We're #17! Global corruption index from Transparency International

[pampango]

The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). A country or territory's rank indicates its position relative to the other countries and territories in the index. This year's index includes 175 countries and territories. Click on the column headings to sort the results, or use the drop-down menu to view results by region. Note that N/A means a country was not included in the index during a particular year.
Rank Country 2014 SCORE 2013 SCORE 2012 SCORE
1 Denmark 92 91 90
2 New Zealand 91 91 90
3 Finland 89 89 90
4 Sweden 87 89 88
5 Norway 86 86 85
5 Switzerland 86 85 86
7 Singapore 84 86 87
8 Netherlands 83 83 84
9 Luxembourg 82 80 80
10 Canada 81 81 84
11 Australia 80 81 85
12 Germany 79 78 79
12 Iceland 79 78 82
14 United Kingdom 78 76 74
15 Belgium 76 75 75
15 Japan 76 74 74
17 Barbados 74 75 76
17 Hong Kong 74 75 77
17 Ireland 74 72 69
17 United States 74 73 73

Other notables:
37 Israel 61 60 61
43 South Korea 55 55 56
85 India 38 36 36
100 China 36 40 39
103 Mexico 35 34 34
136 Russia 27 28 28
142 Ukraine 26 25 26
159 Syria 20 17 26
161 Venezuela 19 20 19
170 Iraq 16 16 18
174 Somalia 8 8 8
174 North Korea 8 8 8

http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results

Interesting that European countries scored quite highly as did Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Barbados.

[hunter]

1. Trouble with the U.S.A. is that the greater the corruption...

... the more likely it is to be legal.

Some forms of corruption are even celebrated.

A $20 bribe is punished by poverty and unemployment.

A $20,000,000 bribe is rewarded with greater wealth and political power.

[Amishman]

2. PA alone must knock us down several places

I'm honestly surprised we are not lower overall.

[closeupready]

3. It's important to compare how bribery is treated in the US versus elsewhere.

It seems as though in the contemporary US, bribery has become an act which is so very narrowly and strictly defined as to be effectively non-existent.

The truth is, however, that in most of the rest of the world, the kinds of financial mischief that goes on between Wall Street/K Street and our government would be elsewhere considered high crimes which are punishable - as reply #1 states - with fines and imprisonment.

But the practice of what is effectively a legalized kind of financial quid pro quo relationship is no less corrosive to our democracy than it is anywhere else. So it's not clear to me that this ranking accounts for that fact.