As I have frequently observed, there is a widespread belief in Europe’s north that the continent is populated by hard-working law-abiding ants on the one hand and lazy tax-avoiding grasshoppers on the other, and that all the ants live in the north while mysteriously the grasshoppers congregate in the south. The reality is much more muddled and sinister. Corruption takes place across borders, in both north and south. It involves multinational corporations whose connections to the deep establishment are not contained by national boundaries either. Part of what prevents us from tackling this
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