The Bust Never Ended for Wall Street’s Most Crisis-Scarred Banks
- Shares of Citigroup, BofA still below pre-crisis levels
- Largest U.S. banks doubled capital levels over past 10 years
A Wall Street sign is seen near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Friday, Feb. 19, 2016. Stocks across the globe rallied on February 22, with the Standard & Poor's 500 Index extending gains following its best week of 2016, as oil and metals advanced.
Photographer: John Taggart/BloombergTen years ago today a pair of Bear Stearns Cos. hedge funds that had gorged on subprime mortgage securities filed for bankruptcy, becoming the canaries in the coal mine for the global financial system that collapsed 15 months later.
After banks worldwide lost $2 trillion and received $700 billion of bailout money, the six largest in the U.S. are making almost as much as they did in 2007. But they haven’t all been rewarded the same. Those that took the biggest government bailouts -- Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. -- are still way below where their shares traded the day the canary died.