Still the bills roll in. Taxpayers have already written impressively large cheques for Northern Rock and Bear Stearns. This week they are asked to dip into their pockets for Fannie Mae and Equitable Life. Ten billion pounds is more than a week’s public spending. But the sum is now the small change of subvention to failing financial services businesses. The common cause of all these calls on the public purse is the gap between the responsibilities government is thought to have assumed and the powers and competence government has to discharge these responsibilities.

Equitable Life, the mutual life assurer that closed to new business in 2000, did not fail. Most of its policyholders did not do badly, but they did less well than they had been led to expect. Regulators did not cause the crisis, but things might have been done that were not done and there were specific procedural failings. In a world populated by real people, hindsight will almost always reveal such mistakes.