“From the Gordon Gekko 1980s until the mortgage meltdown in 2007-8, the financial industry came to dominate the world economy. On this extraordinary and sometimes terrifying ride, banks reaped incredible profits while management and staff received generous salaries and lush bonuses.

“And then everything fell apart. Eventually governments had to step in to bail out or shut many financial institutions.

“Five years after the crisis, some participants and close observers of the world of finance see a generational humbling of the big banks under way. For the first time in nearly 30 years, they say, finance is starting to look a bit more like a normal industry.

“’The future’s going to be different,’ said Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a former Wall Street banker and hedge fund manager. Though he thinks some financial institutions are still too large, he believes important progress has been made since the crisis. ‘The big, complex banks have been chastened,’ he said.’There will be more hitting of singles and less swinging for the fences.’”

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