Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I think Greece fudged their books pretty hard to get into the EU. They weren't financially healthy, they just pulled a Madoff.
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I was curious about the details of this, so I did a little reading and lo and behold....
...it was Goldman Sachs who helped Greece cook the books! ...and then got them hooked into the derivative scam....
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=asBNXSLtlN9E
http://articles.businessinsider.com/...currency-trade
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..._b_465134.html
Quote - "At the heart of the worldwide banking meltdown are those mysterious unregulated derivatives that Goldman and JPMorgan led the way in selling. But Greece's case did not involve the usual questionable mortgages packaged into derivatives with credit default swaps backing them up, but rather expected revenue on airport fees and other potential sources of the cashed-strapped government's future income."
"As The New York Times headlined it: "Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe's Crisis." The story described the scam succinctly: "As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere. ... Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country's liabilities.""
I don't know who should be thrown in jail first, .....the politicians who hide these debts from the public, the ratings/regulatory agencies, or the bankers starting with Blankfein and the rest of 'em at Goldman.