This party’s well and truly over

The old ones are the best, so allow me to remind you of Sibley’s Law. Giving capital to a bank (said that worldly banker, Nicholas Sibley) is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk. You know what will become of it, but you can’t know which wall he will choose. By now we have some of the answers, and if the inundations are extensive, it was, after all, quite a party.

At the head of the world’s biggest banking group, Charles ‘Chuck’ Prince was enjoying himself to the end — when his bank, Citigroup, admitted to losses of $11 billion, not counting the mere $42 million that he took with him when he was chucked out. Other banks’ chiefs have followed, and on Canary Wharf, where Citi maintains a 12,000-seat corral, there will soon be empty saddles.

Bankers can be heard to complain that their troubles are unprecedented and were unforeseeable.