Editorial May 5, 1997 Issue

Moneybags

Mary Metzner Trammell

There wasn't a lot of money in my wallet the day it was stolen. Losing my driver's license, identification, and credit cards was inconvenient, though. And it took a week or so to straighten out all the details from the theft. But what really shocked me was this: two other members of my immediate family got robbed the same weekend. Not to mention the fact that another family member's car had been stolen out of her driveway a couple of months earlier!

Insurance covered most of these losses. But, even so, I just couldn't blandly say, "Well, everything's OK. We recouped our money and replaced everything that was lost." No, there was a larger issue at stake—one that demanded serious problem solving.

What kind of issue? Well, maybe what some people are calling "the global corruption epidemic." This "corruption eruption" takes various forms in different nations, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sometimes it shows up as political scandal, narcotics trafficking, bribery, organized crime, and illicit trading in biological and nuclear materials. Sometimes it shows up as street crime like assault, robbery, murder. Always, it corrodes public health and well-being.^{ See Robert S. Leiken, "Controlling the global corruption epidemic," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, No. 105, p. 55 .}

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