Welcome to Fort Knox, UK-style. The new capital that the UK government and other investors will soon inject will take banks’ Tier One ratios to between 11 and 13 per cent. No-one can remember them being this impregnable. That, of course, is the point. The confidence that the banks will not topple, no matter how bad the recession, should bring the credit markets to their senses.

The benefit – a meltdown averted – outweighs the cost. But the cost is still there. Shareholders will suffer falls in returns, mainly because of the slug of “dead” capital that their banks cannot use to support lending, since its purpose is to raise capital ratios. How extreme a margin of safety has the government forced on the banks?