In Robert LaPointe, the man sentenced last week to three and a half years in jail for causing the deadly boating accident on Long Lake last summer, we have a microcosm of America itself as it runs reckless and out of control in what is turning into a financial nightmare.

You know the story well by now. LaPointe, of Medway, Mass., was drunk driving his muscular cigarette boat north from Naples when he ran through a small boat driven by Terry Raye Trott and his girlfriend Suzanne Groetzinger. LaPointe and his passenger were thrown from the boat, which proceeded to run aground, landing hundreds of feet into the woods near the Harrison/Naples town line on the eastern side of the lake.

Knowing he was intoxicated, LaPointe then tried to bribe the attending nurse to give her blood in place of his during the ensuing sobriety test. He then hired high-powered lawyers who proceeded to tell us how responsible and upstanding a citizen he was, despite almost 50 prior driving convictions.

The thrill-seeking negligence demonstrated by LaPointe – which needlessly killed two Mainers – didn’t come out of the blue. It was caused by arrogance, a party-hearty attitude, and basic foolish behavior. It’s the same attitude that is crippling our financial system.

During the trial we learned that LaPointe saw a unlit boat pass slowly by that fateful August night. That ended up to be Trott’s boat. Instead of driving carefully toward Harrison knowing there was a boat ahead with no lights, LaPointe throttled up, reaching 45 mph at the time of impact. That was plain arrogance on his part, with generous helpings of negligence and irresponsibility.

Isn’t that what’s happened with our economy? Risky behavior was demonstrated by both borrower and lender. You don’t give people $300,000 mortgages if they only make $30,000 to $40,000 a year. You don’t let people buy houses with no money down. Home buyers, meanwhile, should never have thought they could afford such large mortgages. And what fool takes out a loan with a variable interest rate?

Sorry to sound pitiless, but it was arrogance that caused people to think they could get something for nothing. And now they really do have nothing. Some even have less than nothing, in the form of massive debt.

There’s also a certain party-all-the-time mentality that directly led to last summer’s boat collision as well as our current economic “collision.” What was LaPointe thinking ingesting alcohol all afternoon before going out on his boat for the night? People who get drunk and get behind the wheel are supremely self-centered. Ego also played a part in LaPointe’s and his victims’ demise. Why buy a boat with twin 435 hp engines if not to impress onlookers? It’s tragic how LaPointe’s personal excess eventually affected the little guy, Trott and Groetzinger. They were literally run over by a man obsessed with himself, obsessed with his importance, obsessed with having all the fancy toys and showing them off for all the world to see.

And the party atmosphere is still running rampant in corporate America despite the federal government’s attempts to reign in excess. AIG, bailed out by the taxpayer, has held three posh parties for their executives using money that was supposed to go toward shoring up their debt. What is wrong with the people running these firms? Like LaPointe, their excess eventually affects the little guy: you and me. Our personal finances are hemorrhaging because of mismanagement by the companies we invested our money and trust in.

Americans have tended to feel protected from peril. And just as the lives of everyone associated with that boating accident are forever worsened, so, too, is America forever worsened by the corruption that has caused this current downturn.

We will never again fully trust our lending institutions with our hard-earned money. We will always wonder if gasoline or heating oil prices are stable. We won’t trust private or government institutions to loan money responsibly. We can never again feel that our retirement savings are enough. We won’t trust our government to prevent financial collapse. And maybe most dire of all, we will never again feel our jobs are secure.

And it’s all thanks to people similar to Robert LaPointe, who put their egos ahead of wisdom and responsibility.

John Balentine, of Windham, is the former editor of the Lakes Region Weekly.