It has been three years since the roof started to fall in. And only a year and a bit since the more faint-hearted stocked their cellars with bottled water and canned food lest the financial crash presage a descent into anarchy. So what has happened since? Simple: not much. The markets (and the bankers) still rule.

Look back at the grand declarations made by political leaders as the global financial system teetered on the edge of self-destruction. The promises and pledges came from left, right and centre – from Gordon Brown and Barack Obama, from Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, from central banks and the International Monetary Fund.

Finance, we were assured, would be pulled from its gilded pedestal. Main Street would reassert its primacy over Wall Street. The laisser faire capitalism of the Washington Consensus had had its day. The world's richest economies would turn their minds to nurturing real, as opposed to financial, engineering.