There is a new kind of queue in banking, and it is not formed of terrified depositors trying to withdraw their savings. Instead banks are lining up to repay the public capital they received during the depths of the crisis some six months ago. Having met regulators' stress tests, ten of America's stronger lenders, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, won approval on June 9th to buy back a collective total of $68 billion of government shares. In Britain, Lloyds Banking Group has begun to give the state some of its money back.

It is easy to see why the banks are keen. By reducing the government's stake they hope to reduce its influence. Paying back the state is also a way of advertising that they have regained some of their strength. In most respects taxpayers should be happy, too. With the financial system more stable and profits and share prices showing signs of life, these banks have been able to sell new shares to raise cash, and so replace state funds without eroding their capital. The returned money can be recycled into smaller banks which still need equity or used to cut public debt. It will be a long slog: Western governments have injected about $450 billion of capital overall. If the economy deteriorates again, investors' appetite for buying shares will evaporate. But the process of returning ownership of banks to the private sector has begun.

At the same time, however, a worryingly revisionist history of the credit crunch is being penned. It says that some banks did not really need government help and were bullied into accepting it last year as part of a wider bail-out of their flakier peers. There is a startling lack of grace: Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan, has fantasised about sending an ironic accompanying "Dear Timmy" thank-you letter to America's treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, saying "We hope you enjoyed the experience as much as we did." The boss of Wells Fargo has called the solvency tests "asinine". The aim of such behaviour is presumably to convince regulators to focus the coming clampdown on the weakest banks. JPMorgan argues that since it was forced into taking capital, the terms of the remaining warrants the government owns should "out of fairness" be eased. Other big banks make similar cases, albeit less vocally.

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