First Blog

Uncertainty is by all measures not good.   Create uncertainty in your product, and sales will drop. Create uncertainty in your future, and you are diminished.   Create uncertainty with your investors, and stock sales will drop.    It seems that Elon Musk has done all, which paints uncertainty into all his ventures. Here's a problem.  How does anyone repair uncertainty?  In the family, it takes time.  In public, who knows? --------------------- Corruption has become such a vague term that everyone simply accuses their opponents as being corrupt, without specificity.   Get to specifics.   Bribery has a meaning. Insider trading has a meaning. Diverting funds to cronies has a meaning. Incarcerating opponents has a meaning.   But corruption?   Strictly generic and with little meaning.   Admit it, in some sense almost all of us are corrupt – in some way.

Corruption.  Everything is measured these days.  It has been said if it cannot be measured, it doesn’t exist. So, even corruption has been measured.  While there is no real method to measure actual corruption, it is measured indirectly by perceptions of residents.  So, we go transparent, that is to the transparency website to examine corruption*.   A total of 176 countries were evaluated.  The lower ranked countries have the lowest scores (based on a 0-100 score). They are by plagued by untrustworthy and badly functioning public institutions like the police and judiciary.  This includes bribery and extortion. Higher-ranked countries tend to have more freedom of the press, public access to information about public expenditure, higher standards of integrity for officials, and generally independent judicial systems.   Below, we show the bottom or most corrupt countries (Table 1) followed by the top or least corrupt countries (Table 2). ...