Nearly four years after the Wall Street bailout, the beneficiaries of the US government’s support are battered and unpopular, but still in business. Meanwhile, the regulators that rescued them are in trouble.

The Libor affair is the latest scandal to affect the already low reputation of the big banks. It adds to most taxpayers’ feeling that they were forced to support a set of institutions that didn’t deserve it. “They should be enraged by the broken promises to Main Street and the unending protection of Wall Street,” writes Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general of the Tarp programme.

Mr Barofsky’s book Bailout renews his lengthy grudge match with Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, whom he saw as over-sympathetic to Wall Street. “I find that deeply offensive,” Mr Geithner complained haughtily to Charlie Rose of PBS this week when faced by the notion that, as former president of the New York Federal Reserve, he was too close to the industry.