Happy happy little bankies makey billions, smiley smiley corner turny every ickle fing fine and dandy, steer course o-nine-zero Noddy, we’re nearly back safe and dry in Toyland.

Barclays declares its half year results today, and the smart money says Big Blue will announce profits of around £3.7 billion. Lloyds seems set to announce a £2.3bn profit on Thursday,  and RBS will reveal a £1.4bn take. Why be miserable when you can be happy? Bill and Ben pottered up the garden path, looked at the flowers and said to each other “Slubberlobalob”, which is flowerpot for “Everything lovely lovely lovely in the garden”. Unnoticed by them, however, Little Weed in now an enormous beanstalk monster eating into the fabric of the shed.

The MSM coverage of banking results almost never gets beyond the Andy Pandy level these days. All these half-yearlies will be trumpeted by the Right over then next few days, with the Torygraph, Mail and Sun quoting one Camerlot pillock or another saying that all this proves the economy is on the mend, the corner has been turned, we’re back on track, out of intensive care and heading for nirvana. But in point of fact, we are in danger of forgetting what all this has cost, the dark side of criminality contained therein….and the state of the banks’ balance sheets.

One wouldn’t expect much reality in the Newscorp Times, but it is still supposed to be an intelligent newspaper. Yesterday their City pages confidently predicted that Barclays would raise £4bn via a sale of shares or contingent convertibles to meet the Prudential Regulation Authority’s capital requirements. Right. Soooo, everything’s hunky-dory but we need another £4bn on top to even qualify for the PRA’s meagre minimum. Hmm.

Lloyds, which reports on Thursday, is expected to resume dividend payments (there’s a thing, lucky shareholders) and ‘outline plans to begin selling off the 39% government-owned stake in the bank’. Really? Who to? And, um, who is going to buy all those branches? Also keep a close eye on anything with a very big number spuriously described as ‘assets’: it’s code for toxic debt.

The following day we have RBS, predicted to announce a replacement for former head crook chief executive Stephen Hester, most observers tipping retail banking boss Ross McEwan as the man likely to get the hospital pass. Of all the British banks, RBS is by far the most unstable and under-capitalised. Its desperation – as reflected in ‘glitches’ and fraud over the last eighteen months – is there for anyone awake to see. But easily the most important evidence of the state RBS is in involves the utter failure of Government to flog this Tsunami of sh*t waiting to happen. From Abu Dhabi to Beijing and on to Tokyo, endless due diligence has been done, and the answer has never varied: you must be joking.

Finally, it’s important to follow the dirty money. You see, bankers never go to jail. Every man jack of them has a secret clause in the employment contract saying something like ‘the employee will smile, say he has done nothing wrong, and be thoroughly exonerated by a public inquiry before taking up each year’s taxpayer-funded bonus. Total immunity from prosecution up to and including wiping out the entire Royal Family is hereby guaranteed’.

This is why banks and their managements are never charged with anything. The banks set aside. It sounds as anodyne as leaving a field fallow, but what it means is they have to set aside money they made defrauding us, the taxpayers who baled them out and (as it happens) their customers. Money is the only punishment: Plod doesn’t go anywhere near it. If he does in error, the banker takes out his special exonertion badge, and within seconds PC Dixon goes from “Nar then chummy, you’re nicked” to “Right-ho sah, mind ‘ow you go” with an agreeable touching of the forelock.

According to the Daily Mail, Lloyds is expected to set aside a further £250 million for payment protection insurance mis-selling, while Barclays is predicted to raise its provision by around £200 million. This is a half-billion quid fraud people, FFS wake up.

Notable by its absence from these estimates is dear old Hesterville itself, the Royal Bank of Scamland. Stay tuned: it’s not a pretty picture.

Oh, and one final tip this lovely cool summer morning: keep an eye on shenanigens in the East of England Co-Op region. More to follow as and when.

Last night at The Slog: RIP the UFD – strangled at birth by obscene shouters and Leftie wankers