A good idea, but with risks attached

Yes, banks have been saved from going under and with them, we're led to believe the whole financial system. But in terms of making them clean up their act and begin behaving like banks should, progress is depressingly slow.

So, while the US Treasury comes up with this potential $1 trillion scheme (the numbers just seem to get ever higher), which on paper is a sound one - of using public funds alongside private capital - elsewhere, politicians scream at the attitude of those they're trying to assist.

To be fair, it is not their fault that AIG is paying massive bonuses after being bailed out by $180 billion of taxpayers' money.

It says much about Wall Street's deplorable greed. Yet it also says a lot about the inability of the authorities to get a grip on a sector that still sees itself as somehow above and beyond the rest of society.

Asking private investors to pump cash into an industry that is the cause of growing anger on the streets of America and in Congress is politically extremely risky. It will also have to be priced cheaply to get it away, which may make for uncomfortable headlines about profiteering in the future.

In this country, too, there is precious little sign of the banks recommencing to fund the vital cashflows of small businesses. On a daily basis, firms are packing up. This is despite some banks being nationalised and the ones that aren't having received an almighty jolt. Meanwhile, in an echo of the US government's experience with AIG, Westminster is mired in a row over the pension of the former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, Sir Fred Goodwin.

There is still the suspicion, even now, of the UK and US governments being too respectful, of them backing off.

They're in charge, not the banks. They need to crack some whips very hard, or else we will be seeing further bailout packages months from now, and by then more employers will have perished. This US proposal is good but it needs to be the last.