The world has recovered from its Lehman Brothers shock. Important financial stress measures are back to the levels they were just before Lehman declared bankruptcy last September.

The dividend yield on the S&P 500 financials index now stands at 4.22 per cent, below the 4.24 per cent at which it traded on September 12, the Friday before the Lehman collapse. It peaked at 10.8 per cent in early March, at which point bank stocks offered some 10 times the “risk-free” yield available from bonds. That implied the virtual certainty of imminent drastic dividend cuts.