It is now one year since the event dubbed by market traders as the St Patrick’s Day Massacre, in which banking shares started bouncing all over the place with even more wild abandon than normal and ”false and misleading” rumours about the financial strength of Anglo Irish Bank sent the then-listed stock hurtling down 15 per cent.

Such percentage falls seem commonplace to market-watchers now, but even then, seven months into the credit crunch, it seemed calamitous – and suspicious. The high intraday volatility was connected with unusual trading patterns at HBOS in London: both banks were thought to be the victims of short-sellers using illegal “trash-and-cash” techniques to spread malicious gossip about banking stocks and then pocket the profit when the share price collapsed.

One year on, and many shareholders and bailout-providing taxpayers alike will find it hard not to wish for the simplicities of a world in which unscrupulous short-sellers were the only problem facing the likes of Anglo Irish Bank, now nationalised with its associated scandals responsible for a downgrading in the Irish banking system’s ranking, and HBOS, now submerged into the largely state-owned Lloyds Banking Group. It was ruefully noted today that even after the banking bloodbath of St Patrick’s Day 2008, the Iseq closed above the 5,700 mark. These days, it hovers at around 2,100 and is down one member. (Or two, if you count Waterford Wedgwood.)

In the meantime, the phrase “green jersey agenda” has acquired connotations rather less innocent than anything you might find at a St Patrick’s Day parade.