How quickly the City forgets. When Lord Turner published his regulatory review in March, he cited Mervyn King’s comment the same week that “whatever exuberance – rational or irrational – existed has been destroyed by the crisis”. Echoing the Bank of England governor, Lord Turner said that as a result, “we do not need immediately to have in place our guards against its future re-emergence”.

Well, the guards – along with the markets – are up again. “Aggressive” hiring, “risky” trading practices: if you believe the Financial Services Authority’s chairman, it has taken high finance less than three months to forget the lessons of the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. On that accelerated timetable, we should be due another once-in-a-century cataclysm before the end of the year.