Is there any evidence for this bold conjecture? A bit. Banks everywhere are delevering, which will reduce lending, hitting growth and thus the volume of business that they conduct. Bank equity prices and market capitalization have fallen drastically over the past two years. Revenues by asset class are falling. Underwriting has shrunk and trading is not what it used to be. Fixed costs are increasing while bonuses are shrinking and the sector as a whole is getting smaller. Meanwhile, what growth there is seems to be on the retail rather than the investment banking side. But retail depends more directly on the real economy, which is shrinking because of austerity. In sum, we may have impoverished a few million people to save an industry of dubious social utility that is now on its last legs. This is a discomfiting thought that strongly suggests that we really should not have bailed them after all.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 630