If this is as bad as it gets the banks have got off remarkably lightly - and in a sense so have we all.
Like Barclays, The Royal Bank of Scotland finds a growing number of its credit card holders have run into arrears, though, unlike Barclays, it has the good manners not to call them "delinquent".
No surprise there. These trends are no respecters of brands. It matters less for the Royal Bank (and its English conquest NatWest) because they have fewer cards than Barclaycard.
It is no surprise either that unsecured lending to private individuals is not what it was. This fits with shopkeepers and garage companies complaining that sales of cars, cookers and kitchen cabinets, all the things bought with unsecured loans, have turned sticky.
That is tiresome for the banks. Top-rated names like Barclays and the Royal Bank raise money cheaply on the strength of their balance sheets and get their fattest margins when they lend it on without security.
They need to lend a lot more in mortgages and business loans to generate the same income. So the Royal Bank went out of its way yesterday to point out that unsecured loans to UK customers accounted for less than ten per cent of its income last year.
Just the same, this is a year when the Royal Bank and its rivals will be glad of their past efforts to build up their noninterest income - insurance premiums, as well as those detestable fees.
The Royal Bank has also had a good run with dealing profits, though those can vanish any time, the moment that the luck, or the judgment, runs out.
British banks, with the miserable exception of Abbey National and to an extent Lloyds TSB, have had a stonking decade - so stonking that it is tempting to believe that they have abolished their business cycle.
They haven't. The banking cycle may be turning more slowly than usual, but it hasn't vanished. It turns down whenever property prices take a tumble. It doesn't matter whether the market that turns bad is for private homes, shops, factories, or office blocks. They are all vital security for the banks.
When they cease to be worth the loans secured on them, the banks hit trouble. So does the wider economy, because their lending power is weakened. This process has dragged on in Japan since the '90s. But it isn't happening here, not for now. " Delinquent" non-payers on credit cards are beside the point.
