(Updated at 4:58 p.m. ET)

Despite the setbacks around the 787 Dreamliner, Boeing's (BA) stock is back at levels it hasn't seen in half a decade, with the latest step upward coming after a report that it could be close to announcing an $18 billion order, one of the biggest it's ever gotten.

The Chicago-based airplane maker was trading not just beyond a 52-week high Tuesday, as a cursory glance at a basic chart would show, but instead has returned to an area it last occupied in May 2008. At the close, the stock was up $1.22, or 1.5%, at $84.16.

Even though the 787 was grounded earlier this year owing to worries about the safety of the aircraft, shares of Boeing have gained 7.6% since the beginning of 2013. That's right in line with the 7.7% gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, of which it's a member, and ahead of the 6.4% advance for the S&P 500. Boeing's all-time closing high was $107.23 in July 2007, according to FactSet data.

The day's lift for Boeing was being influenced by a

By Bartlett Naylor

In December of last year, HSBC (HBC) admitted to money laundering violations covering $200 trillion worth of transactions involving Mexican and Columbian drug cartels, groups allegedly aligned with terrorist organizations, sanctioned nations and others. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) explained it could not exact a penalty greater than one month’s profits against HSBC because doing so would cause systemic repercussions to the financial system. In shorthand, HSBC was “too big to jail.”

On March 6, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder affirmed the “too big to jail” policy:

"I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become