The figures are dry – the information, to the layman, even boring. “Lending to the private sector in the Eurozone shrank last month year on year for the first time ever” – even as the zone’s economy was returning to growth.

In other words, in common with Britain’s banks, Europe’s bankers have scaled back on making credit available at an unprecedented pace.

This bland piece of information discloses the reality of the times in which we are living. Having tipped truly vast amounts of public money into private bankers’ pockets, not only are those self same bankers paying themselves vast bonuses, but they are most specifically NOT lending the stuff to keep the economic wheels turning.

Short-term loans - those under a year - are almost 10 per cent down. Those are the loans that enable companies to buy forward raw materials and stock to enable them to participate in the renewed growth across Europe’s economy.

Although these figures affect those countries inside the Eurozone, the UK is in no different place.

That’s why it is so instructive to look at how both the investment and the retail banks are working across the world. There is no better example than Goldman Sachs, whose gigantic “profits” and consequent bonuses appear to have played little role whatever in productive economic activity.

The UK shadow chancellor, George Osborne, wants bankers’ bonuses “purified” and turned into shares, so that the cash they would have taken can go into lending to make widgets.

It’s a brave though empty call. If after chucking £1.3 trillion of taxpayers’ money at the banks in Britain alone, the availability of credit has actually contracted, what on earth will persuade the bankers suddenly to lend their erstwhile bonuses?

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, last week demanded the break up of the mega banks. His call represented a lone warning by a central banker. The banking system that got us into this mess has not changed.

We are effectively stoking up another disaster with precisely the same ingredients as the last one. That’s why today’s boring figures from the Eurozone are so instructive.

- Get new Snowblog posts emailed to you. Sign up here for free (link takes you to Google’s Feedburner service). An email is sent daily when new blog posts have been added.

I am at the apparent end of a tussle with the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Or I think I am. Last month it was revealed that 51 individuals had effectively failed to pass muster as “competent” to hold key positions in Britain’s financial services industry.

Or to put it more politely, these individuals had “withdrawn” from the application process after being independently assessed by the FSA.

On the one hand it was encouraging to find the FSA being so hands-on as to be pre-emptively fingering risky individuals who might blight the boards for banks and other financial services outfits.

But on the other, what is the point of barring such people from such sensitive work if we the people have no idea who they are? Where else might these people surface to threaten our corporate life?

The FT revealed that there were 51 individuals whose competence was challenged by the FSA. I wanted to find out who these people were and filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Within the statuary 30 days it was rejected. The FSA admitted they held the names but would not release them.

Then I asked for the jobs for which these people had applied and been rejected as unsuitable for by the FSA. Again the FSA refused. The FOI act is carefully drafted so as not to infringe the human rights of individuals with whom bodies like the FSA interact. There are no viable grounds for appeal.

So on a day when the political classes get to elect a new Speaker for the House of Commons – ultimately because freedom of information exposed the corrupt practices over which the former Speaker presided – we are not allowed to know the identities of the people who threaten the financial system through their lack of competence for such jobs.

My concern is whether the FSA has the competence to ensure that these people never occupy ANY position in ANY company that might threaten our own, or our own society’s welfare. Now, can the the FSA give us that guarantee?