One of the world’s most astute financial experts and investor George Soros is warning that the debt crisis that has plagued Europe and the U.S. since 2008 reminds him of the final years and collapse of the Soviet Union. In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Soros is claiming that the financial markets in some respects did actually collapse but were kept alive by the authorities. He blames the governments in Europe and the U.S. for failing swiftly to approve regulations for the financial sector across the globe in response to the 2008 credit freeze, not realizing how contagion from failures and unwise deregulation in one nation can spread like a virus to the whole globe. What regulation has been done since 2008 has been very slow and not much progress has been made.

I suggest that the main reason why this situation has arisen is because while the West has lambasted many developing countries in the South for rampant corruption that has severely impacted on their economic and social development, what has transpired in Europe and America is an even more dangerous form of corruption. It is what Daniel Kaufman, the former anti-corruption guru at the World Bank and I are calling “legal corruption”. This is the most insidious and potentially unimpeachable form of corruption because it involves the actual or potential capture of the entire state.  It is also up to all sectors of society to combat this form of corruption that could end up with recurrent global financial crises that makes us all victims. See the views of Kaufman and my own in the UN Peace and Conflict Monitor.