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The Government's suggestion that we should think about sending a man into space met with a generally lukewarm response when it was floated last week except, perhaps surprisingly, in certain corners of the City. It could be money well spent, these bankers mused - provided the first man to be despatched to the moon was Chancellor Alistair Darling.
It is a brutal verdict but also fairly unusual in coming so early into his tenure.
The man has not yet been in the job a year and is still a month short of delivering his first Budget. But his announcement yesterday that the Government will rescue Northern Rock by nationalising it - temporarily, he says - will not improve his shattered credibility.
The decision is yet another defeat for Darling, who has all along pinned his hopes on someone in the private sector coming to the rescue.
It was a view he clung to long past its sell-by date, when it should have been obvious that no private company - not Virgin, Olivant or the in-house management team - could promise to return the £20-billion plus of Bank of England loans in any reasonable time frame.
The political flak will fly, no doubt, because nationalisation will be equated with the return of Old Labour, even if in this case that is rubbish. For this is simply what governments do when banks go bust.
The Americans nationalised Continental Illinois, then its eighth largest bank, when it failed in 1984, and most other countries have done something similar at some time or another.
The reality is that once the decision was made not to let Northern Rock fail, this was, and remains, the best way for the taxpayer to get back the money that has been used to support the bank since last September.
All it means is that the Government becomes the owner and installs a new outside management team under the already-named chairman Ron Sandler. When the bank is back on its feet, it will be sold back to the private sector, with the taxpayer getting any profit.
However, nationalisation underlines the fact that this is now primarily a political and not a financial story.
It was initially thought that Northern Rock would undermine the reputation of the City as a financial centre, but with all the banking problems across the world (in America, in France, in Germany), no one thinks London is especially flaky. By contrast, the Government's painfully long-drawn-out attempt to organise a rescue of Northern Rock, which has now ended in the worst-case option, has left British voters distinctly unimpressed.
For it is not just the bankers who are fed up with Darling. A YouGov poll published in yesterday's Sunday Times said voters were turned off, too: 44 per cent believed the Chancellor should be sacked following his clumsy handling of the Northern Rock crisis and the increasingly gloomy news about the wider economy.
All the Government's indecision and haggling contrasts very poorly with the much slicker way the Americans, Germans and French have smoothly moved in to sort out their problems. It seems very much a symbol for a Government beset by fumbling and incompetence across the board.
Meanwhile, what has harmed the City - and seriously undermined its open-door internationalism - is Darling's ill-thought-through attack on non-doms - the people who live here, work here, pay tax here, but don't have to declare their non-British earnings.
Like the Northern Rock fiasco and the Chancellor's similarly shambolic attempt to reform Capital Gains Tax, the non-doms tax painted a picture of a man not in charge of his brief, presiding over a department not in touch with the real world.
The bizarre thing is he was under no pressure to touch either non-doms or CGT and could easily have left both well alone - but he failed to do so.
Having decided to act, he compounded his error by allowing the aggressive acting chairman of HM Revenue and Customs, Dave Hartnett, to hijack the draft legislation and turn it into a wholesale attack on tax avoidance targeted at almost anyone who had ever come ashore at Dover.
It might have had a chance if it had remained a narrowly defined and limited measure, but once it was seen to be demanding information from everywhere for no apparent purpose, suspicions were bound to be aroused and the consequent furore was inevitable.
If there is a surprise in all this, it is that Darling should have been so clueless. No one expected him to be a great thinker or innovator as Chancellor, but throughout his career he has shown a remarkable talent for avoiding difficult decisions and controversial policies. He was, above all else, a safe pair of hands. Now his Teflon touch has deserted him and with it his credibility and usefulness - because there is not a lot else.
This leaves Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a tough decision to make. Darling is finished as far as the City is concerned: he is now so devalued as an operator that even if he were to do sensible things, no one would either believe him or give the Government credit. The country seems to feel the same way.
But things can change rapidly in politics and the situation for the Government may even now not be as hopeless as it looks.
There is in the financial world a fond memory of Ed Balls, the former Treasury minister for the City, who is now in charge of education: Balls was seen as bright, a good listener, understanding of international finance and straightforward to deal with.
The City yearns to have him back - and in this yearning there is a way out for the Prime Minister, provided he has the courage to take it. At some point between now and the summer, it will be time for a reshuffle. Top of Brown's list should be to promote Ed Balls to Number 11 Downing Street, with the hurt to Darling mitigated by giving him the education brief in return.
It will clearly be tough for Brown to sack his long-time ally but in truth he has no real choice. For if Darling does not lose his job soon, Brown and all his ministers will, come the next election.
