Wow... Horrid spelling. Fingertip dyslexia, my apologies
Here's how G/S and the Wall Street predators operate.
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COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU Mother Jones magazine circa Feb 2007 reported on the activities of Mark Florian, Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs' Municipal finance division. According to the report, Florian was traveling to statehouses across the US to convince state officials that selling state assets would be "mutually beneficial." One of the scams involved selling state roads, then monetizing them via bonding----which would make billions per year for G/S until the end of time.
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HOW'S THAT G/S BONDING WORKING OUT FOR YOUR TOWN? Jefferson County, Alabama decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it.
Now Jefferson County is one of the most indebted municipal governments in US history, with a current debt of approximately $7,000 for each man, woman and child residing in the county. Two extremely controversial undertakings by the county account for the majority of this debt.
First was a massive overhaul of the county-owned sewer system, and second was a series of risky bond-swap agreements. Both have been scrutinized by federal prosecutors, with several former county officials convicted of bribery and corruption. In 1995, Jefferson County entered into a consent decree with the EPA regarding sewer overflows into the Cahaba River watershed.
A total of $3.2 billion of new construction was subsequently contracted, both to comply with the consent decree and to expand the system to newly-developing areas and increase the number of ratepayers financing the construction. Much of this work was awarded to inexperienced companies, many of which have since been convicted of bribery, along with several county officials.
A series of controversial interest rate swaps, initiated in 2002 and 2003 by former Commission President Larry Langford (removed as the mayor of Birmingham after his conviction, were intended to lower interest payments, but have, in fact, had the opposite effect, increasing the county's indebtedness to the point that officials have issued formal statements doubting the county's ability to meet its financial obligations. The bond swaps are at the center of an investigation by the SEC.
In late Feb 2008 Standard & Poor’s lowered the rating of Jefferson County bonds to “junk” status. In early March 2008, Moody's followed suit and indicated that it would also review the county's ability to meet other bond obligations.
On March 7, 2008, Jefferson County failed to post $184 million collateral as required under its sewer bond agreements, thereby moving into technical default.......it is likely the county would enter into bankruptcy, which would result in one of the larger municipal bankruptcies in American history.”