The appointment to the top job at Bank of Ireland of Richie Boucher, an insider responsible for €7.1bn of property loans and the first man that developer Sean Dunne went to for advice when he was closing the deal on his Ballsbridge site, will do nothing to assuage public anger over the way the banks and the government are handling the financial crisis.

Boucher's elevation is yet another example of the sort of corporate cronyism that has bedevilled Irish business and banking life and which, in part, has brought this country to its knees.

He may be a perfectly competent banker. We have to take it on trust that the Bank of Ireland couldn't find anyone more brilliant anywhere else in the world in the two weeks they looked for a replacement for the €2 million-a-year Brian Goggin. And Boucher himself acknowledges he faces an "uphill battle" to bring his bank, whose shares are worth just over €280 million, back to health.

But to the public, who as taxpayers have just made a €3.5 billion investment in the bank, he is inextricably linked to failure. He is also inextricably linked to Dunne – one of the country's biggest developers whose massive debts are among those which now threaten the banking system. Dunne specifically mentioned Boucher as one of his closest friends when he gave an interview to Marian Finucane last year. As director of the Bank of Ireland's retail financial services division, Boucher also supported Dunne's ambitious plans for the Jury's Hotel site, writing a glowing submission on Bank of Ireland notepaper to the planning department of Dublin City Council about the need for the massive development.

For some reason, the finance minister has taken a hands-off approach to the appointment, saying it was a commercial decision for Bank of Ireland and that it was an "excellent" choice made through a "transparent and proper" process.

By doing so Brian Lenihan proves, yet again, that this government simply does not "get it" to use US President Barack Obama's words, when it comes to really understanding why people are so angry about the ethics of corporate governance in this country.

It was astoundingly stupid politically for Lenihan not to insist that the bank bring in outside talent, difficult as it may have been to find a suitable candidate. Only two weeks ago he told Irish Life & Permanent he wanted Denis Casey's head – why could he not have been as direct with Bank of Ireland?

In a recent analysis of our boardrooms, business consultancy firm Grant Thornton described an ethos of "camaraderie over competence" at corporate level in our leading companies, pointing to a golden circle of interlinked directors that stretches far beyond the "Anglo 10".

For all the talk of "economic treason" and "seeking to strengthen regulation", of limiting executive pay rates, and of introducing a much tougher regime of corporate governance, the fact that no objections were made to Boucher's appointment shows there is no stomach in the government for a real break-up of the chummy corporate code.

The failure to insist on an outsider undermines completely the calls for a united fight "for our economic survival", and once again raises questions about this government's ability to lead us out of recession.

Lenihan and the government still don't realise that this is not some sort of ideological "them versus us" kind of anger. It is visceral and it is real because comfortable corporate cronyism, deeply unethical in the best of times, has now cost people who worked hard all their lives literally everything. And yet the Bank of Ireland appointment is still given the nod by our political leaders, who don't even raise the slightest objection, mainly because they are so embedded in the culture themselves they don't see anything wrong.

For many of the middle aged and older generation, it has cost them their life savings ? hard-earned money invested in what was sold to them as gilt-edged shares by bankers who were no more than gamblers with other people's money.

It has cost them their pensions which are now almost worthless, because so many of the financial products they bought into were built on an unregulated lie. It is now costing them their jobs, and as all the polls are showing, the sense of hopelessness and fear – not just for this generation but for our children too – is all-pervasive. People don't want the same executives who were responsible for this debacle making decisions about their money in the future.

Brian Cowen, the tribal Fianna Fáil leader, tried to assuage some of this anger and point to practical ways we can rebuild our country in his speech to his party's ardfheis last night.

It was better than his usual fare – but for 86% of the population it is too little, too late. He is perceived as responsible too. He simply does not "get it".