Crisis? What crisis?

A contribution from the floor at the Fabian Trust and the City debate has thrown just asked whether all this breast-beating about trust in banking and the city is really going to lead anywhere, and whether the City is really keeping its head down until it can carry on as before.

Indeed, we were told that another (non-Fabian) event on this subject could have been summed up by the view "crisis? what crisis?". The view of the City high-flyers was that they would have to accept some bad publicity and criticism; that there would be five years of attempts to have a more Scandinavian capitalism; that this would inevitably fail and be seen to fail; and then it would be back to business as usual.

Rachel Reeves says the report is "extremely depressing".

Antony Jenkins of Barclaycard is making it as clear as he can that he doesn't want to be part of that 'consensus' view.

"Anybody who takes that view is incredibly naive. We do not take that view. We do not think this is a PR problem. You might laugh at that but we don't. We are going to have to change to restore trust. We recognise that if we do not get this right our business is going to be curtailed. If we don't get it right, we won't have a business".