A few years ago, Charles P. Kindleberger, emeritus Ford professor of international economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote the following in a New York Times article:

By the 19th century, business corruption was so much a fact of life that it became a prominent theme for European novelists. Among them were Honoré de Balzac in ''The Human Comedy''; Charles Dickens, ''Little Dorrit''; William Makepeace Thackeray, ''The Newcomes''; Anthony Trollope, ''The Way We Live Now''; Gustav Freytag, ''Soll und Haben''; Alexandre Dumas, ''Black Tulip''; and Emile Zola, ''L'Argent.''

So, we've learned to live with it, it's normal, what's new? What's new is that such corruption now pervades every institution on the face of the planet because we've gotten used to it and learned to put up with it. And it's so much worse than we imagine.

For more on Kindleberger's article, go to: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E6DB163DF935A25751C1A9649C8B63