(MONEY Magazine) – Keeping the banking system financially secure is among the most critical jobs facing the next President. Already, the federal savings and loan bailout is expected to stick taxpayers with a bill for at least $500 billion, and bank failures through 1993 could cost another $50 billion or so. (For the views of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chairman William Taylor, see page 30.) President Bush believes banks and thrifts are working out their problems. ''In the first three months of 1992,'' points out a Bush campaign spokesman, ''the nation's savings and loans put in their best profit performance in six years.'' But Democrat Bill Clinton and independent Ross Perot charge that Bush bungled the bailout and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. ''You-know-who should be blamed for the crisis,'' says Perot. Neither Perot nor Clinton will discuss in detail how they would have nursed banks and thrifts differently, however. Clinton says only that ''bank regulators should avoid closing troubled banks whenever possible.'' Many analysts counter that such a policy would add to the taxpayers' tab, since losses would rise by the time a bank failed. The candidates disagree on other issues too. For example, the President thinks the banking system would be even stronger if Congress permitted national interstate banking. The Arkansas governor disagrees, reasoning that a bank based in New York City would have difficulty knowing what's best for customers in, say, its Little Rock branch. Perot offers no opinion on the issue. Consumer advocates tend to side with Clinton. Both Bush and Clinton have called for lower interest rates, but their specific proposals differ. In late June, Bush urged the Federal Reserve Board to drive down the so-called fed funds rate -- the charge banks assess each other for overnight loans. On July 2, the Fed moved in that direction, cutting the discount rate it charges member banks to 3% from 3.5%. Although the President has backed away from his earlier call for banks to cut credit-card rates, Clinton would require banks charging more than 18% to lower tabs for ''good customers.'' (The national average is now 18.57%.) Clinton is familiar with low credit-card rates; Arkansas caps cards issued there (now at 8%). A Perot spokesman told MONEY it's up to consumers to find low-rate cards. Surprisingly, even though a Federal Reserve study shows that blacks are twice as likely to be rejected for mortgages as whites, only one candidate would even consider setting national minority-lending-level rules: George Bush.

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