As the White House celebrates its first 100 days, a decidedly gloomier group on Wall Street has moved into the second of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief. The first, denial, was flamboyantly in evidence last year, as executives continued to fly in their private jets – and even tried to buy new ones – and pay themselves magnificent bonuses. Now, the bankers have moved on to stage two: anger.

In private conversations this month, two Wall Street chief executives described Congress’s draft bill to limit compensation at companies that receive government funds as “the Nuremberg Laws”. Jake DeSantis, one of the AIG executives whose bonus provoked the lawmakers, was so enraged by the controversy that he resigned and fired off a copy of his letter to The New York Times. In the final issue of Portfolio magazine, an anonymous “Tarp wife” complains that the fall from grace of America’s bankers has been “swifter and harsher than any since Mao frog-marched intellectuals into China’s countryside”.