Today is the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the New York-headquartered investment bank whose bankruptcy precipitated the biggest global financial crisis in living memory. Ten years on and as a direct result, average living standards in Britain have had their longest period of decline since the Napoleonic wars. Like many other countries, Britain had to bail out its banking industry with public funds, thereby demonstrating that modern capitalism tends to privatise its profits but nationalise its losses.