The top ten least corrupt are the Nordic countries, plus New Zealand (#1), Canada, and Australia. (Netherlands isn't exactly Nordic, but it comes in at #6. Singapore (#3) is perceived as the least corrupt country in all of Asia.
America is trying to win wars in two of the five most corrupt countries in the world. (Iraq and Afghanistan's rank prior to America's invasions could not have been any lower.)
More about the recent Transparency International survey here.
Delaware tops the Tax Secrecy Index. Blogger and taxation expert Richard Murphy discusses the implications of the findings:
Step forward Delaware in the United States of America. Ranked alongside 59 other secrecy jurisdictions, your commitment to corporate secrecy, and your resolute lack of cooperation and compliance with international norms, places you at head of the new Financial Secrecy Index. Most ordinary people would never consider Delaware alongside Bermuda, Monaco and Grand Cayman as a secrecy jurisdiction. Yet your Opacity Score is as bad as the Cayman Islands’ score, and the sheer scale of your operations places you well ahead of the rest. Your status reveals a brazen contradiction at the heart of the American free market. Properly functioning markets depend on transparency and symmetric access to information, but secrecy jurisdictions like Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada purposefully set out to undermine market transparency.
Listen to Richard justify Delaware's place the list:
