I listen with amazement to Angela Knight and her explanations of bankers as a separate caste, why it was not the fault of the bankers they lost all that money, why PPI was not really a rip-off, and why above all they deserve to be paid vast salaries.
Over the last 40 years the banks have lost fortunes in a variety of creative ways: 1) lending to African and South American dictators in the 1970s, money immediately siphoned off to Swiss accounts; 2) becoming 'one-stop shops' for all things financial and property in the late 1980s, buying estate agents and insurance companies for inflated prices, selling them off shortly afterwards for a fraction of same; 3) during the dotcom boom lending to sure-fire winners like spendcashgobust.com, and uselesstossers.com; 4) finally finding a way to trade pigs-in-pokes by creating derivatives they were unable to value, some based on lending to Billy-Bob-Jim-Joe in Arkansas so he could buy a large house, though he never had any hope of paying for it.
The banking market has failed, not only because banks have enjoyed in effect state guarantees on their bets, but because most of those at the top will have been involved in at least two of those fiascos but kept their jobs.
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