The Problem with Record Bank Profits : The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/07/the-problem-with-record-bank-profits.html
... the remarkable rebound in the financial sector isn’t quite what it appears. Despite all that has happened since 2008, banking remains a very peculiar business—peculiarly cosseted, peculiarly financed, and peculiarly risky. Indeed, its current prosperity reflects not just the over-all economic recovery but the persistence of many of the factors that got us into the financial crisis in the first place: an emphasis on trading rather than lending, a high degree of leverage, and implicit subsidies from the taxpayer.