Just over a year ago we thought that the £37bn injection of equity by the government into Lloyds and RBS was the landmark, never-to-be-repeated event. Bailout 1.0 literally saved the banking system from collapse, and was copied around the world.

Then, in January, came Bailout 2.0, which we were told would be a bailout not of the banks, but of the economy. That bailout was to enable the banks to continue lending to prospective homeowners and to businesses.

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So it’s official: RBS is a nationalised bank. We today own 84 per cent of it, and that in my book makes it a government-owned bank. If it went bust – and still could – we would be paid out BEFORE the unfortunates who own the remaining 16 per cent.

It is even behaving like a nationalised bank, at last. No bonuses to anyone beyond the branch staff. And we are treating it like a state bank. We are insuring it – completely – and we are giving it tens of billions of pounds more of our money.

The 21st century is achieving something that a century of socialist endeavour across the world never achieved. Is it a good thing? God only knows.

And what of Lloyds? We seem to be easing the apron strings. But are we getting any of our billions back? Well, we ARE getting £2.1bn for insuring the thing for the past six months.

But all the rest? God only knows. God is going to be busy in these coming days and years. It is still far from certain that, if the banks crash again, we shall be able to save either bank.

All this against a backdrop in which a government minister has admitted that the current financial market is back to the worst of its worst behaviour – “deal churning”, or holding shares for a nanosecond before trading them again and again and again.

Lord Myners, the City minister, tells us in a BBC interview on File on 4 that a staggering 70 per cent of all share dealing is currently undertaken by these massive computer dealing systems that enable a trader to hold a trade for a nanosecond before selling.

It is a wholly unproductive activity and it is a part of what sank the world’s financial system a year – yes, just a year – ago. We have learned nothing. It is one reason why we should be very wary indeed of the current stock market boom and the current theoretical world recovery.

I must go and get some cash out.

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‘Hockney-esque’ is how the City minister, Lord Myners last week described today’s government effort to reboot Britain’s banking system.

It’s a high-brow reference to the fact that today’s government proposals will be a mix of white and green paper. Many of the more radical decisions will be delayed for more consultation. Some angry taxpayers could argue that toilet paper is more appropriate.

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Today the chancellor is going into the lion’s den to defend the bankers.

Europe feels that Britain failed to regulate the City ‘casino’ properly, and helped stoke the financial disaster that caused the recession across Europe.

The European Commission has come up with proposals that would give two continent-wide institutions the ultimate ability to regulate individual banks, including British ones.

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