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The notion that megabanks like the Royal Bank of Scotland are too big to fail apparently isn’t as easy a sell to as it used to be. Everyone hopes that the European Union will be unable to save foundering debtor nations Greece and Italy from default, but no one can see how. And fears are growing that default is inevitable.  Meanwhile, governments, which are cash poor to begin with, are responding  to  their public’s growing impatience with bailouts by sending signals that they won’t come to the rescue of any financial institutions left holding worthless debt. As a result, for the third time in two months the Royal Bank of Scotland has seen its credit rating lowered by one of the big debt rating agencies, not because of any change at the bank itself, but because debt rating agencies are factoring government reluctance to engage in further bailouts into their overall assessments  of financial institutions. This is why Standard & Poors recently downgraded the RBS from an A to an A-  rating following  similar moves by Moody’s and the UK agency Fitch’s in early October.