Top-down corruption

My pithy observation after living in Argentina for a while was that corruption there was a bottom-up affair, by contrast to the United States, where it works top-down. Same total amount of corruption, just distributed differently and with accordingly differing consequences.

Yves said something similar about the shocking, shocking revelation that Henry Paulson may just possibly have over-paid his former employers at Goldman Sachs when he bailed them out.

Corruption in high places is so rampant that I don't see how we dig ourselves out. And that puts it on much the same footing as our debt hangover.

I wonder what Hanky-Pank Hank will do now that he's not at Treasury? Perhaps open a chain of lower Manhattan shooting ranges where they serve pork out of a barrel? Dick Cheney could serve you dinner from a wheelchair while stroking a Persian cat ... and then shoot you in the face for desert.