Yep . Our dogs treed a whole flock of them in some 100 ft pines <| sep |> Bullshit . You are arguing against math . Assets are not what counts . Assets are a huge loan portfolio . What matters is the ability to monetize it and they lost a lot of that ability in the crisis , some possibly forever . Regulation means no more huge leveraged margins , no more huge bonuses for traders . This is what counts to people who make decisions and to boards . A volume based business based on thin margins on loads of assets is boring old business . What matters is how much you expect to make as a decision maker , and those decision makers got either fired or hugely reduced packages in the crisis . They didn ' t know long term nothing , what do you think , JPM knew that in the crisis Bear Stearns would fold and he could grab it ? That ' s a ludicrous conspiracy theory . All the evidence points to all banks betting on the crisis not happening . And they suffered massively for it . Long term they get stronger in strong markets like everybody else and the market is been strong for a few years . And all companies in decent businesses are getting stronger than ever all the time . Wall Street has ceded its position to Silicon Valley as they American money making machine , in part thanks to the crisis . You have to come to terms that you little number is giving you the wrong idea . Under any normal metric , the crisis was bad for JPM , BoA , etc .