I went to the E-Trade site this morning and this is the first thing that greeted me:

It’s a sign of the times. E-Trade has had more than its share of troubles lately. Suffering from the mortgage meltdown, it recently took a $2.5 billion capital infusion from Citadel Investment Group.

In a letter to investors, the acting CEO of E-Trade writes:

From this point forward our customers can be assured that E*TRADE FINANCIAL has no exposure to securities such as CDOs, Alt-A or second lien asset-backed securities.

One of the banks I did business with folded in September and was taken over by the FDIC. Fortunately for most savers FDIC protection is seamless.