Bankers just aren’t very bright are they?

I was prepared to forgive the poor souls their indiscretions and absurd Toad-of-Toad-Hall poop-poopness about their bonuses. I was even prepared to concede that leveraging your debt to the tune of forty four times (as Lehmans did) was a touch over bold but not exactly criminal.

But then I realised what it meant in layman (or Lehman terns) terms was if you, personally, had a house, net of mortgage worth say £600,000 and other assets, pension, cash, paintings, car, lawn mower, books worth another £300,000 then you were in Lehman terms, worth around £39.5million.

And then I read “Too Big to Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin (read it – it’s an essential insight into financial hell) and I realised these people quite simply weren’t very bright at all.

Firsts, yes. MBAs, of course. Millions of dollars, very many.

But they had absolutely no clothes. They were stark, bollock naked when it came to pass the parcel.

The penny finally dropped when I recently saw a poster for the shamed HBOS, trading under Lloyds TSB. Here’s what it said:-

“Our bank managers are here to help you. Their specialist subject is money.”

I think that lies on at least three counts.

And I think it means you the customer have to start giving that so called “specialist” a very hard time indeed.