The banksters bet on bankruptcy

[Hannah Bell]

Petrino DiLeo explains how Goldman Sachs and other major banks set the stage for the financial crisis in Greece--and then figured out how to make money off it.


AS SPECULATION swirls as to whether the European Union (EU) or the International Monetary Fund will bail out Greece--a deal that in either case would stipulate crippling austerity measures on Greek workers--questions are emerging about the role that large banks played in making the crisis worse, and then profiting off it.

Specifically, the question is whether the banksters hushed up the scale of Greece's debt situation, and then used that inside information to speculate on a potential default.

Goldman Sachs is at the center of the scrutiny. Recent reports show that the firm consulted Greece as far back as 2000 on ways to take on more debt--and then hide it by packaging the liabilities into complex securities that were then counted as assets. It's the same kind of financial trickery that contributed to the massive housing boom and bust in the U.S...

And if that's not bad enough, it seems that Goldman used its insider knowledge of Greece's precarious financial situation to bet on a potential default by Greece. Thanks to its complicated financial maneuvers, the super-bank stands to make a killing in the event Greece defaults or needs to be bailed out.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/03/03/banksters-bet-on-bankruptcy