Monday, December 22, 2008

US Corruption Index

Transparency.org comes out with one of my favorite measures, the Corruption Index. It attempts to simply measure corruption. The higher the score, the less corrupt the country is and vice versa. Typically topping the list are your Danish and Scandinavian countries like Finland and Denmark. And at the bottom of the list are your war torn African countries and hopelessly corrupt countries like Russia and China. However, they typically do not post the TREND of any one country and seeing there has been a fair amount of corruption recently in the US with this whole housing crisis and financial debacle and all, I was curious what the US looked like over time.



Though chaotic, a trend does seem to be occurring. The Corruption Index in the US is going down implying there is MORE corruption. However, I argue the Corruption Index is woefully underestimating the amount of corruption here or is a lagging indicator. I fully expect, along with all the other social and economic metrics of this dying nation, the Corruption Index will approach 6.2, dropping nearly a full point by 2010, putting it in league with Cyprus, Portugal and Botswana.

Alas, just another ounce to be added to the metric tons of empirical proof the US is collapsing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Completely unrelated to post, but interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?em

Junam

Anonymous said...

Ironic to see yet more proof of our nation's decline (through 'compassionate' government) advertising itself on your own blog's top banner ad:

http://www.cheddasblingblog.com/?t202id=11919&t202kw=mixtape%20blogspot

Seriously, I don't even know what to say. If it's a scam or not, it's tragic enough that it's even believable... but it is.

-John

Andrew L said...

If the USA's index drops to 6.2 by 2010, the graph will look like this. I don't know for sure, but that looks pretty improbable. I'd be surprised if it dropped below 6.8 (a drop of half a point), and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a net gain between now and 2010.

Fifty bucks says that in 2010, the index will be 6.8 or higher.