“The fundamental trouble with this whole Stock Exchange Crowd is.... their inability to understand the country or the public or their obligations to their fellow men, ” Roosevelt told an aide.

The trouble is that, as the unhappiness at HP makes clear, the alternative to clubbishness is not some genteel exchange of views called “accountability”, but often strife and division.

Trouble at the group first surfaced in May 2009 after TIBC and the Money Exchange defaulted out of the blue.