treasury secretary janet yellen on thursday will tell lawmakers that the federal government would take extra steps to stabilize the us banking system if necessary “we have used important tools to act quickly to prevent contagion” yellen says in testimony prepared for delivery to a house appropriations subcommittee “and they are tools we could use again” yellen’s comments follow a senate hearing on wednesday in which she said she wasn’t considering ways to guarantee all bank deposits invoking regulators’ guarantee of all deposits at silicon valley bank and signature bank yellen says “the strong actions we have taken ensure that americans’ deposits are safe certainly we would be prepared to take additional actions if warranted” some lawmakers have discussed raising the depositinsurance limit from its current 250000 per depositor but yellen said wednesday that is not her focus right now