It would be disingenuous to begin this article with a statement that corruption is mainly a challenge for the officials in developing countries, and that corruption in developed countries is not an element of today’s global financial crisis. It would also be nice to claim that worldwide corruption is on the decline, due to programs of awareness and anti-corruption, but such is NOT the case.

Corruption in the financial system is at epidemic proportions, as we have seen, and it is not only endemic to developing nations, and it has not declined. Some notable developing countries like Botswana and Chile have lower corruption levels than countries that are fully industrialized. And countries where corruption used to be more rampant have had declines recently, including Liberia and Colombia. But bribery and corruption are the law of the land in many other countries.

At the heart of the coming financial crisis in the U.S. is corruption at the highest levels of finance. Oliver is on record as stating that when the crisis hits, it will not merely be an accident that "nobody could have known" was going to happen.

Although revised laws, anti-corruption commissions and campaigns for corruption awareness have helped, they have not had great levels of success. SEC fines for breaking laws are mere slaps on the wrist and a perverse licensing fee to continue the corruption. Focusing on administrative and petty bribery has been put in place, only to result in more willful neglect of corruption in high political levels.

As countries become more industrialized, their corruption and governance challenges don’t disappear. Instead, they become more sophisticated. More subtle forms of what is called “legal corruption” come into existence. This usually takes the form of a future job promise for regulators in lobbying firms, or sometimes campaign contributions that are given only with strings attached. Undue influence often is exercised by people with private interests, and neither the SEC nor advisory panels make much of a dent in these practices. That is by design.

The global financial crisis we see currently has multiple causes, but lack of oversight and “capture”, whether legal or not, cause more problems.

Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers teamed up to fight then CFTC commissioner Brooksley Born as attempted to regulate derivatives. Alan Greenspan went so far as to say that the free market would police itself. Do we also let unlawful gangs police themselves without the need for any cops?

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae spent many millions of dollars to lobby Congressional members for less stringent oversight. In addition to this, AIG had obscured accounts, unseen by lax regulatory oversight, which eventually brought down the entire organization.

Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was just one more example of capture and corruption, even though it looks to most people like simple fraud. The SEC knew a great deal about what he did, but they chose not unmask the scheme.

These were mainly US-based corruptive acts, but they affected the worldwide economy in what has resulted in a truly global financial crisis.