Too many excesses, and too few ethics
Alfred Kirkland's letter hit the nail on the head. We are all in danger from the system's excesses.
It all started with the administration of the Republican President Warren G. Harding, known as one of the most corrupt administrations of the last century.
Harding died in his sleep on the way to San Francisco. A strong theory is that he was poisoned to avoid a massive investigation into his less than honorable connections to big business. Most of his cabinet was staffed with big business people.
His successor was another Republican, Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge. He was traveling to Vermont when notified of Harding's death, was sworn in as president by his father (a notary public) and went back to bed.
Cal's motto was "the business of America is business." He was a master of the status quo and he let big business do as it pleased. Regulation was feared and despised.
Without regulation, capitalism had its way and it was responsible for the crash of 1929, sending America into a 12-year Depression, which spread to the rest of the world.
The unfortunate Republican Herbert Hoover took the blame for the catastrophe. He made the problem worse by refusing to lift a finger to help the millions of unemployed men and women by insisting it was the business of local governments.
Tent cities grew up around the White House and Gen. MacArthur was given the job of cleaning them out.
It took the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt to get America on its feet again where a person could make a living wage again.
He used his Works Progress Administration like the Civilian Conservation Corps, Farm Aid, and many other government funded public projects.
The current lack of regulation is putting us back to Silent Cal days resulting in the mortgage crisis, the loss of jobs in the building sector and the possible bankruptcy of the building supply business. Everything is connected, like it or not.
Oil companies have merged, big banks are gobbling up smaller banks with more loss of jobs, Ma Bell is returning in the form of AT&T.
Companies have gotten in the habit of laying off people to save money to balance the bottom line for stock holders, an ethical dilemma for some.
Ethics seems to be a mystery for big business and it has gotten so bad that there is an actual book to educate them called "Ethics for Dummies."
How sad that our social upbringing has fallen by the wayside.
Raleigh Sutton
Elgin