ap photo Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies before the Senate Finance Committee about President Joe Biden’s proposed budget request for the fiscal year 2024, Thursday on Capitol Hill in Washington.

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen offered firm, upbeat reassurances to rattled bank depositors and investors Thursday, even as American financial institutions and European agencies ordered fresh rescue efforts following the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history.

Questioned closely, sometimes aggressively, Yellen told senators at a Capitol hearing that the U.S. banking system “remains sound” and Americans “can feel confident” about the safety of their deposits.

Her remarks, against the backdrop of deepening concerns about the health of the global financial system, were an effort to signal to markets that there would be no broader contagion from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in California and Signature Bank in New York.

By the time her testimony was over, another major institution, First Republic Bank, received an emergency infusion of $30 billion in deposits from 11 banks, according to Treasury. And in Europe hours earlier, Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest lender, got a promise from the Swiss central bank of a loan of up to 50 billion francs ($54 billion).

Wall Street rallied on the rescue news.

Republican senators laid a big part of the blame for the problems on Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.

“The reckless tax and spend agenda that was forced through Congress” contributed to record high inflation that the Federal Reserve is having to compensate for through increasing interest rates, said Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho. And those surging rates have caused banks — as well as regular citizens — problems.

The Republicans also questioned Biden’s assurances that taxpayers won’t bear the brunt of the commitment to make depositors whole.

Yellen resisted that scenario, though she said, “We certainly need to analyze carefully what happened to trigger these bank failures and examine our rules and supervision” to prevent them from happening again. She defended the government’s argument that taxpayers will not end up paying the cost of protecting uninsured money at Silicon Valley and Signature.

The Treasury secretary was the first administration official to face lawmakers over the decision to protect uninsured money at the two failed regional banks, a move some have criticized as a bank “bailout.”

“The government took decisive and forceful actions to strengthen public confidence” in the U.S. banking system, Yellen testified. “I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them.”

The week has been a whirlwind for markets globally on worries about banks that may be bending under the weight of the fastest hikes to interest rates in decades, increasures intended to quell rising inflation on consumer goods.

In less than a week, Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California, failed after depositors rushed to withdraw money amid anxiety over the bank’s health. Then, regulators convened over the weekend and announced that New York-based Signature Bank also failed. They said that all depositors, including those holding uninsured funds exceeding $250,000, would be protected by federal deposit insurance.