If the global financial crisis has taught us anything about finance, it has taught us not to trust the big Wall Street investment banks. The banks created the crisis, demanded a worldwide government bailout, then rapidly returned to excessive profitability. Six years after the crisis, millions of ordinary Americans are still mired in loss (job loss, house loss, asset loss), but after a brief setback in 2008 the banks quickly recovered. They have been making money hand over fist ever since. While wages have stagnated in the rest of the economy, the average New York banker’s bonus rose to $164,530 in 2013. That’s on top of an average base salary of around $200,000. Wall Street bankers now make more than five times the average New York City salary, compared with less than two times the average in 1981. It seems Wall Street banking is nice work, if you can find it.

The bankers’ ball almost came to an end in September, 2008. Investment banks Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and American International Group (AIG) all collapsed within a few days of each other. Together these three firms owed massive sums of money to the remaining Wall Street banks. If those interbank debts had gone unpaid, the rest of the Wall Street investment banks would have been dragged under as well. Investment bank Goldman Sachs has long been viewed as having the strongest finances of the big Wall Street banks and among the most careful and sophisticated risk management practices. Yet even Goldman “would have been a goner if the Fed didn’t throw it a life preserver by paying off AIG’s credit default swaps at 100 cents on the dollar and giving Goldman bank-holding-company status, which allowed it to borrow from the Federal Reserve at near-zero interest rates.

The end result? Goldman Sachs not only survived the 2008 crisis with a $2.3 billion profit for the year, but then went on to make a $13.4 billion profit in 2009. It has been profitable ever since.

In the last days of September, 2008 Wall Street pulled off the most audacious raid on the public purse ever contemplated. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson threatened Congress with financial armageddon and a second Great Depression if it did not immediately provide $700 billion to bail out the remaining investment banks with “very cheap capital.”