barring a massive downturn in the economy (which could suddenly lumber the agency with a host of failed companies’ pensions), it is a tragedy that will most likely play out over decades. Social Security—well, that’s anyone’s guess at this point, but I think its constituency is so broad, and the stakes so high, that the government won’t screw it up too badly.