How Politicians are Bribed

Here's a little lesson in political corruption as recounted by Brad DeLong:

Eric Jackson:

Twitter / Eric Jackson: So Meg Whitman's defense o ...: So Meg Whitman's defense of spinning $EBAY stock given her from $GS is

everyone was doing it,
I only made $1.8m on it,
no one cares

Meg, they were trying to bribe you by giving you some of the allocation--trying to take some of your shareholders' money and give it to you in the hope that you would feel obligated and give something to them in the future.

Did you succumb?

She's running for governor of California, so it won't be clear for several years whether Goldman Sachs gets a return on its "investment" (aka bribe). My guess is "yes".

I have history on my side in guessing "yes". I hope I'm wrong, but it will take an upwelling of populism and "throw out the bums" to replace the current crop of corrupt politicians with young and shiny idealistic faces that we can hope to remain relatively corruption free for at least a few years.