Sunday, February 14, 2010

Bombshell: Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Cover Up Its Huge Debt

NYT is out with a major story by Louise Story, Landon Thomas and Nelson D. Schwartz on how Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other investment banks have helped Greece hide the extent of its debt:
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.

It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.

Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street’s role in the world’s latest financial drama.

As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the 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.

In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.

Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country’s liabilities.

Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds.
Most alarming is the hint that this goes beyond Greece:
Such derivatives, which are not openly documented or disclosed, add to the uncertainty over how deep the troubles go in Greece and which other governments might have used similar off-balance sheet accounting.
Bottom line: It appears that Goldman Sachs has turned many governments throughout the world into Super-Enrons, with off-balance sheet shenanigans, financial sleight of hand and convoluted accounting. Governments generally don't need help in this kind of maneuvering, but Goldman with its collection of whiz kid derivative designers has taken the entire process to a new level. A new level so unique that it could very will collapse the financial structure of the manipulated world.

2 comments:

  1. The corporations/elite banks will own everything....Lord Jacob Rothschild is the dark master.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Default on your credit cards, taxes and mortgages. That'll stop the shit right in its tracks and kick the losses and debt straight back into their laps and balance sheets.

    ReplyDelete