In times of trouble, we all like someone to blame. And bankers are getting it in the neck big time for the current financial and economic crisis - but not just the bankers that were responsible for our current difficulties, but any banker. These days, it's all about guilt by association.

Things have become so bad, that some firms are telling their staff to come to work in casual clothing, and not to wear anything that identifies where they work, or who they work for. Some staff have received death threats, or have been physically threatened.

Protesters went on a bus tour (the so-called Rich & Infamous tour) of the houses of AIG executives in the US last weekend, and vandals went to work on a house and a car owned by former Royal bank of Scotland CEO Sir Fred Goodwin in Edinburgh earlier this week, smashing windows. Police are investigating an e-mail which claims responsibility for the attacks, and says: 'We are angry that rich people, like him, are paying themselves a huge amount of money and living in luxury, while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless......This is just the beginning'.

We also witnessed a group of protesters outside Royal Bank of Scotland's London office's this week, trying to collect money from anyone entering or leaving the premises for an organisation they called GUBOMYFC - 'Give us back our money you ...... .....! Again, the police were called in to deal with the matter.

And then we face the prospect of the G20 protests in London next week, which are predicted to end up in riots and more vandalism.

All this nonsense is going too far, and we need our politicians to start showing some leadership here by calming down the rhetoric and exercising restraint. It's a short step (for some) between lawmakers publicly humiliating bankers in hearings, and idiots thinking that they have a green light to take the law into their own hands. Some bankers may have been guilty of stupidity, and others of undoubted greed, but that does not justify singling out these group and victimizing them - many others are responsible for where we are today, not least of all the very lawmakers and politicians who are inflaming the situation. This madness has to stop.

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