Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis(Goldman Sachs implicated again)

NYT ^ | 02/14/10 | LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

[TigerLikesRooster]

February 14, 2010

Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis

By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.

As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.

Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November — three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.

The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.

[TigerLikesRooster]

The first thing to do is to secure a place where you can play fiddle. It may be harder than getting a fiddle, because just about everywhere would be on fire.

[mewzilla]

Wow, check this out. From the there-are-none-so-blind side....

Don't laugh at Europe's woes. The travails facing Greece are also oursThe struggle to stop Greece from becoming a failed state and to make the euro work is one for all Europe, including Britain

[Wolfie]

They’re just providing the services that the customers are looking to buy.

Absolutely. Just like drug dealers. Consequences to society at large be damned...profit is king.

[jd777]

like casino operators.

[Travis McGee]

The global future is option two. What follows, I don't know. World war, global depression, an attempt to foist a new global central bank on us, with a single global fiat currency, a return to the gold standar....the field is wide open. But the fiat era is ending.

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."

-~~Ludwig Von Mises

[10thzodiac]

“Remember, democracy never lasts long,” said Adams. “It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

Added Jefferson, “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.” Madison agreed: “Democracy is the most vile form of government.”

Travis, we’re good for another 40-50 years before we go the way of the British Empire. We could pay our DEBT back double if we wanted too. Not. Those with the BIG GUNS make the rules (world). The good news is we won’t be here in 40-50 years. Well at least me anyways...

Aren’t you glad we are a Republic ?

[Travis McGee]

If we can keep it.

[April Lexington]

None of this is cheering me up one bit... booze in the hands of a drunk and debt in the hands of politicians...same result. To Washington, debt is free money and they never seem to understand that all of this stimulus money and public spending has to be paid back. Or... they know damn well it needs to be paid back and they are amassing it anyway to kill off our republic. WE MUST DISMANTLE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND RETURN POWER TO THE INDIVIDUAL STATES AND THE PEOPLE...

[April Lexington]

Bleak article. The socialist establishment is raping the productive class in a half*ssed attempt to cover over its profligate spending. Tax the productive class until they all move to China!

[CRBDeuce]

so Germany’s agenda is to throw Greece under the bus and the NYT agenda is to throw Goldman (and Sachs) under the bus (for Acorn and Obama)... so who’s complicit now? Ya know, bankers often are accused of ‘doing their job’! GS just does their job better than anyone else!

[TigerLikesRooster]

Yes, CountryWide did its job, and its customers were happy. Crack dealer does its job and crackhead is happy.

So following this tradition, you, GS, and others keep on doing your job. Let's see what the "god's work" leads to.

It is a form of 'Bust Out.' Taxpayers all over the world would have to foot the bill from this fallout in the end.

[TigerLikesRooster]

As for Greece and GS, both are deserved to be thrown under the bus just as Dems and Obama are.

[CRBDeuce]

The HUGE tax evasion problem in Greece...something like 40% don't pay taxes due, and 40% of the economy is 'under the table'. Gonna get them kicked out of the EU along with the other PIIGS as well. Especially if 40% of the currently paying countries stop paying as well! Of Course, the USA is nearing that cliff, with over half of the country on the take (instead of paying taxes, they're collecting from those that do... especially talking about gummit bureaucrats). Even if a gummit bureaucrat pays his taxes it's just going out of one pocket into the other...tough to claim productivity in that 'effort'!!

[10thzodiac]

One Problem Moving To China: Millions hungry - less arable land per capita than one of the poorest countries in the world - Bangladesh, plus if you’ve been to PRC you wouldn’t want to live there. China is its own ticking time bomb 1 billion 300 million and they keep screwing themselves away from the dinner table every nano-second.

[Gene Eric]

>> Consequences to society at large be damned...profit is king.

Yes, but profits for kings.

And let’s stop giving capitalism a bad name by labeling the array of shenanigans as “Crony Capitalism”. Subsidizing broken and corrupt systems with taxpayer funding is no form of capitalism.

[Erasmus]

Does Greece have a VAT?

That’s like the ‘Fair Tax,’ but with the added virtue of a characteristic European bureaucracy whose deleterious effects are (as always) out of proportion to its great size.

[Erasmus]

I think what zilla meant was that the productive activity will move to China, leaving the Greek formerly-productive individuals with nothing to do but to go down on the sinking ship along with their mooch-countrymen.

[Erasmus]

I might add that your point about China’s potentially explosive problems is sobering. If China blows up (economically and therefore politically), it will be a literally world-class cataclysm.

[Erasmus]

I just noticed that 10thzodiac was responding to you, not mewzilla, so it’s you that I meant to ping.

On rereading your post, maybe you actually were talking about productive Greek individuals physically moving to China.

My first interpretation of your post, however, seems the more likely scenario to me.

[cranked]

Goldman Sachs should be immediately torn apart and sold off. Oh wait.....half of Jack Squat’s folks are Goldman Sachs linked....oh wait, Goldman Sachs was one of Jack Squat’s largest contributors....my bad.