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.
变来变去都一样！两年前，雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破产，美林(Merrill Lynch)卖身给美国银行(Bank of America)。这寓意着什么？华尔街投行死到临头了呗。非也！在美国第三大和第四大投行消失两年后，最大两家投行——高盛(Goldman Sachs)和摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)——依然十分活跃。而且，从雷曼“临终”那时算起，这两个幸存者的股价至今仅下跌了10%，跌幅与标普500指数相当。同期内，KBW/费城股票交易所覆盖大型商业银行的银行指数下跌了三分之一。