Press release from September:

Transparency International’s global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2008, launched today, shows a significant worsening of the way the UK’s attitude to corruption is seen in the world. The UK’s score has dropped from 8.4 last year to only 7.7 today: the first time it has ever fallen from the high rating of more than 8 (10 is the highest a country can score on the Index).

The UK's engrained complacency over its failure to take international corruption seriously is now further exposed to public scrutiny. The UK has a wretched foreign bribery prosecution record compared to most of its G7 peers. It was strongly criticised this summer by the OECD body responsible for ensuring that members comply with the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and may now face tougher measures by the OECD if it continues to fail.

The top 20:

(htp: Hatfield Girl)

BTW: Zimbabwe is not even in the bottom 10 of the list.

An expert writes

The words...

In truth, gold has been a poor investment for a long time...

Other safe havens have done much better... Government bonds... Swiss franc...

Gold rises and falls with oil, copper and wheat, and all the other things that get turned into stuff in factories. It is still a useful metal. But it is not money — and after its failure to rally in this crisis, even the most dogmatic gold bug may well have to admit that.

(Matthew Lynn in The Spectator)

The picture...

Corruption Competition

Jeremy Clarke's dragoman introduces a brilliant new system of classification:

The Egyptian government is 100 per cent corrupt. In other countries the government is 10 per cent corrupt or maybe 20 or 50 per cent. Here in Egypt it is 100 per cent corrupt. I am telling you.

You are invited to argue the case for one or more "other countries" to be considered as runners-up in this competition.

(Please have regard for libel law.)

Don't write it, think it

Bankers und der Liquidity Crisis, by Laurel und Hardy

China to devalue its currency?

I said some time ago that Far Eastern creditors weren't going to let themselves be swindled by currency depreciation; now it is rumoured that China (and maybe another country also) will take their revenge and begin a dangerous round of competitive devaluation around the world.

Hurray for a radical

I sympathise with Mish; but getting it done would be like a goat persuading a tiger to turn vegetarian.

If deflation is not the problem, what is?

The problem is fractional reserve lending that allows banks to leverage lending 12-1 and broker dealers like the now defunct Bear Stearns and Lehman 40-1. It does not take much to cause a run on the bank when leverage is 40-1. Fannie Mae is leveraged many times more than that.

Without that excessive leverage, no one would be in trouble over falling prices. Actually everyone would benefit. The cure is not to defeat deflation, the cure is to embrace deflation and stop fractional reserve lending and the serially bubble blowing activities of the Fed.

I support abolishing the Fed and the elimination of fractional reserve lending. Those are the only long term cures to the problems we face.