Inside Wall Street’s $1 Trillion Decade: Big Take Podcast

 2022 was a tough year for markets, but the US’s biggest banks capped off a record decade. 

raders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Monday, June 27, 2022. Money managers betting on a sustained global rebound will be left sorely disappointed in the second half of this crushing year as a protracted bear market looms, even if inflation cools.Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg.There’s no doubt 2022 was rough on markets—it was the worst year for equities since the Great Recession. At the same time, though, 2022 marked a different kind of milestone for the six biggest US banks: Over the past decade, they made $1 trillion in profit.

Such an enormous haul didn’t seem possible as the decade began, when financial institutions were the target of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement and Washington policymakers were enforcing new restrictions put on banks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Today, Wall Street is outpacing much of corporate America. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. made more profit over those 10 years than all but a few publicly traded US companies. Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley aren’t far behind. Together, the six are poised to increase their profits in 2023. 

On today’s The Big Take podcast, Bloomberg reporters Max Abelson and Hannah Levitt explain how Wall Street made such blockbuster profits--and what it means for the rest of America as the biggest banks get even richer. 

Read: Wall Street’s Big Banks Score $1 Trillion of Profit in a Decade

This podcast is produced by the Big Take Podcast team: Supervising Producer: Vicki Vergolina, Senior Producer: Kathryn Fink, Producers: Mo Barrow, Rebecca Chaisson, Michael Falero and Federica Romaniello, Associate Producers: Sam Gebauer and Zaynab Siddiqui. Sound Design/Engineers: Raphael Amsili and Gilda Garcia.