I've said it before and I'll say it again, nothing has changed in banking. And that's downright scary.

While the failure of Lehman Brotherswas certainly frightful at the time, it apparently didn't shake things up enough. Sure, it brought about a lot of jawboning about banks being "too big to fail" and the danger of their opaque trading segments. But did anything really come of it?

Fast-forward to today and what we find are huge financial institutions -- some, like JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), even larger thanks to government-led acquisitions -- making most of their money in the dark corners of their business. A glance at earnings reportsfrom Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and JPMorgan show booming businessin heavily cloaked trading. Even more traditional banks like Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) are finding ways to pull in money through avenues like hedges on mortgage servicing rights.

If you enjoyed the gut-wrenching revelations that seemed to come daily during the financial crisis, then you can go about your merry way. But if you'd rather avoid a second showingof that horror flick, then all of the above should be very worrisome.

But all is not lost, because there are plenty of ways that Uncle Sam can step in to help turn down the fright-o-meter.

Hair-raisingly huge
Huge banks are not our friend, because, as the hackneyed saying goes, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." Here's a look at some of the largest U.S. financials by assets:

Company

Total Assets

Bank of America

$2.3 trillion

JPMorgan Chase

$2.0 trillion

Citigroup (NYSE: C)

$1.9 trillion

Wells Fargo

$1.3 trillion

Fannie Mae

$911 billion

Source: Capital IQ, a Standard & Poor's company. Fannie Mae assets as of 6/30/09.

It's OK for Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) to have far-reaching global operations and to command a significant percentage of the fizzy-beverage market, because a small misstep by Coke won't result in a meltdown that could imperil the U.S. or global financial system. The latter, however, is a real risk when it comes to huge global banks, so capping how large a financial company can get would be a prudent move.

Leery about leverage
Another way we can look at the fright factor of the financial industry is by checking out the leverage that these companies employ. As a company stacks more assets on top of its shareholder equity cushion, it starts to look more and more like the final stages of a Jengagame -- ready to be toppled by even one poorly timed movement.

Company

Leverage

MetLife

19-to-1

Morgan Stanley Continued...