THE MOST CORRUPT COUNTRIES IN THE AMERICAS
If you ever wondered which are the most corrupt countries in the Western Hemisphere, a new study by the World Bank offers concrete answers: the regional champions are Haiti, Venezuela and Paraguay. The ranking is buried in myriad statistics contained in a recently released World Bank study, ''Governance Matters 2007." Read the full column here, and let us know whether YOU agree.
posted by Andres Oppenheimer at 8:14 AM
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16 Comments:
Es muy interesante, aunque al ser elaborado este estudio por el Banco Mundial es razón suficiente para que se ponga en duda la objetividad del estudio.
And that comment by saul explains why corruption and latin america will be synonymous forever.
Latin Americans accept corruption as a fact of life and thus give it very little importance. They actually resent being reminded of it by others. I can already see the discussion of this article moving from "corruption is bad" to "the world bank is a proxy of the yaquis."
from: Paul Thørsen
PThorsen240@aol.com
yes, that absurd comment by Saul does explain why things in Latin America will never change. Despite tens of millions of Latin Americans paying their life saivngs and risking their lives to get the hell out of their countries, they still insist there is nothing wrong with their countries. That anything bad said about their countires comes from "racists" or from study groups with no legitimacy.
How many more failed Spanish speaking countries will it take for Hispanicks to realize there are major problems in their own countries of their own doing??!!
How many more Hispanicks dying risking their lives to get the hell out of Latin America will it take to enact fundamental change in Latin America?!
Me parece que se equivoca en su apreciación final en un punto básico, cuando relaciona la transparencia (como opuesto a corrupción) con la prensa libre, las instituciones democráticas y la independencia del personal civil. Si así fuera no se justificaría que Italia y Grecia estuvieran por debajo de Uruguay o Costa Rica o Chile. Muchos otros países deberían tener ubicaciones diferentes. Sin embargo, hay una estadística que es casi idéntica a los resultados de la transparencia: el grado de dificultad (trámites necesarios, costos y rapidez) que hay en un país para la formación de empresas. En este rubro el país donde es más fácil formar una empresa es precisamente Finlandia y el país en América Latina es Chile y el país en Africa es Bostwana (apuesto a que Bostwana es el país menos corrupto en Africa subsahariana de acuerdo al Banco Mundial).
En mi opinión, la razón es muy simple: si no se requiere la aprobación de funcionarios, ni hay que apurar los trámites a través de los burócratas, entonces no hay necesidad de pagar ni existe la posibilidad para los funcionarios de sacar beneficios personales. Es la libertad individual, no la democracia representativa, la que termina con la corrupción. Se es más libre en la medida que se tiene mayor poder individual. Mientras más se delega el poder del individuo en el "representante", menor es el grado de libertad
from: Paul Thørsen
PThorsen240@aol.com
dr salvo, you are correct. Democracy has nothing to do with stopping corruption.
Check out the Japanese, they are the finest human beings in the world. They are the most honest people you will ever find. No way would they take bribes.
my opinion: it's the PEOPLE that determines how a society turns out, not what type of systems they have in place. Good people make good countries while bad people create bad societies.
Paul Thorsen is wrong, as clearly the idea of "the people" making their country a corrupt place regardless of institutions, press, and democracy by virtue of being "good" or "bad" themselves is a racial and shallow argument that boils down to name-calling.
If we get to the earlier point of democracy, press, and institutions, we return to the realm of facts, data, and statistical correlations and move away from the world of simplistic accusations.
If I recall correctly, don't the Japanese have political parties and elections too? How does the "people are bad" argument explain that different countries move into higher or lower levels of corruptions with reforms such as Chile's climb?
Unfortunately Mr. Thorsen, the Japanese government has been plagued with corruption problems lately that included a Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet.
It is not the people, it is the freedom of the society to deal directly economically among its members without the intervention of the authorities. That simply: the more control, the more corruption. At the end the main source of corruption is: POWER.
to all good fellows,
I believe that corruption as a money making trade should be quantified and away from clichés qualified.
Examples as Enron, AOL and recently single handed contracts of "rebuiding irak" certainly twarf any other attempt and gives usa government gold medal.
Tomb Raiders
Italy's aim is to stop the illicit trade in antiquities that often begins with tomb robbers sacking archaeological sites.
All but one of the 40 objects will return to Italy by Dec. 31. The one remaining work, a statue of a goddess believed to be Aphrodite, will stay at the Gettys New York until 2010. Italian officials refer to it as the Venus of Morgantina, named for the site in Sicily from which they say it was looted.
Italian officials are still figuring out where to display the returned works. The statue of the goddess -- which the Getty bought from a London dealer for $18 million in 1988 -- will go back to Sicily, where it belongs.
This is the classic corruption attitude from usa and uk that has been going on for centuries and now want to set standards that they have failed to meet.
get real.
There are thieves and corrupt businesspeople an politicians in every country in the world.
However, there are countries and cultures in which this is considered unacceptable by anyone and is aggressively pursued and punished when discovered.
There are countries and cultures where corruption is a normal part of life and virtually every level of society winks, looks the other way, and just passes it forward.
That is the difference we are referring to here. A big one in my opinion.
This is the exactly point.
For centuries usa and uk developed more subtle ways to corrupt than the system they have created can evidenced. So their corrupts are always ahead just like the new drugs in sports.
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truthmattersfa.blogspot.com
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paul is a new world order cyber agent spreading confusion.
the world bank destroys latin america, you can't sell the "globalization" lie anymore, latin america has awaken and its a matter of time until the new world order disappears.
I don't believe it, the most corrupt country is U.S.A., it's just they are well organized to keep their lies and myths as the "only" truth, such as all their wars (they participated always for political or economical interests and not for "freedom" as they say) for example the ficticial war against "terror" wich is a complete lie.
I lived in Brazil for the last 2.5 years. I was always dumbfounded by the way in which corruption, and senseless bureaucracy, as well as crime, pollution were rampant, yet people often talked about how great the country was.
Yes, I agree that most people seem to be in denial about the problems of South America, which only seems to worsen the problems since they are never fully considered unacceptable. I concluded that Brazilians, like the Chinese now in denial about the Tibetans, are blinded by some kind of illogical pride and nationalism. Mind you, I am not excusing any of the mindless policies you can point to regarding the US,especially in recent years under Bush, but this is a separate matter.
Whenever I tried to have a reasonable conversation about these issues with most Brazilians, they treated it as if if was a competition in which they needed to defend their country no matter what problems they had. They in turn would attack Americans as being cold, insensitive, racist,etc.
They would in turn see themselves as very warm, caring, and non-racist.
With so few blacks in the university, politics and high positions in business, I can't understand their denial of their own rampant racism. In terms of the so called warm Latin culture, I saw little of this to impress me.I saw families on the streets and people living in grinding poverty, and people turning a blind eye and just walking right over them on the streets. The life in Sao Paulo was gritty and uncaring for most of the people on the bottom. My own experience was that people could be mean and insensitive in situations where they had the power. As I traveled the city looking for work, people would laugh outright in my face at my poor Portuguese proficiency. In the US, I worked for years as an ESL teacher. I would be outraged, like most Americans, if I saw such treatment of someone who did not speak English well. It took a year, before people in our neighborhood began to even say hi to us. Our direct neighbors never once talked to us in the 2.5 years. Crime alone accounts for a cold and cautious character of people on the streets. Poverty also is related to this. When I asked my Brazilian wife why the people I met on the streets seemed so cold compared to the town we lived in in Massachusetts, she said don't take it personally, most people are just overworked and tired.
Whatever the reason, I found the life there really disturbing and out of balance, yet many Brazilians truly seemed blind to much of it. The rivers smelled like sewers, the beaches are littered with trash, and more people die in one year from wild and reckless driving than American casualties in the Vietnam war in 7 years.
I pray for the development and rise of all third world countries to a more equitable and caring world order, but I suspect that the denial of their problems as well as their own complicity in these problems is critical factor holding back change.
I lived in Brazil for the last 2.5 years. I was always dumbfounded by the way in which corruption, and senseless bureaucracy, as well as crime, pollution were rampant, yet people often talked about how great the country was.
Yes, I agree that most people seem to be in denial about the problems of South America, which only seems to worsen the problems since they are never fully considered unacceptable. I concluded that Brazilians, like the Chinese now in denial about the Tibetans, are blinded by some kind of illogical pride and nationalism. Mind you, I am not excusing any of the mindless policies you can point to regarding the US,especially in recent years under Bush, but this is a separate matter.
Whenever I tried to have a reasonable conversation about these issues with most Brazilians, they treated it as if if was a competition in which they needed to defend their country no matter what problems they had. They in turn would attack Americans as being cold, insensitive, racist,etc.
They would in turn see themselves as very warm, caring, and non-racist.
With so few blacks in the university, politics and high positions in business, I can't understand their denial of their own rampant racism. In terms of the so called warm Latin culture, I saw little of this to impress me.I saw families on the streets and people living in grinding poverty, and people turning a blind eye and just walking right over them on the streets. The life in Sao Paulo was gritty and uncaring for most of the people on the bottom. My own experience was that people could be mean and insensitive in situations where they had the power. As I traveled the city looking for work, people would laugh outright in my face at my poor Portuguese proficiency. In the US, I worked for years as an ESL teacher. I would be outraged, like most Americans, if I saw such treatment of someone who did not speak English well. It took a year, before people in our neighborhood began to even say hi to us. Our direct neighbors never once talked to us in the 2.5 years. Crime alone accounts for a cold and cautious character of people on the streets. Poverty also is related to this. When I asked my Brazilian wife why the people I met on the streets seemed so cold compared to the town we lived in in Massachusetts, she said don't take it personally, most people are just overworked and tired.
Whatever the reason, I found the life there really disturbing and out of balance, yet many Brazilians truly seemed blind to much of it. The rivers smelled like sewers, the beaches are littered with trash, and more people die in one year from wild and reckless driving than American casualties in the Vietnam war in 7 years.
I pray for the development and rise of all third world countries to a more equitable and caring world order, but I suspect that the denial of their problems as well as their own complicity in these problems is critical factor holding back change.
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