The USG is forcing Och-Ziff, the hedge fund, to pay $412 million to resolve civil and criminal allegations of bribery across Africa. Turns out the United States has a law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, that prohibits the use of bribes to foreign officials to get or keep business. Why? Why should that be a crime? And anyway, whether the bribe is legal or not is between the U.S. company and the government of Africa. It is none of the business of the U.S. government. Don’t many U.S. companies and individuals have to pay some government entity in the United States–federal, state, and or local–in order to get or keep business? The USG is a giant extortion racket.

The Best of Laurence M. Vance