Of course, if the banks and their PR folk had been more open and communicative initially and not played the game of making the general public and non-financial press feel that finance was something they couldn’t understand, we might all be a bit better informed.

Starting from where we are now, rather than bleat about not being understood, banks need to start to win back the trust they used to have before they became so focused on selling and forgot about being a respectable part of the fabric of society – especially at a local level.

I think they need to get off the high horse and back to the grassroots – how many banks have bothered to explain to any of their stakeholders what is going on? Those of us who have money or mortages with those banks affected by the crisis have had zero personal communications,for example.

We need better PR/mediated communications, but also direct contact at the personal level to regain trust to overcome years of arrogance.