And it is not just banks in which public confidence is at an all-time low. For over the past five years, we have witnessed an unprecedented public crisis in the great pillars of state: the banks, the police and Parliament.
Why? Because in more and more cases, naked greed seems to have been the driving force for many self-serving individuals in these institutions.
That said, the real crisis we are facing is not a financial but a moral one. And it is a direct result of the something-for-nothing culture which is poisoning our society.

The question we must all seek to address, then, is how we can restore public confidence in these tarnished institutions. Where the banks are concerned, the answer lies partly in simple finance — for they must do their part to help restore Britain to economic stability, having plunged us into such peril in the crash of 2008.
But the reparations that must be made go beyond balance sheets.
One of the key Christian concepts is the idea of repentance, and I firmly believe that this is not a matter merely of saying a begrudging ‘sorry’, or simply paying lip-service with no real change of heart. Repentance implies a complete turning around and making good. As things stand, the banks have failed to demonstrate any sort of repentance.

It is hard not to conclude that institutionalised corruption is rife throughout today’s banking industry.

But this moral corruption has become widespread throughout our public institutions in recent years, in which executives have clung to their jobs despite major errors of judgment. The concept of the honourable resignation seems to have disappeared entirely.

Lord Carey speaks a lot more sense these days than he did when he was Top Banana in the C of E.