One Year after Lehman: It's Business as Usual Again for Wall Street's Casino Capitalists

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But the debate will now be held in Pittsburgh, as well, although naturally the Fed will not be mentioned by name. Germany, France and Britain have agreed to demand an "exit strategy" from the Americans.

Europe wants to know when the United States intends to stop driving up its debt to ludicrous levels. And Europe also wants to know when the Fed plans to curb the flood of dollars. Indeed, Washington's crisis fighters are on the verge of becoming a systemic risk themselves.

The German chancellor is about to receive support from Hollywood, where director Oliver Stone plans to film "Wall Street 2," starring Michael Douglas once again. This time, however, Stone plans to focus on the Fed in his film. The banks are important, he said last week while touring locations for the film, but the Fed is the "bulwark of the system."

The Party Continues

Meanwhile, the bankers and traders who are the focus of Stone's film and the Pittsburgh conference have returned to normalcy -- their normalcy. The party on Wall Street continues. In 2008, the bonus pool of US banks was so full that it seemed as if nothing at all had happened.

Nine of the biggest bonus-payers spent more than $32 billion on their supposed top performers, while at the same time collecting government bailout funds. For the general public, this is an outrage, but investment bankers see it as a "smart" move.

In a minor concession, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has asked his bankers to at least keep their spending habits discreet. But whether they have followed his advice is another matter.

At a recent event called "Fashion meets Finance" -- an opportunity for beautiful fashion models to meet wealthy bankers -- there was a long line at the door of the Nikki Beach club in midtown Manhattan. According to the invitation, the post-crisis panic had led -- horror of horrors -- to "a two-year blip in the system where a hot fashion girl might commit to a pharmaceutical salesman." But fortunately, the invitation continued, those days are gone, and "women of fashion" can take solace in the fact that "it will only be a couple more years until you can quit your job and become a tennis mom."

Back in Gear

Former Lehman banker Lawrence McDonald is already looking forward to the annual get-together with his former coworkers -- and to telling them about his proposal for reform, of which he is proud.

He believes that there should be more bonus payments, not fewer. "You have to pay the people in the government regulatory agencies some incentives too," he says, "so that good people take those jobs."

Until now, says McDonald, most of the government's watchdogs have been making only a little more than about $100,000 a year. "We used to laugh about this in the trading room," he says. "These people have to deal with some bankers making $5 million a year."

McDonald smiles at his own observation. His world is back in gear. Wall Street is big on forgetting.

BEAT BALZLI, SEBASTIAN BORGER, WOLFGANG HÖBEL, MARC HUJER, CHRISTOPH PAULY, WOLFGANG REUTER, MATTHIAS SCHEPP, GREGOR PETER SCHMITZ, GABOR STEINGART

• Back
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• Part 1: It's Business as Usual Again for Wall Street's Casino Capitalists
• Part 2: Can Capitalism Learn from Its Mistakes?
• Part 3: Bonuses Are Back
• Part 4: Treating the Symptoms
• Part 5: Fantasy Numbers
• Part 6: 'Large Banks Are Useful'
• Part 7: Demanding an Exit Strategy