An old joke about Latin America’s corruption that is making the rounds on the Internet says government officials from several countries were asked the same question: “Honestly, what’s your opinion about hunger in the rest of the world?”
The Swiss official, bewildered, responded: “Hunger? What’s hunger?” The Cuban official, equally puzzled, said, “Opinion? What’s opinion?” The U.S. official said, “Rest of the world? What’s rest of the world?” The Argentine official said, “Honestly? What’s ‘honestly?’”
The joke came to mind as I was reading a new book entitled “The Public Wealth of Nations, ” by Swedish authors Dag Detter and Stefan Folster, which proposes a bold way to fight corruption across the world: creating National Wealth Funds such as those that exist in Singapore and Austria to prevent the discretionary use of state assets by government officials.
It’s an idea that would be worth exploring in Latin America, where corruption scandals involving state-owned companies are making headlines almost everywhere.
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Etiquetas: Andres Oppenheimer, corruption, Latin America
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