An online ready reckoner from HSBC suggests that a borrower with a £250,000 repayment mortgage on a 22-year term currently paying 3 per cent interest who pays an extra £100 a month could save nearly £13,000, and be debt free two years and nine months sooner.

Packages at other banks range from an average of £1.6 million at Bank of America, the next biggest payer after Goldman, to 'only' £600,000 or so at RBS, which naturally claims it is being ultra-prudent with taxpayers' money.

According to the Bank, however, things are not that simple: it reckons there is actually little sign that households are trying to pay down their debt more quickly than in the past and that the apparent craze for accelerated repayment is largely down to fewer home sales.

Goldman Sachs produced seven pages of detail on the £367 million being shared between 120 of its London-based senior executives and traders, including the 'philosophy' of its pay programme and vulkan casino its 'governance'.

These individuals may, or may not, be in tune with the man on the average wage -£474 a week including bonuses - as opposed to the Goldman Sachs average for top staff in Britain of £3 million, or nearly £60,000 a week.

This sounds counter-intuitive, but the paradox of thrift means that whilst it may make sense for individuals to reduce their home loans, if everyone does it the economy will suffer because consumer spending will be hit.

The Goldmanites and their peers are not being rewarded for enterprise, job creation and adding value to the UK economy, but for transactions that are sometimes of dubious social value. Accepting this justification buys into the warped logic of investment banking pay.

The Bank of England's latest figures, showing a net housing equity injection of nearly £11 billion, suggest people are paying down their mortgages - a stark contrast to the pre-crisis years when homeowners treated their properties like cash machines, using the equity to fund their lifestyle.