My Big Fat Wall Street Bankers

Posted on Feb 14, 2010

Flickr / World Economic Forum

Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, shown here at the 2009 World Economic Forum, led the banking team in Greece that tried to hide the country’s debt from European regulators.

The logic of global capitalism is everywhere. New investigations are showing that the same Wall Street tactics—and companies—that ushered our own economy to economic collapse have emerged to exacerbate Greece’s current financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs in particular has been accused of helping European countries like Greece to hide their debt from budget regulatory overseers. —JCL

The New York Times:

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.

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