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By objective measures, the US is by far the most corrupt nation in the world. China aspires to the title, and may get it, and Russia dreams of it, but just doesn't have the volume to match us..

We don't like to think so, but consider: did anybody get charged with fraud over the crash of 2008? Why not? We have laws on the books making what everyone did a writhing, toxic mass of felonies.

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And what objective measures do you have for nations like China, Russia, Iran, and plenty of despotic dictatorships in Africa? There isn’t some magic measure that goes filters through all the lies perpetuated by those countries. There is definitely some degree of corruption in the US but there isn’t really evidence for the strength of your assertions. I suspect China is probably a lot worse because of the opacity/concentration of power of the communist party. I’d also be interested to hear what felonies perpetuated 2008. The government incentivized individuals to buy homes, and the banks looked the other way as long as people signed their mortgage agreements. A lot of the laws that would’ve prevented this were repealed in the 90’s.

If you don't know about the fraud, it can only be that you have not been paying attention.

Fabricated signatures on thousands upon thousands of mortgage documents is hard to get confused about. Goldman Sachs paying multibillion-dollar fines for deliberate misrepresentation, without anybody there charged personally with a crime, is easy to find in the public record. A Goldman Sachs corporate officer becoming Obama's Secretary of the Treasury in the middle of it all, likewise.

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