by Richard Paxton
“I think our childish, simplistic view of corruption has become, like a youngster’s fascination with zombies, simply a manifestation of our fears. A scary word, yet an essentially vague abstraction. . .”
— Heather Marquette, Birmingham University
Corruption is a dirty word, especially at big banks and prestigious Wall Street investment firms. It’s difficult to prove, especially on Wall Street, because the criminals are very smart and use advanced methods and technology to cover their tracks. Of course, corruption is committed in secret where all the players are part of the crime.
In an article published by the Motley Fool and USA Today, columnist John Maxfield argues that Wall Street banks and bankers are corrupt by nature, but then also states in his conclusion that, “of course, it’s impossible to forensically prove that corruption is woven into the fabric of Wall Street banks.”
Maxfield falls into the classic mind-trap in regards to corruption – something is amiss and he knows his world has been impacted negatively, but he doesn’t have the hard evidence needed to truly label the duck a duck. His perception of wrongdoing is driving his opinions and in turn, fueling the content behind his writing. And Maxfield is not alone in relying on his perceptions as they relate to corruption. In fact, a recent data study shows public suspicion of corruption in the Americas and EU is much higher than the actual corruption taking place.
Alacer Group’s data science team crunched two separate pieces of data gathered by Transparency International and discovered that North Americans are the most paranoid citizens in the world in regards to corruption. They’re suspicious of bankers, the government and its representatives even though North America is one of the least corrupt regions of the world, second only to Western Europe in public facing transparency. And those Western Europeans are plenty suspicious, too. The hard data shows that, regionally, citizens in the the European Union and Western Europe gauge corruption to be as severe a problem as citizens in the Middle East and North Africa (3.92 and 3.96 respective averages based on Transparency International’s Global Transparency Barometer – GCB) despite the fact that corruption is a much more severe problem in the Middle East and North Africa (33.9 and 61.84 respective averages based on the Transparency International’s Corruption Percentage Index – CPI).
Citizen perceptions of corruption in the Americas are the highest of any region (4.34 average based on the GCB), even though in reality the Americas, on average, experiences the second lowest level of corruption (55.16 average based on CPI).
Perhaps citizens’ collective corruption paranoia actually helps curb corruption? Or is the data saying that our view of corruption is skewed, and therefore inaccurate? Maybe it is time to change the conversation around corruption.
One proponent of changing the conversation around corruption is Heather Marquette, the Director of research for the Developmental Leadership Programme at Birmingham University in the UK. She recently published an article in The Guardian titled, “Is fighting corruption like fighting zombies?” in which she explores the nature of the global conversation around corruption and compares it with trendy discussions surrounding a potential zombie apocalypse, using her son and his nuclear blaster as the protagonist.
Corruption comes in so many forms, according to Marquette, that it becomes difficult to decipher which corrupt acts to condemn, because in all cases there is collateral damage. She says that when “we understand that the police officers demanding payment to protect their fellow citizens haven’t been paid for six months, condemning corruption no longer looks so straightforward. They also have families to feed, and rent to pay.”
Therefore, do we let up on those banks and Wall Street firms when the evidence is shaky, or where the definition has injured those merely trying to survive a broken system, or do we continue forward with new regulations designed to curb corruption? Do we really take the effort to change the conversation around corruption? I’d say no to letting up and yes to working towards changing the conversation, but in the meantime keep hammering on those we suspect as corrupt and keep pushing a healthy paranoia agenda socially. To date, at least according to the data we’ve analyzed, this paranoia has prevented even further corruption.
