There is some debate about the efficacy of the ancient Chinese form of execution called ling chi, death by a thousand cuts. But whatever the effect of ling chi on Alistair Darling, the remarkably inept and unlucky chancellor of the exchequer, and on Gordon Brown, his vastly overrated predecessor, there is less uncertainty about what is happening to the UK financial economy and what will happen, in all probability sooner rather than later, to the real economy.

The current, ill-thought-through demands for greater transparency and controls on private equity and hedge funds, proposals to tax the supposedly rich “non-domiciled” residents and plans for an 80 per cent increase in the effective capital gains tax charge on selling long-term business assets – coupled with liquidity injections into the banking system and interest rate cuts that were both too little and too late – are all occurring precisely at that inflection point when the market would have adequately dealt with managers’ egos and profits by deflating one and denting the other.