Plus ça change. Two years ago, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. The implication? Wall Street investment banks were dead. Not so. Two years after the third and fourth largest US investment banks disappeared, the top two, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are very much alive. Combined, shares in these two survivors have fallen only 10 per cent since the eve of the Lehman collapse, in line with the S&P 500. The KBW/Philadelphia Stock Exchange banking index, covering the biggest commercial banks, has dropped by one-third in that time.
變來變去都一樣！兩年前，雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破產，美林(Merrill Lynch)賣身給美國銀行(Bank of America)。這寓意著什麼？華爾街投行死到臨頭了唄。非也！在美國第三大和第四大投行消失兩年後，最大兩家投行——高盛(Goldman Sachs)和摩根史坦利(Morgan Stanley)——依然十分活躍。而且，從雷曼「臨終」那時算起，這兩個倖存者的股價至今僅下跌了10%，跌幅與標普500指數相當。同期內，KBW/費城股票交易所覆蓋大型商業銀行的銀行指數下跌了三分之一。