randomafrican's comments

I know that(I've lived in countries that were at the time last on the list).

But did they survey North Koreans to discuss said perception ? Is "corrupt" really an equivalent of "bad and arbitrary and awfully run" ?

To me those are two different things.

Or may be things are just uneven..

While officials in touch with foreigners in Santiago are clean, it could be that it's less the case at the local BMV in remote town..

May be I should download the brochure to learn more about the methodology but some of the countries at the bottom seem weird.

North Korea is last ? Is there even room for corruption in the North Korean public sector ? I imagine it being arbitrary and all sort of things but I wouldn't dare attempting to bribe a North Korean official.

Does Somalia even have a public sector ?

M-Pesa is one service by one telco operator. Almost every teco in Africa has implemented an equivalent.

Now the penetration may not be as deep in the other countries as in Kenya but that will change.

So now the country with the worse case of hyperinflation of may be the last 30 years is somehow representative of a continent of 50 countries ?

Anyway.

Capital flight (especially unearned capital) has been a more common issue for much longer. I'm not sure how making that problem worse would help.

Do we all agree that their only hope in consumer mobile is making Office cross-platform ?

what if sales have peaked not because don't buy new tablets but rather because people don't replace them that often ?

>People saved money with Icelandic banks that had opened branches in the UK and the Netherlands.

Weren't many of those branches of Icelandic banks seized/nationalized/prevented from repatriating any capital to Iceland all over Europe ?

I'll give you the Eurozone... Makes it impossible to devaluate and much harder to put capital controls in place (though Cyprius manage to do so while being in the Eurozone).

However, what Iceland did was still unilateral. They didn't ask for anybody's permission and didn't expect their decision to be accepted.

Laws and treaties still need to be enforced and those countries are still sovereign. What happens if a country does something that is against EU law ? At worst, they may be expelled from the EU.

So it's really a matter of comparing the advantages of EU membership to the cost of the path of action that was taken.

It's still a political decision.

You make it sound like things were all bright and shiny for Bjork, Icelandi and Thor.

In real life they were not.

Yes.

But the biggest point is that Iceland has taken a very different path from Ireland, Spain or Greece with very different outcomes.

(of course, the situations were not exactly similar at the beginning but comparable enough to draw those comparisions)

There's no other way to prevent capital flight, right ?

That's exactly what the OP said though..

I think Iceland is used as a coutner-example to Greece, Ireland or Spain and not the US.

Notice as they keep comparing the Icelandic unemployment rate to the EU average unemployment rate ?

One quick fact: the root of the word Ukraine is a word meaning "border".

The length is more important than the outcome, IMO

>who sent the previous president to jail on trumped up charges

Previous Prime Minister.

And I'm not 100% sure the charges are totally trumped up.

Not that it changes anything.

On the other hand, while there was a lot of trade between European powers, part of the point of colonization was to have the colonies "trade" manly with the colonizer.

Many Tennis or Formula 1 stars do. Money earned abroad and individual sports.

Soccer players have to live where they play and their teams have to be located somewhere too. So taxes are paid based on that location.

HOWEVER:

Most soccer players negotiate post-tax income. So rather than them earning less, their employers will end up paying them a lot more to garantee that income.

But the oil-related infrastructure will stay and will keep generating some revenue.

I live in an oil city and the number of Scottish workers or companies that have regional headquarters or major locations in Aberdeen is huge.