Financial Transparency Coalition

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently evaluated the United States on its effectiveness in implementing the goals and standards outlined by the Anti-Bribery Convention. The sizeable OECD report overall applauds the U.S. for its current efforts and offers a few areas for improvement. First, some background. The U.S. foreign anti-bribery laws are outlined by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which Jimmy Carter signed into law on December 19, 1977. The FCPA makes it unlawful for persons and entities to “make payments to foreign government officials to assist in obtaining or retaining...

Sanctions are penalties imposed by a single country—or a group of countries—on a state which has taken a troublesome economic or political action. They can be economic, for example bans on exports, or they can be financial, which often bar banks from maintaining accounts in the offending country. Trade sanctions, which are often rooted in economics and not politics, include import duties, tariffs, and import or export quotas. The idea behind these restrictions is that a sanction will cause economic harm to the recipient, thereby pressuring that country into compiling with international or bilateral will. ...

There’s been a lot of chatter about the yuan lately. Well, honestly there’s been a lot of chatter about the yuan for a lot of years. For over a decade, China pegged the yuan, which is the basic unit of the Chinese currency called the renminbi (yes—confusing), to the U.S. dollar. The Chinese government sets its ideal exchange rate by buying foreign exchange with yuan, thereby increasing the number of yuan per dollars in the global market. This keeps the ratio of yuan to dollars high, which means the exchange rate is artificially low (again—confusing—no...

The watchdog organization Global Witness released a report this week exposing ties between a number of British High Street bankers and corrupt Nigerian officials. The report detailed the reprehensible actions of Barclays, NatWest, RBS, HSBC and UBS, which for years took money from Nigerian officials. As we are all acutely aware, such corruption fuels poverty, entrenches dishonest politicians, and exacerbates obstructions to development for many countries. I want to be surprised. Really, I do. They just make it so hard for me. Each of those banks has been embroiled in scandal at one point or another in the...