After Three Years and Trillions of Dollars, Our Banks Still Don't Work

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It was supposed to be a simple bargain. We would bail out the banks, and then they would bail out the economy. So why is it that things in the banking industry seem as dysfunctional as they have been since the financial crisis began in 2008? Share prices of the biggest American banks are plummeting as a spate of problems, including some in the mortgage markets that they've long tried to put behind them, come to the fore once again. Things are even worse in Europe, where banks are reeling from the sovereign-debt crisis. Moody's has downgraded the credit of two...

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