American People's Trust in Government and Business Frayed

Eric M. Uslaner is professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland-College Park and author of "Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law: The Bulging Pocket Makes the Easy Life."Mr Uslaner comments in Newsday: 2008 was a year of scandals in America." Yet by world standards, the United States is relatively "clean." It ranks 20th out of 180 countries in the annual Corruption Perceptions Index produced by Transparency International, an anti-corruption organization based in Berlin." In other country brides often keep the accused out of prison. "In the United States, guilty parties in both politics and business go to jail, and politicians charged with dishonesty almost always lose their seats...We have not faced an economic crisis of this magnitude since the Depression - and then there were few charges of corruption. If the economy does not rebound within a year, we could be entering uncharted territory - or at least a situation unknown since the Depression. The public could demand far more widespread regulations of business, and the stage could be set for a more serious challenge to both political parties by populists of the left and the right."