No one likes them now, of course. But it is selective amnesia to say that we did not like them when they were handing out 100pc mortgages at attractive initial interest rates of 1.5pc. Why, without that, one could never have afforded that beachside apartment on the Black Sea.

This is not to be smug or unsympathetic to the many who find themselves in negative equity or with loans they cannot service for lack of business. Far from it. It is to make the point that, with banking as with food, what we want is very often not good for us.

What we want now is more lending, especially to small business, and some relief from the heavy burden of so many mortgages. The banks are reluctant to oblige. This naturally makes them even more unpopular, since they have received so much public money, and are about to receive more. But we must be very careful what we wish for.

Instead of lending, the banks are sucking up to a very long-suffering group -- depositors. But, like their past sucking up to borrowers, their behaviour borders on the reckless. And none seem more reckless than the new people in that old bugbear, Anglo Irish Bank.

Anglo is offering regular savers 5pc on their money. With consumer prices falling by 6pc, that is, by conventional measures, a "real" interest rate of 11pc. Rich people pay hedge fund managers gigantic fees for promising that kind of return. And risk-free too, provided you regard the Irish State as risk-free. It is certainly not so risky as to justify eye-watering returns like that.

AIB will also offer 5pc, and Irish Nationwide is not far behind with its 4.35pc savings rate, according to the latest notices. It may be more than coincidence that the three banks in the most straitened circumstances are offering the most enticing deposit rates.

They badly need the deposits, but they are almost certainly losing money on these deals. None more so than Anglo, which has the most useless loans, and whose good ones will also transfer to Nama, in return for a one-off cash payment. Anglo is simply not earning the income to cover deposit rates of 5pc.

The exercise is only possible because so many of its existing deposits have been placed there by the European Central Bank at very low rates.

One was glad to see, in figures last week from the Central Bank, that Irish banks' dependence on the ECB fell sharply in August. Perhaps things will be even better in September, post-Nama.

Even if they are, the Irish banks are losing money, on top of their considerable Nama losses, and the outlook is for more losses, not profits.

Last week, the Standard & Poor's rating agency made this point, when it warned of one more downgrade for AIB and Bank of Ireland. The reason it has not happened already, they say, is the blanket government guarantee. But some of that may have to be removed in 12 months time, possibly under EU pressure.

Despite all the complaints about how generous the Nama terms are to the banks, S&P, like others, know they are not enough to restore the banks to financial health, and are not certain private capital is available to finish the job. Like everyone else, they do not think the economy will provide any improved revenues next year.

In this, they are in an even worse situation than banks in most other countries, where the International Monetary Fund is expecting growth to return next year. The IMF points out that most of its banks are in desperate straits too, in need of much more capital and struggling to borrow enough money to meet their commitments.

What Irish banks need to do in such circumstances is pay as little as possible to depositors and charge as much as possible for mortgages and other loans.

For a while, they can perhaps afford to be generous on the deposit side, but politicians and the media demand, in effect, that they lose money on the lending side, by charging interest rates that are too low. Even more than the last time, it will be our money that is at risk.

In the medium term, banks may see margins wilt as they incur higher debt interest costs to extend their funding, and competition for savings bids up the cost of attracting deposits.

Banks also face higher deposit insurance premiums, costs from tighter regulation and the need to hold more and higher-quality capital.

Netting it all out, the IMF reckons US, UK and other European banks face a net drain on equity of $310bn (€213bn) over the next 18 months. The shock factor may be gone, but sustaining a recovery will be no cakewalk.