The irony of CN and finance crisis

We as a nation now watch with shock and awe as our government scrambles to pull the U.S. back from the precipice of financial ruin.

There are many to blame in this latest Bush Administration scandal, but without question, its genesis was the 1999 Gramm-Leach Act. It deregulated the financial industry to the point that it repealed significant parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, the bill borne of the 1929 stock market crash.

How ironic it is then that the man tasked with saving our nation's financial future from the damage of deregulation, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, hails from Barrington Hills.

How ironic it is that this decent and qualified fellow Illinoisan can only watch as another spawn of deregulation runs roughshod on his own community.

The Canadian National's (CN) plans to convert the EJ&E railroad into a NAFTA rail superhighway have 1970s and '80s deregulation to thank.

CN's plan only temporarily relocates trains on lines with countless more under- and overpasses to towns with few or none. Even CN's cargo by and large is destined not for American consumers, but European markets.

Deregulated financial institutions now line up expecting U.S. taxpayers - and their children's children - to secure their futures.

And, from New Lenox to Mundelein, Canadian National demands we find the funds to pay for our own underpasses along the EJ&E.

So, here we are. Taxpayers must cover the costs of an impending New Depression, and, for CN's profit margins, we're expected to fund new access for ambulances to reach our own hospitals.

For Mr. Paulson, deregulation may ring like the opening bell on Wall Street, but for his family here back home, it's a freight train's horn, soon blowing 21 times daily.

In either case, we'll pay for many years to come.

Mike Deering

Barrington