With the Greeks facing up to their third (or 4th or 5th, who's counting anymoe anyway) bailout, [8] proclaiming growth is just around the corner, that the crisis is behind them, and that slavery will solve European youth unemployment [9]; we thought it both ironic and sad that, as Bloomberg's Niraj Shah notes, the European Commission today publishes its first anti-corruption report and finds Greece has the most corrupt public sector, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index [10].
In chart form...
[11]
and table...
[12]
As a gentle reminder, Greece’s shadow economy was equivalent to 24 percent of GDP in 2012, the Institute of Economic Affairs estimates.
[13]
But Afghanistan and Somalia top the world's corruption index...
(click image for large legible version)
[14]
The Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 serves as a reminder that the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery continue to ravage societies around the world. The Index scores 177 countries and territories on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). No country has a perfect score, and two-thirds of countries score below 50. This indicates a serious, worldwide corruption problem.