Official portrait of United States Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner Español: Retrato oficial de Secretario del Tesoro de los Estados Unidos Timothy Geithner (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Goldman Sachs Headquarters, New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Dr Alf makes a good point. Europe and the UK are both behind the curve in deluding themselves into believing that if they talk things up enough everything will come right.
On the point about the Greeks, a child of six could see that with widespread property tax avoidance (nobody ever finishes the roof on their house or the roof of their business premises), productivity so low that it would make an English benefit recipient seem like a workhorse and Civil Servants retiring on full pension at the age of 38, that Greece was a hopeless case.
Dr Alf has said in other posts in earlier times that five important Greek families removed a lot of money out of the country and that this was the primary reason for Greece’s plight.
However, Greece does not make or sell anything that anyone wants, so other than relying on German tourists not enough was being done by that country to save itself.
Turning to Timothy Geithner, formerly of Goldman Sachs, he was the man who allegedly did not know the disposition of the $2.9 billion USD, given to Goldman Sachs as part of the bailout program, and the firm that advised the Greek Government on how best to present their shattered finances, was of course Goldman Sachs who as we were told by their CEO Lloyd Blankfein, “Do God’s work”.
Doubtless a different Goldman Sachs employee to Timothy Geithner provided this earlier advice and doubtless Mr Geithner knew nothing about this until the Europeans had decided to teach the Greeks and the rest of the PIIGS a harsh lesson.
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