Wiping the smiles from their faces!

Four former bank executives are at this moment being grilled by the Treasury Select Committe. All have said sorry. As I left it, Lord Stevenson was sounding cheerful about future bonus structures. I got the impression they know it went wrong, that they felt it could go wrong, but, like a Las Vegas gambler, they wanted to have one more roll of the dice. Now they can't.

Andy Hornby sounded contrite. I'm not sure about the others. We may all have got wound up in the greedy credit spree and wanted bigger and better houses, bigger cars, and so on. But most of us didn't or couldn't bundle up loans to resell them like some frightful pyramid scheme.

A chap on BBC News suggested that, if this was the USA, these guys could be facing criminal charges for fraud. The trouble with fraud is proving it. Incompetence and a clouded brain are good defences in a court of law. That's why today is such a bind for them. Say they knew about everything and the book could be thrown at them. Come across as if they knew diddley-squat and they will for ever be seen as fools and Clarkson-type idiots!