An Apology Would Be Nice

Felix Salmon of Reuters writes about apologies and why it would be nice to receive some from those who played a part in screwing our economy up:

...we’ve had virtually nothing in the way of apologies for screwing up the
global economy, and it would do us all a lot of good if people who both caused
and benefitted from the financial-services boom would man up and admit to their
mistakes.

Top of the list, just by dint of his present importance in the
government, is Larry Summers. In his tenure as a senior Treasury official during
the Clinton years, Summers was intimately involved in laying the regulatory and
philosophical foundations for the bubble. [Economist Simon] Johnson, who’s been following
Summers’s thinking for some time, says that it has evolved in interesting ways,
especially as regards the over-reliance on the financial sector for economic
growth in the 1990s. It’s not a giant leap from that evolution to a simple
admission from Summers that he made mistakes at the time. Except there’s the
whole problem of Larry’s massive ego, which makes it hard for him to ever admit
being wrong.

Of course, Summers isn’t the only person who should be apologizing: I
very much look forward to reading or watching something similar from Bob Rubin,
who managed to compound his errors at Treasury with further massive blunders at
Citigroup. And the list goes on. Greenspan would be nice, but he’s already
admitted being wrong on some fronts, and has at least engaged substantively with
his critics on most others. Ken Lewis and Stan O’Neal and Sandy Weill and Dick
Fuld, of course. Phil Gramm, absolutely. But let’s start with Summers, since
he’s the one name on the list who’s still actively involved in making incredibly
important decisions which affect the future of the country. And if he can’t
admit to making mistakes, how can he learn from them?