Afriend, who is a teacher, lamented to me recently: "For years we have been told that bankers were paid so much because you were cleverer than the rest of us. Now it turns out you were not clever at all and we are all suffering for your stupidity."

In the past two weeks, big financial institutions in Europe and America have announced losses and savage job cuts caused by new writedowns for US subprime mortgages. So far, we have seen more than $250bn (£126bn) of writedowns related to the debt bubble of the past few years. I am reminded of the remark attributed to Everett Dirksen, a former US senator: "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking real money."