Has Wall Street really learned the lessons of the financial crisis? A series of articles in New York Magazine suggests that that the banking industry has much to celebrate after emerging relatively unscathed from the “barely averted apocalypse.” Why then, the magazine asks, do the banks seem so downbeat?

It could have been so much worse, the magazine says. On a day when the Independent Commission on Banking review in the UK stopped short of recommending for British banks, their Wall Street counterparts could also congratulate themselves on a narrow escape.