Up until about 2006 or so, to work at J.P. Morgan Chase was to experience the feeling that you were part of the blanding of banking.

In Wall Street's testosterone-fueled pecking order, the company's name might have evoked prestige of the past, but it lost that after it merged with Chase Manhattan in 2000. The esprit de corps of the place was all but obliterated, even if the pay was still pretty good.

In other words, it certainly was no Goldman Sachs. I worked at Goldman for two years after college. Despite perhaps being the most unenthusiastic investment banker in history—I'd had my Jack Kerouac moment around the time I was offered the job, and accepted it only because I had student loans to repay—I actually liked working there. Why? Not because I liked what I did. Rather, it was because I had a job that I knew so many other people would kill for.

Even after the downturn started, the media was still awash in stories about how Goldman Sachs was a modern-day version of the Illuminati, all but secretly controlling the government, and, through its foresight and power, crushing its competition with apparent nonchalance. Goldman employees were different than the rest of us.

In a word, they were, well, better.

But something has changed, at least in the status perceptions of Wall Streeters. Goldman Sachs is no longer the Goldman Sachs of the financial world. J.P. Morgan Chase is.

Sure, Goldman reported blockbuster results in April and followed them with an in-your-face equity offering of $5 billion that was intended to help pay back TARP funds from the government.

But pay no heed. This is not the Goldman of times past. That's because J.P. Morgan chief Jamie Dimon has navigated the shoals of the economic and financial crisis so adeptly that it is his bank, and not Goldman, against which all others are now compared. Let us count the ways.

In the first quarter of 2009, J.P. Morgan's investment bank led the industry's much-watched "league tables" in the most important capital-raising categories. More companies raised debt and equity through J.P. Morgan than anyone else.

While Goldman Sachs claimed to have won the mergers and acquisitions footrace, they had to perform a sleight of hand to get there, changing the criteria from deals that were announced during the quarter to deals that were actually completed. Most Wall Street firms play with the inputs to try and find a way to claim they're No. 1. Goldman never used to, but they're doing it now.

When Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley decided—while fearing for their own existence—to transform themselves into bank holding companies in September (bringing with it the ability to access the Federal Reserve's discount window), they essentially brought to an end the era of the standalone investment bank.

Goldman used to be special. Now, Goldman is merely a far smaller bank than J.P. Morgan. Sure, their results beat analyst expectations by nearly double in April. But their revenues only rose 13 percent. J.P. Morgan's top-line gain? A cool 48 percent. More to the point, J.P. Morgan's investment bank brought in $1.4 billion in revenue in the quarter, tops on Wall Street.