According to a report by Alex Barinka and Whitney Kisling who write for Bloomberg, banking and finance are all but fully recovered from the crash of 2008. Back then, before the sky fell, finance was the largest single industry in the S&P 500 index. It appears to be headed to that top spot once again. As of last week the banking and finance sectors made up 16.8 percent of the index.
Since then the government stepped in and imposed stricter regulations on the industry, hoping to prevent similar (or any) crisis in the future. The remarkable way that the sector has rebounded shows that the market believes the industry has, and will continue to weather the storm of demands for even more regulation.