What does solvent mean? JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, 2010 A little more than five years after the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (Sarbanes–Oxley),1 many of the nation’s largest financial institutions failed or were pushed to the brink of failure. An unprecedented decline in housing prices reduced the value of securities backed by housing loans owned by many banks. The resulting insolvency of some of the most significant Wall Street giants prompted the worst financial turmoil since the Great Depression. The crisis raised serious questions about the efficiency of markets as hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization suddenly disappeared. The losses suffered by investors were more severe and long lasting than those that came out of the market crisis that helped give rise to Sarbanes–Oxley.