Stephen Green, Chairman of HSBC and author of a new book "Good Value", has said in a BBC interview that he feels banks owe the public an apology.

This makes quite a change from the tales of "back to business as usual" emanating from Wall Street and London's Canary Wharf, and much more appropriate to the author of a book with the subtitle "Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World". I wonder though whether an apology is enough. Here's a reminder from my earlier post about what we can now view as:

the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: an increase in the number of people around the world in chronic hunger and poverty by over 100 million, to 1.02 billion; between 200,000 and 400,000 more babies could die each year between now and 2015 if the crisis persists; an increase in global unemployment by between 29 million and 59 million people; one in eight US mortgage borrowers is behind on mortgage payments or facing foreclosure at the end of the second quarter 2009; pensioners relying on developed country stock market returns for their retirement incomes have seen their savings fall by 45%.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in the US holds out the promise of going beyond apologies and the inevitable return to customary way of doing business. It offers a public space in which public but impotent anger can be channeled into better understanding and a focussed demand for real change, generating and sustaining in its turn the political will for the necessary reforms.

London could do with a comparable public inquiry of its own.

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