There are apologies, such as "we are sorry for the late running of your train" from railway public-address systems, that are as obviously pre-recorded as they are insincere. There are apologies along the lines of "we are sorry if we have offended you", which are not really apologies at all. And then there are bankers' apologies, of which the Treasury Select Committee heard four on Tuesday, with more to come. They turned out to be a cross between the two earlier kinds, with a hint of pre-recording (or at least of practising in front of the bathroom mirror) and of the sort of conditionality that makes their mea culpas fall a little short of maxima. The four top bankers did not seem quite sure what had gone wrong or whose fault it was. In the absence of a firm purpose of amendment, absolution is surely not yet merited.

What they did admit, perhaps because it was undeniable, is that capitalism's valuable ability to create wealth has been more than matched of late by a gigantic capacity to destroy it. And at the heart of this grisly wealth-destruction process stands the financial services industry. Vast sums of other people's money were invested, that is to say gambled, on the premise that the right thing to do in a bubble is inflate it further, and make yourself very rich doing so. Bankers have the excuse, however, that at its peak the City of London was being praised on all sides for having at last beaten New York into second place, and in the process providing the foundations on which an unparalleled period of national prosperity was based. The few voices that failed to join the chorus of praise were not heeded. It is now clear that the relationships between bankers, the regulators of financial services and government ministers were far too cosy and complacent, and their blind trust in market forces was reckless.

Even so, questions of blame are a distraction from the real issue: how to get the banks banking again. Having catastrophically misjudged risk in the past, they ...

The announcement of the lifting of the excommunication of the four bishops illicitly ordained by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre has been received badly for two main reasons. The first is the impression given that Pope Benedict XVI is so determined for the organisation that they lead - the Society of St Pius X - to be reconciled with Rome that he may have underplayed the significance of its opposition to some of ...