Little more than a year after the worst financial meltdown in 60 years, the New Statesman stages an all-party debate on the banking system.

I think to myself: “Radical mag. Controversial subject. Plenty of party political difference. There should indeed be some fur flying.”

Boy, was I wrong! The City minister Lord Myners made the running and, frankly, there wasn’t a dissenting voice in the house. “Comfortable” would be too kind a word.

The Lib Dem and Conservative shadow ministers dissented not at all. And even the bankers seemed happy.

Barclays CEO John Varley never raised the question of the super-tax and bank bonuses, and people only laughed when it was suggested some bankers might be thinking about leaving Blighty.

If this is the shape of the general election to come, it’s going to be extremely dull. And the difficulty is that with hardly a policy difference between then – certainly on this matter – how are voters expected to choose?

It is hardly credible that politicians strutting round the country boasting that they are not the Labour party is going to do the trick.

I’m hoping today was an aberrant moment, but suspecting that it is a pointer to things to come.

I have blogged before about the role “unproductive” trades are playing in the current stock market boom.

The FT today reports Goldman Sachs only posted one day’s trading loss in the past quarter – the quarter before saw two such days.

On 35 of the 65 days of trading in the last quarter the company made over $100 profits a day. Goldmans’ profit in the last quarter totalled $6 billion.

The surge in stock market trading is credited to the vast amounts of public money being injected into the world economy by governments trying to get bank credit flowing again. But as I reported on Monday, Lord Myners, the City Minister states that 70 per cent of all trading involves the holding of trades for nano seconds.

I commend today’s FT article.

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.