The more it says it can cope with whatever penalties are imposed on it, the more US politicians are entitled to ask whether they are high enough.

More details please. On Thursday ­President Obama declared war on Wall Street — but what would ­victory look like?

It was a bad plan — but it was a plan. The refusal of the US House of Representatives to back Hank Paulson’s bail out takes us into new territory.

If this is the death of Wall Street as we know it, the tombstone will read: killed by complexity.

You might have expected Northern Rock to sound apologetic as queues formed outside its branches and its website was overwhelmed. Here is a bank that lent aggressively and tried…