That argument is equivalent to: "the wild animal dealers were told their client wanted a zebra that could pull a horse cart and since that's impossible, they did the rational and upstanding thing. They painted stripes on a horse. Surely you can't call them [edit]"predators"[/edit] for doing the one thing that could make their client happy" (and that's accepting the facts as given).
No, it is not. You're assuming the "surely you can't call them fraudsters" part. No one is saying that. Matt Levine was quite clear:
'Now, to be clear: While it's just a complaint, and Barclays hasn't had a chance to respond, Schneiderman makes a pretty good case that Barclays was deceiving its big institutional customers. But this is not quite the same as making a good case that Barclays was ripping off those customers. The complaint is long on evidence of false advertising, but shorter on evidence that the "predatory trading" was actually predatory. There's a certain amount of foamy fulmination at "predatory trading," but nowhere is there any evidence suggesting that Barclays's institutional clients were actually harmed by it.'
The position that "Barclays deceived their customers, and should be punished" is also consistent with "Barclays did not materially harm their customers."
The passage you quoted is exactly what seems like weird apologism to me. If I sell someone something that I'm sure is just as good as what they want and lie about it being what they actually want, I'm "deceiving" but "not predatory".
Many years ago, after six months of failing to get somebody to use firefox and having to de-malware their machine regularly, I gave up and made every blue E shortcut I could find launch firefox.
They later thanked me for the IE upgrade and said how impressed they were at how much less malware their machine had on it.
Or: Providing somebody with what they need but selling it as if it's the thing they think they want can absolutely be deceptive and non-predatory, and the difference is important.
Consider also the way many technical decisions often have to be marketed to non-technical clients.
So to my mind, to care about the difference is sound thinking, not apologism, and I feel like you're emotionally matching 'argument that doesn't condemn a thing I want to see condemned' to 'apologism' rather than thinking it through; I'm guilty of that too on plenty of occasions.
Note that none of the above should be considered to be an opinion on whether Barclays were also predatory (I don't honestly know) or whether their behaviour was morally bankrupt (my answer to this would be longer than the existing comment, inconclusive, and unsatisfying both to right and to read :)
