While bankers already talk of "turning the corner" and going back to business as usual, others continue to bear the legacy of the banks' imprudence.

This makes grim reading.

On the one hand, the word on Wall Street is that the crisis is basically behind them, and they can now get back to "innovating" as before.

On the other hand, the financial crisis created by the banking industry has been credited by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) with increasing the number of people in chronic hunger and poverty by over 100 million, to 1.02 billion.

Last year, before the crisis erupted, the FAO revised downward its estimate of the number of chronically hungry and poor people from 963 million to 915 million, due to improvements in the global food supply.

When companies talk at Davos about how they might contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals - which include the goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 - the talk is of philanthropic actions.

It seems to me that the financial sector might best show their commitment by undertaking not to make things worse through irresponsible behavior. Instead, bankers are lobbying like crazy to retain the freedoms they have so massively abused.