We can get into almost any car and drive away without much trouble. Find the ignition, put the car in gear, grab the steering wheel and go. The readout on the dashboard might be a slightly different color from car to car, but we don’t need much more than a quick look around to get started. We can do this because the controls from one car to the next are very similar. Standardization makes the interface transparent. We drive away without a problem.

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Right. The biggest casualty of the current financial crisis is trust.

Wall Street, already viewed askance by Main Street for it’s lavish ways, now conjures images of the Strip in Las Vegas after a losing streak. The self-styled “Masters of the Universe” that Tom Wolfe skewered so justly in Bonfire of the Vanities, have duped us again – and themselves in the bargain. Lehman Bros., a brand that was almost a synonym of trust, has vaporized overnight. Banks are taking money from the Fed for nominal interest and hanging onto it, afraid even to loan it their fellow banks. Credit is “tight” because trust is the scarcest resource. Collateralized Debt Obligations? Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

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The past week of debates by the presidential and vice presidential candidates prove one thing – if you create a bar so low, it will be difficult to lose.

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