So today we get a squint at the new regulations that MAY be brought in to guard against the greed, ignorance and arrogance that brought about the banking melt down and consequent financial crisis last year.

Sir David Walker’s interim report lands on the chancellor’s desk today. It is said to reveal the unbelievable lack of knowledge that existed on many bank boards.

He does have a plan to force financial institutions to publish the pay and remuneration of senior dealers, managers etc. He also wants people to be qualified for the job. The trouble is that this is still a closed club that dominates the City of London, despite the influx of ‘foreigners’ courtesy of globalisation.

The Financial Services Authority has refused my Freedom of Information request to reveal the 51 people they ruled unfit for the jobs for which they applied in the Financial Services Industry – they would not even reveal the jobs for which they applied.

So don’t hold your breath on greater transparency. Indeed I can’t believe that those 51 were the ONLY people they have rejected this year, but they have published no numbers since.

The greatest fear is that we return to exactly the same landscape that brought about this last financial disaster. Great hope is vested in Sir David Walker and his report, let’s hope it is justified.

AIG, the US insurer which got through $170bn of taxpayers’ money in order to survive and then had the cheek to pay $165m of it to dozens of senior executives, is up before a congressional committee today.

But we have also now learnt that the lawmakers in the US are exploring whether it can levy a 100 per cent tax on said executives.

It poses the question here: could the UK Treasury instigate a total withholding tax on the HBOS and Northern Rock and RBS executives and board members who either took the money in pensions and bonuses or, alternatively, sanctioned it?

Answers on the usual postcard/blog card, please.

I blogged earlier this week about the possibility that our disgraced bank bosses had signed “gagging orders” as part of their severance deals, stopping them from talking about what happened to the banks on their watch (earlier this week we asked RBS and Lloyds TSB to confirm or deny this, but they have yet to do so).

Above all, these gagging orders mean the government and individual ministers escape scrutiny, which in turn means the media route to exposure is dead. Beyond whatever police inquiries that may be underway (and if you work for the FSA, DPP or the attorney general, can you tell me – are there any police inquiries?), only MPs remain empowered to break these gagging orders.

The Treasury select committee has hardly scratched the surface of this thing thus far. It has done a good job in what little it has found time to do and to continue to do.

We journalists are doing what we can. But MPs have the power to order attendance before the bar of the House of Commons. They should use it extensively and exhaustively to break this possible “conspiracy of silence”.

I turn on the radio to find that the government is launching a fund to sap up the toxic debts of the banks. Not just the banks we own, but others too.

Is it still beyond the realms of reason to ask whether some of these specific debts could not be unwound to find out how they were put together?

Let me put it this way. I offer you £100, which I know to be made up of one good £20 note and four notes that are complete rubbish. I sell you this £100 for a bargain £70.

In criminal law, my knowledge of the rubbish that is bound up in this notional £100 is known as the “mens rea”. My crime – the “actus reus” – is to sell the £100 to you.

The bankers, of course, would say in their defence that they thought what they sold had real value.

The Treasury announced last week that it is looking for 70 bankers to employ during this crisis. In the view of some, it should be looking for a considerably larger number – to prosecute.

Of course, six months into this crisis, not only do we still have no idea how big the toxic debt in the banks is. We have no idea of the real number of human beings who generated it.