Posted on 02/14/2010 4:07:25 AM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
P!
What do you mean, implicated? They’re just providing the services that the customers are looking to buy.
Same thing can be said about subprimes, and AIG's CDS. It is the nature of transaction which matters. Complicit in the arrangement of hiding debts and overleveraging.
enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.We need rules I tell ya gotta have rules./s
and we should believe the New York Times because.... ???
Der Spiegel: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
It has become fashionable to use free economy and anti-liberal sentiment as a cover for (usually pro-liberal) financial oligarchy's misdeed.
Greece Outlaws Cash Transactions Above 1500 Euros, Unveils New Taxes
Oh, boy...
...because in this case it is correct.
Honestly, they have a HUGE tax evasion problem out there. The whole southern europe is culturally predisposed against paying any kind of taxes at all, and noone has any qualms commiting blatant tax evasion crimes that people go to prison over here. The inept governments have had very little success clamping down on it. Heck in some places they advertise on billboards “please pay your taxes, it pays for the schools and hospitals”.
Has a democratic country done this before, made transactions above a certain amount illegal, anyone recall?
....cash transactions....
What do you mean, implicated? They’re just providing the services that the customers are looking to buy.........
Same as meth and crack dealers
Maybe it’s just me, but I find what Greece has just done frickin’ scary....
You have been asleep
The Goldman Sachs/Greece connection is all over the news. Not just the NY Times.
I’m not up to speed I guess, I don’t trust the
New York Times to tell me what time it is much
less news and events of the world... sorry
Pinch should just go eat a cr_p sandwich.. there I said it.
Maybe southern Europe needs to switch over to a vastly superior and cheap to implement taxation system like this:
I'm surprised somebody in Europe hasn't read this book and figured out that by no longer taxing the process of earning money, the local economy would literally rocket upward because you attract foreign companies to set up operations in your country. Mind you, Switzerland won't like this because it would kill much of their offshore financial center banking business, though.
According to recent Chicago Trib article the following debt exists as a percent of GDP:
Japan Iceland Italy Greece Belgium
197% 145% 127% 123% 105%
France US Canada Germany
92% 86% 82% 92%
How bad off are we? I duno. How bad off is everyone else? The same or worse. Possible solutions? World war?
How do you get a planet full of people to pull their head out of their ass?
Do you know where I can get a fiddle for the impending fire?
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