For nearly two decades, long before he was even at Morgan Stanley, let alone its CEO, James Gorman has coveted one thing above all else. And this thing, for some reason, was E*Trade. And it cannot be said that Gorman only loved the discount brokerage in the good times, and not only because there have not been a ton of good times for E*Trade over that period. He first fell for her in the aftermath of the dot-com collapse, and his hunger for her did not wane in spite of its huge pile of home-equity loans during the subprime mortgage crisis, although it did prevent him from buying her then.