Apologizing and Taking Responsibility — They’re Not the Same.

Apology is in season. Chuck Prince, former Citi CEO, was apologizing recently–up to a point. He told a Washington commission looking into the roots of the financial crisis: “I can only say that I am deeply sorry that our management – starting with me – was not more prescient and that we did not foresee what lay before us.”

Prescient?

In other words, you’d have needed supernatural powers to see this coming. No merely mortal banker, regardless how steeped in capital reserve ratios and the quantification of risk, could have detected any new vulnerability at his bank or in the financial system.

Robert Rubin, sitting alongside Prince, agreed. The former Citi Vice-Chairman said: “Almost all of us involved in the financial system . . . missed the powerful combination of forces at work and the serious possibility of a financial crisis. We all bear responsibility for not recognizing this, and I deeply regret that.” He seemed to regret having the responsibility rather than what it was he might be taking responsibility for.

These apologies were mechanistic utterances. Prince, in his smug cynicism, blamed himself for lacking oracular powers. Rubin had been Treasury Secretary when Sandy Weill came to Washington a decade ago to repeal Glass Steagall, then collected $120 million at Weill’s bank, Citi, with few duties other than meeting clients and advising the firm. Nevertheless, he made himself a face in the crowd. There is the royal we, the editorial we, and now the escapist we. Mistakes were made.

Apologies are worthless without a palpable change in the apologizer. So, let’s give credit where it’s due—to Tiger Woods. His claim of responsibility for all that had befallen his family, friends, and partners could hardly have been less equivocal. He uttered the words that have escaped so many others—that what had happened was his fault. Those criticizing him for waiting so long to take the blame might consider the challenge he may have found in coming to terms with what he’d done. Besides, there wasn’t anything so trivial as the world financial system at stake. It was his marriage. He was speaking to someone he could no longer fool.