How corrupt is a country?

(This post was updated on 06/30/2014.)

There's a relatively easy way to find out. Transparency International is an organization that ranks countries using a Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Pre 2012, the index was a number from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean).  From 2012 onwards, the score goes from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Here's how the CPI of the US has varied over the years.

Year - CPI - US Ranking - Least corrupt country (CPI)
1995 - 7.79 - 15 - New Zealand (9.55)
1996 - 7.66 - 15 - New Zealand (9.43)
1997 - 7.61 - 16 - Denmark (9.94)
1998 - 7.5 - 17 - Denmark (10)
1999 - 7.5 - 18 - Denmark (10)
2000 - 7.8 - 14 - Finland (10)
2001 - 7.6 - 16 - Finland (9.9)
2002 - 7.7 - 16 - Finland (9.7)
2003 - 7.5 - 18 - Finland (9.7)
2004 - 7.5 - 17 - Finland (9.7)
2005 - 7.6 - 17 - Iceland (9.7)
2006 - 7.3 - 20 - Finland + Iceland + New Zealand (9.6)
2007 - 7.2 - 20 - Denmark + Finland + New Zealand (9.4)
2008 - 7.3 - 18 - Denmark + New Zealand + Sweden (9.3)
2009 - 7.5 - 19 - New Zealand (9.4)
2010 - 7.1 - 22 - Denmark + New Zealand + Singapore (9.3)
2011 - 7.1 - 24 - New Zealand (9.5)
2012 - 73 - 19 - Denmark + Finland + New Zealand (90)
2013 - 73 - 19 - Denmark + New Zealand (91)
2014 - 74 - 17 - Denmark (92)
2015 - 76 - 16 - Denmark + New Zealand (91)
2016 - 74 - 18 - Denmark + New Zealand (90)
2017 - 75 - 16 - New Zealand (89)
2018 - 71 - 22 - Denmark (88)

2019 - 69 - 23 - Denmark + New Zealand (87)

2020 - 67 - 25 - Denmark + New Zealand (88)

The US has gotten more corrupt since the inception of the index but, on the bright side, it's still within a fairly narrow band.

Finding a "safe" bank

With all the news about the economy headed downhill, a natural question that comes up is whether or not one is banking with an institution that is sound (i.e. unlikely to fail). Here are some sites that allow us to check on the health of financial institutions -- banks, thrifts, and credit unions.

• Bauer Financial's star ratings
• The Finance Buff has a post on how to go about finding a local bank.

Food at the Yoga Farm: The yogic diet

Disclaimer: I'm still a newbie on this path, so I might have some facts that are incorrect. If so, please forgive the error and let me know so I may correct it.

In my introductory post about the Yoga Farm, I discussed how my digestive health benefited immensely from food that I ate there. Naturally, I was intrigued by how the food was prepared because the food had the same positive effect on my digestion regardless of the menu.

The diet is a simple lacto-vegetarian diet, but they also avoid ingredients such as onions, garlic, mushrooms, vinegar, fermented/aged foods, and excessive chilis. I later discovered that this is quite a common diet among Vaishnavs (followers of Vishnu), and as such it is commonly referred to as a Vaishnav diet. Yet another name for this diet is the sattvic diet. Followers of ISKCON (more commonly known as the Hare Krishnas) also follow this diet. The goal of the diet is to minimize karmic impact by being non-violent (hence vegetarian), and promote clarity of the mind for advancing on the spiritual path by eating light, fresh, easy to digest foods.

Because of abstinence from onions and garlic, people sometimes confuse this with the Jain diet, but the Jain diet is even stricter than this one and further excludes most vegetables that grow below the surface of the ground such as potatoes.

Additionally, there is a lot of emphasis on fresh food. The life force or prana that we get from the food is highest in fresh foods. The food at the Yoga Farm is usually prepared fresh starting about 2 hours or so before each meal. Any leftovers of cooked food are stored in the refrigerator, and can be reheated and served only once within 24 hours. Anything older than that is composted. Stale food lacks life force and creates heaviness in the mind and the body and that's why it must be avoided. The calories that we get from processed food and the calories that we get from fresh food have an entirely different effect on the mind and the body. It is after this education that I stopped paying attention to the "nutrition information" on packaged processed foods and usually just avoid them altogether.

Finally, the cooking methods are influenced by ayurveda which is a holistic form of medicine from ancient India. They use organic, unrefined oils, and liberally use basic ayurvedic spices such as turmeric, cumin seed, coriander seed, fennel seed, fresh ginger, and mustard seeds that are known for promoting digestion and allowing the body to better absorb nutrients.

More on onions and garlic

Onions and garlic are considered to be disturbing to the mind and hinder the practice of meditation. Perhaps the best article I have seen on the subject of avoiding onions and garlic is "Why no onions and garlic?" by Kurma. A number of Buddhist vegetarians also avoid using onions and garlic.

Personally, I have found several prosaic benefits from avoiding onions and garlic -- no bad breath, food tastes better because the flavors of the underlying ingredients are no longer overpowered by the pungent flavor of onions and garlic, and I have less trouble with heartburn.

Why no mushrooms?

From what I have been told it's because mushrooms grow in the dark and they are a fungus. With respect to food that grows in the dark, wouldn't that be true for vegetables like carrots and potatoes that grow underground?  Not quite.  While the vegetable is underground, the leaves are exposed to sunlight and grow above the ground.

More than just a diet

Of course, the yogic diet is just one of things that is part of the yogic lifestyle. The yogic lifestyle requires being careful of everything that we consume. This includes abstaining from intoxicants such as caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol, but even extends to being careful about what we consume with our other sense organs as well -- movies, books, music, etc. While I've been encouraged to follow the diet because of the more prosaic benefits that I noted above, I'm still not there yet in terms of following the complete yogic lifestyle.

Saving for retirement: A thought experiment

In an earlier post, I discussed worry-free investing which was based upon the work of Zvi Bodie. Determining how much to put away for retirement depends on so many different factors that is becomes hard to come up with a "correct" number. There are so many variables such as:

• Inflation rate: By this I don't mean just the widely publicized consumer price index (CPI), since one's spending habits may differ quite a bit from the way the CPI weights the various classes.
• Tax rates: This would relate to current and future income tax rates (federal, state, and local) as well as sales tax rates. This is also affected by where one chooses to live in retirement.
• Returns on investments: This includes things like interest rates and the movement in stocks and bond prices.
• Social security payments: With the financial problems facing the government, it's hard to say what sort of payments social security would be able to make in the future.
• Changes in income: One would normally have more income with age because of experience, but that seems to be changing nowadays with folks losing a job and being forced to accept a lower income.
• Changes in expenses: As one goes through the years, what we spend on changes.  In younger years, one may not need to spend much.  In middle age there is often added costs of supporting a family.  As we age, depending on our health, there may be a lot of expenses for medical care.
• Life span: Perhaps the most crucial one. One may not be around during one's planned retirement years!  But it's probably better to leave behind an estate than to live one's golden years in poverty.

But for the purpose of this exercise, we're going to ignore all of that.

Let's say I make 100 pieces of gold for every year that I work, with no change in income, and no loss of income at any point during my working life. Further, let's assume that what a piece of gold buys today, it will also buy n years from now, where n > 0. In other words, a piece of gold will buy in retirement exactly what it buys today. Let's assume that there are no taxes.

Now, for every year I work, I get 100 pieces of gold. Let's say I spend 50 pieces of gold each year and save the remaining 50. Thus, for every year that I work, I have basically bought one year of retirement. In other words, if I work 30 years, I can have 30 years of retirement. If, on the other hand, I spend 25 pieces of gold each year, I have bought 3 years of retirement for every year of work. And if I spend 75 pieces of gold, I have bought only one year of retirement for each 3 years of work. This, of course, ignores the time value of money as well; i.e. there was no attempt to invest the money during the working years, but also bear in mind that any kind of investing necessarily involves risk.

So if we look at the average working life of about 40 years until retirement (age 25 to 65), and we need to plan to live to age 105, a retired life of 40 years, then using this simple example, we need to be able to save 50% of our income. In general, if I work x years, and need to plan for a retirement of y years, then I need to restrict my spending to [x/(x+y)] × 100% of earnings. Put another way, if I save m% of my income each year, then I buy one year of retirement for every (100-m)/m years of work. If we want to account for taxes, then these percentages would apply to the post-tax income.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of this example is that it does not account for social security. At lower income levels, social security tends to replace a significant portion of that income, and would therefore require a significantly lower savings rate. However, at higher income levels social security contributes far less to replacing that income.

Anyway, this is just a thought experiment and is not practical by any means. But I thought I'd write it up nevertheless.

(A few days after writing this post, courtesy of A.Word.A.Day, I found out of the existence of the word gedankenexperiment, which means "thought experiment". Had I known of it before this post, I might have used it in the title.)

Inspiring words from Steve Jobs

In his commencement address at Stanford in June 2005, Steve Jobs tells 3 stories -- the first is about "connecting the dots", the second is about love and loss, and the third is about death. I found it to be a very inspiring piece filled with words of wisdom. I keep going back to it again and again, reading through the full text. Here are some excerpts:

On "connecting the dots"...

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."

On love and loss...

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers."

On death...

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life."

Concert at the Yoga Farm: Stephen Longfellow Fiske

Following the Thanksgiving dinner at the Yoga Farm, and after the meditation and chanting, we had a concert by Stephen Longfellow Fiske. Stephen was an acid rock musician in San Francisco before he became a disciple of Swami Satchidananda, who was a contemporary of Swami Vishnudevananda (the founder of the Yoga Farm) and they both shared the same guru, Swami Sivananda.

Stephen visits the Yoga Farm multiple times a year. He usually has a concert performance on the opening day of the Teacher's Training Course at the Yoga Farm, a month long course where people train to become teachers of yoga in the Sivananda tradition. The courses are held twice a year in May and in October.

I've sat through several of his concerts here at the Yoga Farm and always find his music inspiring even though the concert has more or less the same format and songs every time. This Thanksgiving, he entertained us with songs such as "In my imagination", "Go for it", "Green City", and some peace chants. About the only one I can recognize on a commercial album is "Green City" which is part of his album titled Stephen Longfellow Fiske.

He shared with the us the inspiring story of Andy Lipkis, whose dream was to plant a million trees, and who at the time didn't have a clue as to how he was going to accomplish it, but then went on to found Tree People.

Concert at the Yoga Farm: Jai Uttal

Yesterday evening at the Yoga Farm, instead of the usual discourse following the evening mediation and chanting, there was a concert by Jai Uttal, a Grammy nominated kirtan musician. He was accompanied by Joss Jaffe on the percussions and Dr. Dennis Chernin. The event must have been well advertised as it was very well attended. The Yoga Farm was packed and there were many familiar faces that I have met over the years -- ex-staff, ex-students, etc. I've only seen the Yoga Farm this packed on events such as Thanksgiving.

Jai Uttal's singing filled the room with a lively energy. The format of the songs was call and response. Between songs, he'd tell us stories from Hindu mythology such as the story of Hanuman. At one point, he was in the middle of a story at a really interesting part of the plot and he asked "Should I finish the story or should I sing?" The crowd was unanimous -- "Sing!", they chorused. On the way out, I bought one of his CDs, but I found that it is really not possible to capture the energy of the moment in a recording.