English: Logo of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Category:Goldman Sachs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Whilst this news is not new, this article is well worth reading – it provides some amazing detail. Check it out!
via How Goldman Sachs Profited From the Greek Debt Crisis | The Nation.
According to the article, Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, made EUR600 million for helping Greece to window dress borrowings. It seems the swap instruments were the wrong bet after the 9/11 attacks caused bond yields to crash. By 2005, Greece owed double the original debt. Another interesting twist is that the deal was restructured in 2005 by the managing director of Goldman’s international division – this was Mario Draghi, the current head of the ECB. It’s the ECB that is providing massive financial support for Greece’s banks so that they can open next Monday.
It all seems a bit incestuous. Remember thet a large part of the first two Greek bailouts went to helping large French and German banks, rather than to help Greece rebuild her economy.
Perhaps Greece really is a special case and deserves some extra help?
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
The Greek Government and its advisors chose to submit bogus figures prior to attempting to enter the Euro.
They used Goldman Sachs to massage those figures and create the business case for Euro entry.
Greece is, as Dr Alf says, a “special case” in that both its Government and Goldman Sachs perpetrated what many would allege is in simple language a ‘fraud’.
However, the matter does not end there because the other EU Governments did not perform relevant “due diligence” and thus permitted the fraud to occur. They knew, or should have known, what was going on but instead of putting a stop to it they encouraged what was happening, reasoning that EU taxpayers would foot the bill if things went wrong, such is the contempt these taxpayers are held in by those in power.
Behaviour in the private sector of this nature would see Financial Directors and indeed whole boards indicted for fraud or indeed struck off by Companies House in disgrace.
Goldman Sachs meanwhile argue that they were operating within the rules prevalent at the time.