Few companies have controlled an industry as De Beers has controlled the diamond industry. De Beers, established in 1888, is the world's leading diamond company with unrivalled expertise in the exploration, mining and marketing of diamonds. Effectively, the company's history is that of the diamond industry. Among the founders of the company was Cecil Rhodes, the man most responsible for British dominion over most of southern Africa. Historically, the company has controlled 85 to 90 percent of the world's diamond trade. The company only sells its wares at limited sightings called "single channel marketing" where diamond merchants can only buy or reject diamonds sold in lots determined by De Beers. The price is fixed and the company is able to maintain its pricing structure by limiting the amount of diamonds that are made available. The size of the diamond industry is approximately $30 billion USD.

The company created the slogan "A Diamond is Forever" in 1939 to suggest an emotional value to diamonds that did not really exist prior. The goal behind that marketing campaign was to ensure that women keep their diamonds literally forever and to prevent a secondary market from being created. The campaign is perhaps the most successful ever creating a mass market for diamonds. The main use for diamonds is industrial. One factor that has helped De Beers maintain its control of the diamond market is that until the end of the Cold War, Russia kept its diamonds off the global market - engagement rings were just not a Marxist-Leninist value. In the past twenty years that changed with the Russians forming the Alrosa Diamond company, 90 percent owned by the Russian government. De Beers' share of the diamond trade has fallen to 40 percent. In 2009 Russia quietly passed a milestone this year: surpassing De Beers as the world's largest diamond producer.

Recently, De Beers' fortunes have sunk even further. Short of cash, the company had to raise $800 million from stockholders in just the past year. The onset of the global recession also coincided with a settlement with European Union antitrust authorities that ended a longtime De Beers policy of stockpiling diamonds, in cooperation with Alrosa, to keep prices up.

It is hard to shed tears for De Beers even as if the transformation of De Beers over the past decade or so is a remarkable and little-known story but the collapse of the diamond trade is having repercussions in Botswana, perhaps the best managed economy in Africa. The collapse of global diamond trade bodes ill, not only for Botswana's mineworkers and diamond cutters, but also the country's economy as a whole.  At independence in 1967, Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world, with a per capita income of about $80 a year. Today, it is among the most prosperous countries in Africa, with a real middle class, and a per capita income approaching $6,000 a year.  Its economy is the diamond industry and the income from that industry has allowed Botswana to build Africa's longest-lived democracy after that of Senegal.

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New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland are the top five least corrupt nations according to a new survey released today by the NGO Transparency International. The United States with a 7.5 (out of ten) score ranked 19th just behind the United Kingdom and Japan. Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Sudan and Iraq ranked as the most corrupt in that order. In the Americas, Haiti (ranked 168) followed by Venezuela (ranked 162) were deemed the most corrupt. 180 countries are included in the rankings.

Rounding out the top ten least corrupt are Finland, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Iceland and Norway. The most corrupt states were a mix of African and Central Asian dictatorships, failed states and oil-dependent states.

From their press release:

"As the world economy begins to register a tentative recovery and some nations continue to wrestle with ongoing conflict and insecurity, it is clear that no region of the world is immune to the perils of corruption," the organization said.

"The vast majority of the 180 countries included in the 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) score below five on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have low levels of corruption)," it said.

"Fragile, unstable states that are scarred by war and ongoing conflict linger at the bottom of the index.These are: Somalia, with a score of 1.1, Afghanistan at 1.3, Myanmar at 1.4 and Sudan tied with Iraq at 1.5. These results demonstrate that countries which are perceived to have the highest levels of public-sector corruption are also those plagued by long-standing conflicts, which have torn apart their governance infrastructure," said the group.

"Stemming corruption requires strong oversight by parliaments, a well performing judiciary, independent and properly resourced audit and anti-corruption agencies, vigorous law enforcement, transparency in public budgets, revenue and aid flows, as well as space for independent media and a vibrant civil society," said Huguette Labelle, who is chairwoman of Transparency International. "The international community must find efficient ways to help war-torn countries to develop and sustain their own institutions."

"Highest scorers in the 2009 CPI are New Zealand at 9.4, Denmark at 9.3, Singapore and Sweden tied at 9.2 and Switzerland at 9.0. These scores reflect political stability, long-established conflict of interest regulations and solid, functioning public institutions," she said.

Other countries of note include China ranked 79th with a 3.6 score, India ranked 84th with a 3.4 score, Mexico ranked 89th with a 3.3 score and Russia ranked 146th at 2.2. Russia tied with such notables as Sierra Leone, Ecuador, Timor-Leste, Zimbabwe, Kenya and the Ukraine. Greece was deemed the most corrupt member of the European Union. Greece ranked 71st with a 3.8 score.

Among Latin American countries, Chile and Uruguay fared best with 6.7 score and a ranking of 25th. Cuba scored 4.4, good enough for 61st place and just ahead of Italy. Brazil, Colombia and Perú tied for 75th place with a 3.3 score. Argentina scored 2.9 and ranked 106th.

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This evening, I read a column by Murtaza Razvi in Dawn of Pakistan touching on how Pakistanis, and the Pakistani government in particular, have been living in a state of denial on many issues confronting the country for far too long now. The wholly article is worth reading and indicative of the thinking of a segment of Pakistani elites who recognize the problems that Pakistan faces. Its leader are in a state of denial and the real problem is an absence of the state in critical areas.

Firstly, one must note the withering away of the state's writ, not only in Fata, Swat and Balochistan but all around. Like everything else that is so rotten and bad with us now, this trend could also be blamed on Gen Musharraf's eight long years in power, and perhaps justifiably so. In the big cities crime is rampant and terrorists strike at will. The flaring up of ethnic tensions in Karachi which left a number of people dead recently, and terrorist assaults on the Sri Lankan cricket team and a police training school in Lahore in March as well as the recent bombings in Peshawar are but obvious examples.

Lastly, it is the absence of governance which dogs the current dispensation. Living in denial of the many differences the coalition partners have on national and on inter-party issues has delayed the task of effective governance. One lesson that the PPP must learn from its experience of falling out with the PML-N is that reneging on promises will not win it or the country any respect. It's time to fulfill rather than delay delivering what it promised the people, which is decentralisation of executive and fiscal powers, leading to provincial autonomy.

I read this and as a Colombian I can relate. In Colombia for too long we too were in a state of denial and it took some time before we realized that answers to our problems were extending the state to areas where it was noticeably absent. Let me first dispense with the fiction that Plan Colombia has been a success.  If the goal was to reduce drug trafficking, then Plan Colombia has been a resounding failure. What saved Colombia was the 1991 Constitution.

We went from being a country where Bogotá decided everything to being a country where political power was diffused and dispersed. Decentralization saved Colombia. It's likely part of the solution for Pakistan.

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Everyone remembers former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo's famed speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention. Even me (and I was 5).  In it he said:  "President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. `Government can't do everything,' we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class." The speech could have just as easily been delivered in 2007 as 1984. So as the country plunges into another Presidential election cycle, Governor Cuomo, a practitioner and one of the left's most eloquent voices, once again asks to candidates to step back and examine their governing philosophy and the challenges the country faces, arguing that pat answers and rhetoric are insufficient to address them.

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Democrats are about to transition from a period where we were focused largely on winning electoral victories (ie. winning back power) to a period of governance.

In this period we will be focused both on maintaining and expanding our electoral success and the core mission of any majority party: crafting policy and moving our legislative agenda.

The laws we write are as important as the electoral victories we win. In fact, the legislation we craft is the reason we won those victories in the first place. I'd like to talk about this reality a bit...

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