Given the state of the US financial system, two quotations come to mind.
One to describe the character of both the current and outgoing administration of both Congress and many huge financial institutions:
“Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.”
~George Bernard Shaw
The other to describe the recent Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008:
“Go into the street and give one man a lecture on morality and another a shilling, and see which will respect you more.”
~Samuel Johnson
Character is based on past actions, and past actions are drawn from record. As Joe Biden recently said, “past is prologue”. 
And it matters.
At least it did a century or two ago…
In the current state of the union we ALL owe it to ourselves to LOOK at records and weigh the differences in deciding which way we want our DEMOCRACY to go.