there is a cancer that eats away at countries and societies around the world and the global recession has demonstrated that corruption is very much part of business as usual in rich countries that often lecture the poor. to discuss the phenomenon of corruption i'm joined by daniel kauffman in washington he's a senior fellow at the brookings institution also in washington we have dave when hold he's president of the american league of lobbyists and in east lansing we go to bruce being he's professor at michigan state university college of law and another member of our cross talk team you know on the hunger are right if i don't you know if i go to you in washington first today this just recently we had the transparency international restates annual report on corruption around the world and there are not too many surprises there are we because of the financial scandals in the financial crisis in the west some of the western countries have dropped down . and the ones the laggards are still there and i must admit russia is part of that

lagging group but do you like these types of reports how their methodology how they judge things because is we getting at what is how we define corruption is that something that we have to revisit because it's just not bribery i think the state is left out a lot go ahead. yes i have to acknowledge chopra that i like them but i mean vaulting all of these efforts including in helping transparency international but also we do our own with their worldwide governance indicators i think they are there. to basically measure i monitor how countries are doing they're not there not because it's a very broad picture so one has to drill down and look at the different manifestations of corruption so it's a cat cut it's a flag and i say flag it already shows these type of like transparency

international why we do it dollar it also shows that one should not go our core into two myth of what people say that poor countries are or the corrupt ones and their rich countries are doing well that's not the case once you look at the data you see very clearly that countries like greece or italy have much more corruption that african countries like but so i know my own country like chile and so on which runs much better than there in europe for instance so it's very very important to look at the data carefully because he said a lot of the same time by now is to go to the next stage and go to each country and measure the different money for station or corruption because as you say peter there there are very different dimensions which are very important how much it's because of of bribery from corporations even cheated by where they capture their state and their state regulations and so are you a little bit of that i mean i know you've used that term before capture and i'd

like to go to you bruce here i mean if we look at the financial scandals that have rocked the united states and some financial institutions in the west i mean in your opinion and in researching corruption in do you do these kind of financial downturns they manifest corruption or are they just revealing more because we could spend a whole week of programs of cross talk about all of the corruption has come out of major corporations the last ten years for instance in the united states. well that's certainly true peter. whether whether we think that it's worse because of the financial crisis or not i'm i doubt it but regulatory capture of regulatory agencies and legislators certainly in this country is a phenomenon that i think everybody has acknowledged forever but it's just not part of the political rhetoric. thirty three years ago we started with the foreign corrupt practices act and we've been exporting our standards to the rest of the

world while ignoring them here. i know that danny has spent a lot of time on that sort of thing but. it's not just corporations it's the institutions it's the entire system it's the way it's set up we call it democracy and yes it's a wonderful system but it is not perfect and it's certainly not what we teach our children in the third grade ok dave if i can go to you a lot of people would say though it would grease is the works of a lot of corruption is lobbyists and that's why you're on the program do you how do you feel about that obviously you would disagree but what role does lobbying play in all of this because again if we use the term capture which i really like because it really captures the meaning of what different types of corruption the not in a normative sense and that's why i started out with this report because they mention things that are quite obviously obviously corrupt and we could all agree with them but as we just heard as you go deeper and deeper down how does it really

work and people say lobbyist or at the heart of it. i tend to disagree with course i think lobbyist our job is to educate inform people and lobbying in america is the most regulated industry in america i've been to other countries and tried to help them with their code of ethics and especially in the in the south european eastern area and they're still on of the old you know i would say the one nine hundred seventy s. and before lobbying rules where it was pay to play in america now lobbying is on our microscope and ninety nine point nine percent of us are doing it accurately effectively transparently for our clients and the people who are breaking the system go to jail and that's a good thing well but i think what's happening and i've talked to people in russia as well is that there's this. there's this cultural system of that corruption

or bribery or whatever you want to call it is is part of the way business is done and i think we've got to get to the heart of it of changing it from the top down and if into little the leaders and the people demand more you're going to have corruption i think that people are demanding if i may go back to daniel i mean let's look at the government oversight of b.p. i mean do you think those people are going to go to jail i tend to doubt it you know i mean when you have that kind of lax regulation lobbyist very much behind that what is the oil industry is one of most lobbied in in the world and in the united states i mean what i'm saying is that we can all agree that you know all of these things are terrible and they're wrong but they just keep going on and on and on go ahead. yeah yeah i think one has to get down into the deed there are many regulatory agencies in the us and bruce knows them very well and david to the case of the m.m.s. well regulated b.p. and many others it's going to be

a case study where there was captured the way it was such a cup sure but they were cozy relationship through gifts and other in other issues that took place between m.m.s. as a regulatory agency and b.p.'s going to be a case study and when you see some people may be indicted or prosecutors may not done in the past some people have in the land that in jail but that's not enough bruce a systemic issue one has to look at all the agencies let's look also more carefully at what happened with c.c. and we think he agency through in the financial crisis that had a lot to do that was also capture even if it was subtle and soft and it does not always require it of course bribery payment and table so that's a huge issue but that's as david this is saying i mean what nice to be careful in just pointing the finger out one group is not just lobbies it's true that there

have been three point five billion dollars in lobbying expenditures in the u.s. alone or over two thousand and nine and these three billion plus is the extent of expenditures so that place an enormous role but one has to look at the other side of the picture a politician in that are very pleased to work work we have a solution with another government agencies that basically play a role in this so it takes at least not two but three to tango here ok and bruce i mean basically. go ahead go ahead this is crosstalk jump in grad. you know you know i think you're absolutely right you know i always say that. a lot of us never vote on the house or senate floor it really comes down to when you provide that information out to a legislator or decision maker they've got to make those decisions at the end of the day they need to be accountable and what's happening now in this recent election the people are speaking out and say i need you to be accountable to us so at the end of the day you know it's easy to make the lobbyist the bogeyman and the

scapegoats but at the end of the day we never vote on the house or senate floor brousseau when it really comes down to it yet i was just going to say to her is that what one of the things this is it is we see this woman's use of term here but revolving door i mean politicians become lobbyists ok everybody keeps track of everybody lot of favors i mean it can be very subtle ok like i can count on this guy for a job or things like this you know or a banker is you know we can go into the whole financial crisis where you know it would be. the security and exchange commission and you had wall street you had government to every everybody's playing the same game here i mean this is the systemic corruption that i think that doesn't release and pointed out in these reports because they don't have the same kind of categorization what do you think about that. peter i mean you asked the question about who's going to jail and what's legal i mean let's recall who makes the laws and who makes things legal

congress has had its hands completely into this financial crisis in the late ninety's. there is no doubt that they're not going to jail or the only thing you can do to a congressman or a senator is not elect him i mean. we're marveling at the fact that there's almost one hundred seats available that my that are contested well i recall that there are four hundred thirty five seats up every year what what is it what do we call it when three hundred thirty five of the guys are in serious contests we don't call it corruption but in this country there's no doubt that we have legalized what in other countries we call corruption the institutions are set up to accommodate the congressman and the congress and make the rules you can't put them in jail dave you want to finish. all right i'm sorry go ahead daniel go ahead. yeah i wanted to compliment the already two thousand and four. paper which we called legal

corruption and we measured over one hundred one hundred countries in the war in terms of all of these issues which are not captured which are not measured in the journal corruption in the states which are much more subtle in terms of undue influence on the on the policies on the regulations to regulate including greg and the u.s. in two thousand and four when its rate the bottom half of the war why there nor was there nor debate where top so one can say one can do better and be the new watch group let me jump in here if i were you going to a short break after we continue will continue our discussion on state.

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well. i'm here to remind you we're discussing the state of corruption.

before let's look at what russians think about this topic corruption today and necessary evil or phenomenon we should fight against many argue it's inherent even in highly regulated countries often kickbacks are part of running businesses employing people and even generating growth the us government's on the take measures to put an end to these practices now louis many claim instead of corruption there would be dozens of different phenomena to replace the public opinion foundation oscar if they have faced corruption recently seventy percent of the respondents said they haven't and another twenty seven percent said they have still russian president dmitry medvedev has recently signed a national strategy to eradicate corruption. ok dave i'd like to go to you i mean i hear all the time in the mainstream and maybe you're the perfect

person to answer the question and with some clarity i hear all the time lobbyists and they're representing their clients write laws for the politicians for them to vote on to what degree does that happen you hear this about health care all the time you hear this about finance financial reform i mean that whole revolving door is quite frightening with if you look at the people that are involved in this the people that got us into this mess in the first place are still writing laws for us to get us out of it that's a hard sell for me so how much do lobbyist write laws. well let me give you two perspectives peter really quickly there are about five thousand bills introduced in the congressional session there's no way a legislator and their staff can be experts on all those issues i mean the health care was one bill. so what you have is when you have your bring in an issue from your clients or somebody will say can you send me a draft of of you know talking points on this so i can put it from my boss. that's kind of where i think people think well jeez lobbyists are writing bills well. the

legislation has to go to legislative council has to go through the member of congress so those people are actually right in the bills now let me let me go back to the russian study real quick i've had the pleasure of dealing with some folks over in russia that are working to put in a code of ethics for people in the government relations industry they're finding it and create increasingly difficult because of the culture over there that it's accepted but they're willing to make the change you know i think most lobbyist feel that transparency and accountability a good thing but it needs to be measured as well as is as reasonable. in america i think we have a great code about a code of ethics the american legal obviously the great code of ethics but that doesn't you can't you can't make sure that everybody is following the same moral compass and that's where i think strong rules and regulations come into effect where those people who do break the law you know there are penalties for that daniel what about you what do you think about that i mean this is again another popular phrase it's being spent on outsourcing government and

a lot of people would say that it particularly in the united states a lot of policy is outsourced for private enterprise and something tanks that are supporting private enterprise to write laws because a lot of these things are are quite complicated and they're always going to be written to serve somebodies purpose and it seems to me less and less of the average person's interests what do you think. well in many other countries the actual legal writing is done by the legal body with their stuff and they here in the us they have enough resources to do that having said that one point that they did is make is very important which is these are crucial inputs which is part of the debate and discourse that may come from outside of their legal politician reality i work for a think tank now brookings institution before i was with the world bank in providing inputs and we did it in many countries that that's legitimate but it should not be

the blueprint for the law itself and b. what david is saying is very important also should be subject to enormous transparency debate and discourse with many such inputs the point about lobbying in my view is not to to just try to eradicate lobbying like like the cream in russia about corruption you cannot eradicate corruption or you cannot eradicate lobbying because it's part of human nature every human every individual would always be the issue is transparent taking it and making it free entry that there are many different views and issues and representatives that come to that and it should not be monopolized by the most powerful in terms of money and that if this is what has happened in the us money in politics has distorted so much of these that it's the most potent that financial and industrial conglomerates and a bit of that happened in russia too which are driving they have much of these

influencing that that's what led me to read the file which should also think about redefining corruption not just a traditional definition of the abuse of public office or private gain by that the privatization of public policy this is what's happening in some countries subjected to capture including in the regulatory capture is that public policy that should be for the. and if it of all is being privatized to benefit the fuel because of a distortion influence of my mean politics and by the way the revolving door is a major issue that has not been resolved and there i would take issue with. those few that are breaking the laws is that one can get around these issues by having a quick revolving door for politicians are going to industry are lobbying they give them a little bit separate and he or she does not directly make their phone calls to lobby but she oversees the whole process of lobbying by other states but it's a relatively simple state to exert on enormous influence dan i can influence i said

defacto lobbying ok but ok gentlemen we've all used we've been and i'm going to dave we've all used the same term here transparency and a first bruce is getting more transparent or less transparent because i'm really worried expression in the states it's the same group of people that got us into this mess are saying they can get us out i mean that's like i said that's a hard sell really. it's not it's not something that you're going to buy peter and it's not something that that ninety nine percent of americans by. the dodd frank bill which is what nine hundred pages of fine print and in comprehensible phrases that were put in there by the lobbyists perfectly legally by the way that's just not going to solve the next problem the next crisis will happen i mean i like one of the one of the phrases that then he used i mean we talked you brought up the question of bribery in russian law making and russia generally i mean what we have

done in the united states is we have privatized bribery privatized corruption and made it illegal well ok but we should acknowledge that and we should take your point that exactly the people that brought us this mess for the last two years are the people who now say oh we'll fix that for ever and they are fixing it courtesy of david and his friends and they're doing everything perfectly legally and terrifically transparently transparently but they are doing it on behalf of their clients the. new reality was under islam as a question to you you think universities do you think universities are nonprofits and i know who i know very well i mean equally as much as a. just because you know they are all going. i know i look i worked for corporations of thirty years and i lobbied for two years

and i know that the universities very carefully lobby for the thirty one billion dollars that uncle sam passes out but that doesn't mean that the this system is working it means that the public is not being represented the clients with big money as danny pointed out those are the ones that are being represented i mean there's three hundred ten million people that aren't represented in these these things and if nobody believes that a large bill is this or the way to solve this problem all right dave go in there i'm not surprised go ahead go ahead dave you know i totally disagree i think you know every american is represented if you think if you think the average plumber or auto worker is not represented in washington d.c. by somebody who is their lobbyist you're mistaken most people are represented by five or six lobbyists in a day if you're an older american a r.p. represent you whether you're a member or not. you know to bake i agree that the system could be improved i told

agree with that but the say that lobbyists are at fault that's a generality that just doesn't play with with being i think most people want want somebody to blame and because they really don't know what a lobby is does hey that's a great scapegoat members of congress will do it too until they decide they need a campaign contribution and i honestly think that the campaign contributions and lobbying should be disconnected because honestly when you get the grassroots level and that type of thing yeah they should and what happens is at the end of the day you know the issues should be one on on the education and information provided in front of you then the legislator gets to decide which one is the best choice and another thing in washington if you ever want a legislator your reputation is down to the tubes danio it looks like you want to jump in there maybe so but if the latest likely lies that's ok again you're going to head well well that's on there just. i mean somewhere in the middle i mean i think lobbying can be vastly improved because it's not

that nobody among the three hundred ten million is represented by this a vastly equal distribution of power and influence in terms of what's being who is successful lobbying on ways not and that depends on money however we and he was just mentioning brief where we're missing half of the other picture and that should be integrated and that pain finance there the whole issue of campaign finance even if if the lobbying industry disappear tomorrow which i'm not saying it should happen because i think raise a legitimate value of lobbying but that's to be proven even if it disappeared we are left with billions and billions very unequally distributed and very much linked to what kind of a vote politicians are going to have and causes they will take and linked also to issues of regulatory capture which are related to come pain finance and we're

seeing them play out right now and after a very very disturbing decision by the supremes of course allowing corporations and even foreign foreign influence and now we don't even know wave comes from so these are transparency is coming so let's not miss the other half of the picture in terms of these money in politics that causes capture which is they come pain finance which david is suggesting should be linked into this picture and let's not just point fingers at the lobbying issue i'm going to really do that when we need to look at cumorah gentlemen i wish we had i wish we had a whole lot more time because we could cover so much more many thanks to my guest today in washington and in east lansing and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are keep see you next time and remember across the. street.

fighting over black gold a showdown between israel and lebanon over recently discovered oil reserves in the eastern mediterranean with turkey and cyprus also staking their claim. nato to limit its military presence near russian borders we should be reestablished cooperation with the. tensions high in northern iraq over fears ethnic violence will erupt after u.s. troops leave the kurdish controlled region. also reporting that russia is facing a challenging task of stepping up its youth crime prevention as new figures show it has the highest rate of offenses in europe.

live from our studios here in central moscow this is the recently discovered oil reserves in the eastern mediterranean looks set to become the latest point of tension in the troubled middle east at least four major competitors a staking their claim israel lebanon turkey and cyprus all want peace but with no clearly defined maritime borders the fight could be lengthy and bitter and despite unclear border demarcation israel has already gained the upper hand and started developing two sites. takes a closer look at the divisive deposits. prayer is a long time in coming. i've been begging for a year yeah please don't let me down don't let me down and finally jackie malaysia's praise has been answered the oil company he's invested in reportedly he underground still talking about the largest.