A look at banks’ marketing slogans – no doubt chosen with great care and sincerity not so long ago – is extremely uncomfortable.

“Where vision gets built,” was how now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers defined itself. “When your money is safe everything is too,” Dexia proclaimed, before receiving a $9bn capital infusion from various European governments in September. “Live richly,” said Citibank, in the not-so-distant days when it wanted people to borrow money even if they did not need it. Such exhortations now have an extremely hollow ring to them.