If it hadn’t been for the greed of the dim-witted population at large the banks wouldn’t have been in a position to make such a mess.

But then, People Like Gordon Brown have long relied on a population that seems to be absolutely clueless when it comes to finance and economics - just what they want so they can persue the politics of mediocrity and yet still proclaim political brilliance.

Historically low interest rates ( not counting where we are now ) produced some fantastic margins, LIBOR at circa 5% gave even the most competitive credit card companies advertising APR’s as low as 13- 14% a 160 - 180% gross margin so financial institutions could not lend fast enough GREED.

The phenomenon of borrowing against a fixed asset to pay current expenditure has been going on for a long time, at least since the 80s. It has allowed successive governments to con the public that prosperity was growing under their leadership. In fact, not only was that prosperity illusory from the point of view of the individual, but the swingeing taxes that it allowed successive governments to levy from those of us who still worked have proved to have been utterly squandered and the country itself is now in serious danger of bankruptcy.

We have got to change our whole mindset. First-world countries (I am being wildly optimistic here in assuming that the UK will remain one) should be net lenders (probably to the third world), not borrowers. Home buyers almost inevitably will be borrowers but must be so on a prudential basis. And instead of screaming about big business and fat cats and such nonsense, we should all be screaming about the greatest fraud of all - the trillions (not billions) of pounds of our money (because it is ours you know) that have been utterly wasted by our bloated, incompetent and inefficient state machine.