Investment bankers are back. After two years of being vilified by politicians and the general public – taking the blame for everything from the collapse in the housing market to the global recession, and pretending to be estate agents or tax collectors at dinner parties – bankers can breathe easily again.

As stock markets rally, US banks pass their stress tests, and everyone from Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, to Robert Peston, business editor at the BBC, call the bottom of the market, investment bankers can return to their traditional position as masters of the universe. In this article, David Charters, a former investment banker turned author, explains with typical understatement how they will wear their return to greatness with modesty and good grace.