Investment Banking Earnings Highlight Wall Street’s New Vulnerabilities

By Martin Hutchinson, Contributing Editor, Money Morning

The collapse of The Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (OTC: LEHMQ), the forced takeover of Merrill Lynch and the decisions by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) to get commercial-banking licenses seemed to signal that the investment-banking business model was dead.