Five Years After Wall Street Collapse, Are Banks Better Off?
It's been five years since Lehman Brothers collapsed and touched off a banking crisis that is still being felt by the global economy. Today, the banking industry is a lot stronger than it was, but some critics say efforts to reform banking regulations have fallen short of their potential.
The 2008 banking crisis underscored how vulnerable the financial sector had become. Huge institutions like Countrywide were saddled with mountains of bad mortgage and consumer debt. And the losses were magnified by the widespread use of leverage and derivatives such as credit default swaps. Today, says Wayne Abernathy of the American Bankers Association, banks are much healthier and safer.
"The banking industry is so strong today, I don't see any of those risks causing systemic trauma to the economy as we had in the past," he says.
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