I'm sure I'm not the first to have compared the highly overpaid leaches in the top end of banking as "psychopaths" but actually, their so called apology displays all the characteristics of classic psychopathy.
"We're profoundly sorry" they cried unanimously yesterday. Ah, good, those’s what the public want, so let’s appear to do the right thing, goes the mindset.
But later on, they claimed that they were either "not responsible" for causing the crisis, or only "partly" responsible. They were quite happy to blame ministers, the regulator, even the general public for buying into the get rich quick, easy credit, pay back whenever culture. Excuse me, but the sheer amount of junk mail I received offering ridiculously easy credit terms during the "good times" mean I'm now on the mail preference service - I was receiving one or two pieces of mail per day. I don't, and didn’t need the credit - I'm an old fashioned kind of "if you don't have it, don't spend it" guy. A pretty fortunate position I know, but even if I wasn't just doing the maths would have indicated to me that it looked too good to be true, and therefore probably was. Or is, as it turned out.
My wife gave me a very important lesson soon after we were first married, after one of our first quarrels. I was trying to placate her by saying that whatever it was I'd done to cause her offence, I was sorry. Her lesson was: "If you don't know why you are saying sorry, then don't say you are, because it is meaningless".
Makes good sense to me.
These bankers aren't sorry - not in a way which expresses real empathy. They are just looking to do with right thing, but with no personal stake involved, their apologies are meaningless, drivel. It may have been better for them to have just kept schtumm.
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