The 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index charts the role that secrecy, abuse and hard cash plays in government worldwide. There are few surprises, as usual: small, efficient European countries are clean as a whistle; big western powers like the U.S, Britain, Germany and Japan get solid grades; Russia and China remain disappointing, but not so much so as Somalia, the Seattle Mariners of international government.
Now, not to downplay the need to combat pervasive government corruption, but it’s interesting how the color scale they use suggests a standard “red-yellow-green” scale of safety and danger, but even “very clean” only warrants yellow.
Consider a simple change of the gradient:
Seems a different world, doesn’t it? Ah, the magic of charts.