(FORTUNE Magazine) – Does the U.S. have a corruption problem? Transparency International, a global watchdog, recently released its tenth annual corruption perceptions index, a worldwide survey of businesspeople and country analysts, ranking each nation from most honest to least. Of the 146 countries included this year, the U.S. came in 17th. That's not so bad, given that the higher rankings tended to go to far smaller economies, like Finland and New Zealand. But the index focuses only on public-sector corruption--"the abuse of public office for private gain" --so Martha, Enron, and the like don't factor into the count. Still, the U.S. is far from the bottom, where extremely poor countries like Haiti are joined, notably, by oil-rich nations such as Nigeria, Azerbaijan, and Indonesia. Overall, it seems the world could use some work in the ethics department. One hundred six countries scored less than 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, and the average was a dismal 4.2. -- Oliver Ryan

No honest mistake

Public-sector corruption, on a scale of 1 to 10.

FORTUNE CHART / SOURCE: TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL