Crisis, corruption and the pressing need to uproot corruption
One of the things I’ve learnt after the Icelandic collapse – and from observing economic disasters in the euro zone – is the importance of sound allocation of money. If a banking sector, or big parts of that sector, ignores financial rationale and allocates money not according to financial soundness but according to connections, cronyism, own benefits, disaster looms.
I have written on this topic earlier – and now I’ve expanded on it in a blog on the Le Monde Diplomatique website. I firmly believe that the crisis in the eurozone countries can’t be fully understood – and dealt with – unless some attention is paid to uprooting corruption. People in the worst hit countries aren’t just upset because of austerity measures but because they know that austerity isn’t enough.
For anyone who isn’t Irish, it may come as a surprise that Ireland can be seen as a corrupt country. True, it’s not a country where you can bribe a judge but that’s not the only level open to corruption. The Mahon report on Ireland in the 1980s and the 1990s throws a light on the situation at that time. The events leading up the collapse of the Irish banking system in 2009 shows the same trends.
The European Union needs to wake up and take this matter seriously. Corruption needs to be fought and uprooted. It won’t happen over night, it won’t happen at all if no attention is given to it – but it will happen slowly slowly if corruption is fought sensibly and forcefully.
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Can’t agree more.
A case in point within the EU commission
http://corporateeurope.org/news/dalligate-smokescreen-or-smoking-gun.
goupil
2 Nov 12 at 3:40 pm
Corruption is the cancer of a State… Nicolo Machiavelli said that sometimes the only way to do away with a corrupt prince is to kill him along with all his family…
JM
3 Nov 12 at 7:51 pm
Is this corruption ?
Imagine a foreign enterprise giving big sum of money for the reelection of a candidate in the hope that once elected or reelected, the said candidate favors that enterprise ?
It looks like big French enterprises are giving money for the election of their favorite US congressmen.
http://www.bastamag.net/article2758.html
goupil
5 Nov 12 at 12:27 pm
[…] documents such as the Memorandum of Understanding and IMF data on Cyprus – and here is an earlier blog, linked to an article of mine on Le Monde Diplomatique English website, on the correlation between […]
Cyprus and Iceland – and the fight against corruption at Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's Icelog
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