A mericans are at a low point when it comes to trust in our political leaders. And that's a real problem.

On the one hand there's good reason not to trust them. Think of all the lies we've been told — about Vietnam, about arms sales to Iran, about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, about, well…the Bush administration seems to have set a new standard for deceits large and small. And we can all remember what Bill Clinton lied about, too.

But it goes down to the state and local level as well. Dishonesty in our politics eats away at the foundations of the state. It's reached the point where we don't believe a word they say, or almost.

Only now, with the wheels coming off of the global financial machine, a shortage of trust is truly disastrous. The political and financial elite want us to take their word that we have to spend an ocean of money bailing out big companies that lost their own money playing craps at a billion bucks a throw, and now they need ours to stay in the game.

Is it any wonder that we say "no way"?

But the crisis is real enough. It may not be obvious to most of us yet, because we only borrow money on a daily basis when we use our credit cards. But businesses, large and small, borrow money all the time for a million different reasons. In fact, one reason the American economy became the Nth wonder of the world was due to the ease and speed with which businesses could borrow money.

And now? Well, no one wants to lend money to anyone. The whole system is seizing up like an engine without oil. A modern economy runs on credit, which means lending. Take it away, and everything will follow it down the tubes.

And still, the poison of mistrust in our political class remains. It operates at every level. We suspect them of lying about taxes, zoning, and everything else. Every decision they make, at local, state, and federal levels seems contaminated sometimes with some kind of chicanery. Trust has evaporated.

And that might be where we have to start. Elected officials have to earn our trust again, just as banks will have to. Everyone — from presidents to town board members — needs to remember that without the people's trust, democracy simply doesn't work. The banks are going to lose a lot of flexibility in whatever deal finally emerges. They'll have a ton more paperwork to do. Too bad we're picking up the bills. If they want us to trust them with our money, they're going to have to earn it.

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