Comment by vlovich123
6 months ago
I'm not sure I buy into this. Sure, compared with Russia it's probably a lot less, at least in terms of being something everyday people engage in. But in terms of comparing with countries like Germany or Sweden I don't know.
Here's some food for thought:
* Global financial crises: Banks were paying (bribing) ratings agencies to rate junk bonds AAA.
* Savings & loan crisis: widespread fraud & insider abuse.
* Bernie Madoff: Ran the largest Ponzi scheme ever, with an estimated fraud total of $65B raking in $17.5B in invested cash.
* Enron: straight up accounting fraud sprinkled with intentionally causing brownouts in California to pad their pockets with a side bonus of making Gov Davis unpopular & get him recalled (Enron was closely aligned with the Bush administration).
* Nixon straight up using psy-ops against Democrats & finally trying to burgal the DNC offices.
In terms of stats, the FBI does a few hundred bribery and corruption cases annually. Are they good at catching white collar crime? Well such crimes regularly take more than 5 years to investigate.
And hell, some things that are basically lying and cheating are straight up legal. Usury is legal with minimal to no regulation of payday loans. Pyramid schemes are legal as long as you call it multi-level marketing.
The list goes on and on.
If the list doesn't go on and on that is a clear sign that corruption is being hid.
Could be a sign that the commenter was not willing to spend all his day writing, especially once his point was made.
I can’t tell if they’re trying to refute the point (ie the list being long means that it’s definitionally not being hid) or support (ie the list I made is finite and therefore the corruption is hid).
But I think of it like trying to estimate the size of an iceberg by observing the tip. Just because you know a little bit doesn’t mean you actually know about the scale. And there’s every reason to believe it’s quite extensive given how easily money flows from corrupt countries through USD and US persons and companies (eg the major bank that’s constantly getting fined for laundering terrorist and drug cartel money - either they’re the only ones and they’re making a killing providing this service anyway or they’re the only ones anyone is bothering to investigate, but that business is clearly lucrative to continue to engage in).
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