In retail banking, they haven't capitalized on the benefits of size (like lower borrowing costs) to cut prices for their customers, the way big retailers like Wal-Mart do.
It's not people with experience in banking or business whom Labour desperately needs, but people who know how to build a political movement from the bottom up.
For me the lull before the storm was illustrated by the complacent attitude of the Federal Reserve's vice-chairman Stanley Fischer, in his question and answer session after the annual Per Jacobsson lecture – not least when he dismissed that great central banking veteran Paul Volcker's call for a more structured international financial system.
Not because I think a banking crash is just around the corner, but because of the size of that gulf between those right at the top of this city and everyone else.
It is the first time the Real IRA has engaged in such open anti-capitalist rhetoric or focused on the role of the banking system.
Put that together and we will start to have a banking system that serves us, but culture change always comes last.
This makes a risk-averse, highly centralised banking system even more risk-averse and conservative.
But perhaps more noxiously, a culture was generated in which investment banking seemed smart, charismatic and the source of fortunes.
The first task is to reform the way the Bank of England deals with the banking system – the most conservative and hidebound relationship in any advanced industrialised country.
Banking analysts reckon that Standard Chartered needs to sort out its balance sheet, and could do so via a 30% cut in its dividend or a rights issue.
Under his long stewardship, Luxembourg became Europe's wealthiest country, one of the richest in the world in per capita terms, as well as a bastion of banking secrecy and a tax haven for multinationals keen to exploit the EU's single market while minimising their contributions to the European exchequer.
