DOES Wall Street owe the people of America an apology? That was
Senator Sherrod Brown's suggestion to Ben Bernanke and Hank
Paulson during a Senate hearing last week. If so, the humbled
titans of finance will be in good company; institutional
apologies have mushroomed in past years (see table). British
Christians, for example, have expressed public contrition for
slavery (pictured above) and have even considered apologising
for scepticism about evolution. Nicolaus Mills, an American
commentator, calls the fashion for saying sorry a “global
culture of apology”. That may be an overstatement: public
kowtows are still rare compared with the manifold wrongs of the
past. The bigger question is what, if anything, they mean.  An
individual's private apology, if sincere and well timed, may
draw the sting from debilitating feelings of humiliation, guilt
and vengeance. Public remorse has more impact, but may sound
opportunistic: a political trick, or a showbiz stunt. (Think of
former presidential candidate John Edwards'