Last year was another record year on Wall Street, which followed a record 2004, reports the New York Times. But with interest rates rising, the conventional wisdom should be that major finance houses will falter.

They earn as much as half their profits from credit, so rate hikes should hurt, but that’s now how the bankers see things.

“Who cares about rates?” asks Richard Bove, a securities analyst with Punk, Ziegel, an investment bank. “High interest rates and a flat yield curve do not cause bank earnings to weaken.” Bove argues that historically yield curve inversion has only a shallow and short impact.

With big deals and offerings in the pipeline, another record in 2006 is “plausible,” reports the paper. Major investment banks have big interests in Asia and have modernized their trading operations, which has helped the otherwise weak performance in stock trading.

“So the party may not be raging, but it may last one more year,” the paper concludes.