Over the past five years, the focus of the crisis has moved from elite-level incompetence to base corruption

In July 2007, HSBC executive John Root fired off an angry email to a subordinate in Mexico, accusing him and his colleagues of "rubber-stamping unacceptable risks". As we now understand from a year-long US Senate investigation, that was a woeful understatement: HSBC was acting as banker to Mexican drug barons; a ready conduit for cash to terrorist organisations; and was helping Iran and other regimes toiling under sanctions. The huge fines that would result from all this were foreseen by many bank employees, in repeated warnings down the years. But it is Mr Root who asked the most plangent question: "What is this, the School of Low Expectations Banking?"

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