This past year hasn’t been pretty, for Cornell or the world at large. Here on the Hill we’ve seen our endowment shrink at least 30 percent, our budgets slashed, our staff cut back and a bunker mentality descend over campus — and we haven’t yet seen the worst of it. Elsewhere, things aren’t so peachy, either: rising unemployment, astronomical federal debt, a general feeling of powerlessness and despondence.

Unless, that is, you happen to work at Goldman Sachs, Pfizer or Bain & Co.

The first is the captain of the band of thieves that wrecked our financial system, cried for help and walked away with gigantic rescue packages, courtesy of the American populace — and is now wallowing in record profits. The second is just one of a handful of health care corporations (insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants included) who, thanks to secret backroom dealings with the White House and an obedient Congress, stand to strike gold with this year’s health care reform — again, at the expense of the average taxpayer. The third is the consultant hired by our beloved University to guide us through our “Reimagining Cornell” project, receiving an (undisclosed but certainly massive) fee to help cut college payrolls.

What do Sachs, Pfizer and Bain have in common? They all represent, in their own way, the false idols to which we cling in times of crisis, the ill-advised sources of counsel whom we turn to, blind and desperate, when the going gets tough. They’re the abusive boyfriend we just can’t escape; and, as with him, we end up getting screwed.

Take Goldman Sachs. After its bankers and their cronies helped engineer the most serious financial crisis in 80 years, we were told by the government figures charged with cleaning up the mess (most of whom, coincidentally, were former Sachs employees) that the institutions which perpetrated the crimes were “too big to fail,” and that they needed a shot of taypayer billions — right away, and no strings attached. People cowered at the thought of banks withholding loans, of capital withering away, of their illusory holdings disappearing even from their computer screens, and they gave consent. Now, less than a year later, the gravy train’s flowing again, the bonuses are soaring to all-new heights and the shisters are sitting back and laughing, amazed at what they managed to put over us.

The shady dealings with the health care industry are not much different. Bemoaning in advance the destruction that will be wrought on their profit margins by the Democrats’ proposed reform — a reform necessary only because of the industry’s amoral and exploitative practices — the insurance companies and drug producers have convinced pundits and populace alike that Obama is planning a vast intrusion of government power into private life — “honest” business must be saved from “socialism” at all costs. So, caving to pressure (or, perhaps, with an eye toward the fickle, campaign-funding prowess of those corporations), the White House concluded a secret deal with the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association in August that guarantees the government will not seek to negotiate lower drug prices or import cheaper products. Good to know there’s someone on our side.

That leaves us with Bain & Co. Unlike Sachs and the health care industry, this corporation doesn’t have much at stake in the crisis at hand: The contraction of Cornell’s coffers doesn’t pose it any existential threat. But the mentality behind its recruitment is identical to the thinking that left the financial robber-barons the last ones standing and the health care giants the biggest recipients-to-be of reforms ostensibly aimed at curbing their respective abuses. The University administration has made it painfully unclear why outside help was needed in overhauling our financial and administrative structure; the reason why Bain & Co., a corporation with dubious academic experience, was chosen is even more obscure.

But there’s a few ominous signs of what we might be in for. When Bain was hired by UNC-Chapel Hill last semester to help slim down its budget, the two parties agreed to a contract that included the following clause: “The University agrees that any oral communications made by University employees that reference the Bain name or Bain’s services will be consistent with talking points mutually agreed to by the University and Bain.” Yikes.

We don’t know yet whether Cornell has agreed to similar terms. But the signs aren’t promising. Are secrecy and restricted discourse really the price of preserving our dedication to openness and learning?

Some might say that you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you. In the case of the financial crisis and our health care system, however, that hand was not just feeding us, but was hitting us, smacking us and generally slapping us silly. And if Bain & Co. is offering us the same terms as it did to our friends down south, then it’s no friend of the University.

So let’s get real. No institution is “too big to fail.” If the financial sector and the health care industry are screwing the common citizen, then those systems, and the people who run them, must be replaced. As for Bain & Co., the verdict’s still out. But if their hiring proves to be in line with the recent psychology that has dominated our national crisis management — placate the beast, don’t hurt it — then we’re in for far more trouble.