Why the West is more corrupt than the BRICS | Russia & India Report
@Parul @Star Wars @vostok @Arzamas 16
Why the West is more corrupt than the BRICS
he situation is so dire that the more than 30 per cent of global foreign direct investment is booked through tax havens. “This is a massive – indeed, fundamental – cause of poverty in the developing world, yet it does not register in the mainstream definition of corruption, absent from the UN Convention, and rarely, if ever, appears on the agenda of international development organisations,” says Hickel.
So is Transparency International’s index gamed? Why not? Is there any reason to believe it is bias-free when it does not factor in the massive corruption that is part of the City of London or the bribing of Iraqi officials by the United States?
A bird’s eye view of corruption in Russia and India
The LIBOR scandal of 2012 revealed the magnitude and extent of gaming by British banks that fix interest rates. When the scandal broke, more than $800 trillion in financial products were riding on LIBOR. That’s 10 times the size of the world’s GDP. It meant hundreds of millions of homeowners, investors and businesses were paying the wrong interest rate. If the rates were gamed by just 0.01 percent the total losses would have been in the region of $800 billion, or two and a half times the GDP of Greece.
But according to Hickel, “This kind of corruption is not entirely out of place in a country where a feudalistic royal family owns 120,000 hectares of the nation's land and sucks up around $65.7 million of public funds each year. Then there's the parliament, where the House of Lords is filled not by election but by appointment, with 92 seats inherited by aristocratic families, 26 set aside for the leaders of the country's largest religious sect, and dozens of others divvied up for sale to multi-millionaires.”
Things are no better in other parts of Europe. In 2012 a poll by Eurobarometer showed that 74 per cent of Europeans thought corruption was a major problem in their country. The results showed around 20 million bribes were paid to officials in the 18 European Union nations covered by the report. The European Commission estimates the cost of corruption is equivalent to 1 per cent of EU GDP, some $156 billion.
Clearly, the representatives from Western democracies and think tanks who offer country ratings and character certificates, besides publishing tomes on how corrupt the third world is, need to be given a long walk on a short plank.
Why the West is more corrupt than the BRICS | Russia & India Report
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he LIBOR scandal of 2012 revealed the magnitude and extent of gaming by British banks that fix interest rates. When the scandal broke, more than $800 trillion in financial products were riding on LIBOR. That’s 10 times the size of the world’s GDP.
that does enough to discredit western ratings...
@Parul @Star Wars @vostok @Arzamas 16
Why the West is more corrupt than the BRICS
he situation is so dire that the more than 30 per cent of global foreign direct investment is booked through tax havens. “This is a massive – indeed, fundamental – cause of poverty in the developing world, yet it does not register in the mainstream definition of corruption, absent from the UN Convention, and rarely, if ever, appears on the agenda of international development organisations,” says Hickel.
So is Transparency International’s index gamed? Why not? Is there any reason to believe it is bias-free when it does not factor in the massive corruption that is part of the City of London or the bribing of Iraqi officials by the United States?
A bird’s eye view of corruption in Russia and India
The LIBOR scandal of 2012 revealed the magnitude and extent of gaming by British banks that fix interest rates. When the scandal broke, more than $800 trillion in financial products were riding on LIBOR. That’s 10 times the size of the world’s GDP. It meant hundreds of millions of homeowners, investors and businesses were paying the wrong interest rate. If the rates were gamed by just 0.01 percent the total losses would have been in the region of $800 billion, or two and a half times the GDP of Greece.
But according to Hickel, “This kind of corruption is not entirely out of place in a country where a feudalistic royal family owns 120,000 hectares of the nation's land and sucks up around $65.7 million of public funds each year. Then there's the parliament, where the House of Lords is filled not by election but by appointment, with 92 seats inherited by aristocratic families, 26 set aside for the leaders of the country's largest religious sect, and dozens of others divvied up for sale to multi-millionaires.”
Things are no better in other parts of Europe. In 2012 a poll by Eurobarometer showed that 74 per cent of Europeans thought corruption was a major problem in their country. The results showed around 20 million bribes were paid to officials in the 18 European Union nations covered by the report. The European Commission estimates the cost of corruption is equivalent to 1 per cent of EU GDP, some $156 billion.
Clearly, the representatives from Western democracies and think tanks who offer country ratings and character certificates, besides publishing tomes on how corrupt the third world is, need to be given a long walk on a short plank.
Why the West is more corrupt than the BRICS | Russia & India Report
---------------
he LIBOR scandal of 2012 revealed the magnitude and extent of gaming by British banks that fix interest rates. When the scandal broke, more than $800 trillion in financial products were riding on LIBOR. That’s 10 times the size of the world’s GDP.
that does enough to discredit western ratings...
