If you’ve been offline for a couple of weeks, you’ve missed some spectacular earnings numbers. All the big banks - Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers - have announced record earnings, reports BusinessWeek and the reason is big deals.

The banking houses no longer depend on traditional revenue streams such as equities to make their numbers. Oh no! They’re on the cutting edge with equity deals, consulting fees and big derivatives trading, says the magazine.

And even in a softening economy, there are plenty of big players with cash to invest or cash to expand market share and so the buyout business will be very lucrative. You wouldn’t want to cook up a multibillion dollar deal without a spear carrier or two from one of the Wall Street powerhouses. “Huge M&A deals are moving the needle,” one analyst says.

And all that equity sloshing around should make it very feasible for those planning ultra-luxury megaresorts on the Strip to raise the money they need to build.

Finally, spare a thought for Treasury Secretary-elect Henry Paulson. While his old outfit, Goldman Sachs, is literally coining it, the Office of Government Ethics is making him sell his $485 million worth of GS stock, reports the New York Times. Apparently, he won’t be selling the rest of his portfolio in hedge funds, private equity funds and real estate. Giving up even that much money makes Henry Kissinger’s words that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” seem prophetic.