The stage is set for too-big-to-fail banks such as Citigroup and Bank of America to take on greater risks in pursuit of profits, counting on taxpayers to make good their losses.

There have been no obituaries. No eulogies. No burial services. But this quarter marks the death of traditional banking at the big money-center banks.

What does the falling dollar mean for you?

And it's exactly those huge profits from everything but banking that have put the final nail in the big banks as banks.

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase and maybe Bank of America (BAC, news, msgs) and Citigroup (C, news, msgs), too, will survive as financial institutions. But they won't be banks.

The model for what these big financial institutions will be is laid out in the most recent...