Greece Suing U.S. Banks for Causing Crisis?
Greek prime minister George Papandreou was on Fareed Zakaria GPS yesterday said he "wouldn't rule out" the possibility of Greece suing U.S. banks for their role in the crisis. (http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-15/gree…)
Does anyone else think this is ridiculous??
Greece took on an absurd amount of debt to make their deficit spending possible, and they basically committed fraud by hiring GS to engineer complex products that allowed them to hide how much debt they really had. This allowed them to keep borrowing and spending like maniacs.
Then a global economic crisis hits, their tourism industry cash cow dries up along with the rest of their economy, and they find themselves SOL in regards to paying off all that debt they took on. And now they're crying about it? Idiots should have seen it coming when they borrowed billions of Euros to feed their God-damn socialist ambitions.
The fact that they want to blame all of this on banks in the U.S. is ridiculous to me. It's their own freakin' fault, for God's sake. Try not borrowing so much money next time.
I agree 100%.
What Greece did is all their own doing. They made their bed, it's time for them to lay in it.
Pretty funny. They'll do anything to take the focus off themselves. Easily the most hated nation in the EU right now.
Goldman was absolutely complicit in the Greek shell game but, in typical Goldman style, never violated a single letter of the law while they were gang raping the spirit of the law. Game, set, match Goldman.
Haha nice Edumundo.
If the EU really hated Investment Banks they would have let Greece Default so all the Banks that took advantage of Greece's stupidity and lack of due diligence would have lost a Millions of dollars.
The interesting thing is, like with the SEC Goldman Case, it's not about the letter of the law but about Ethics, and technically I don't have to sue someone in Civil Court because they broke the law, I can sue them if they legitimately acted in bad faith when doing business with me.
I can just see Loyd Blankefein and Papandreuo on Judge Judy now...I mean this is what Greece sounds like, some 15 year old who bought a car on Craigslist for 2,000 dollars that broke down with-in a week.
Beef, completely agree. If Greek's treasury didnt do due diligence - I dont feel bad that the country's finances are going to shit.
At least they've moved away from sending James Bond after them
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/02/15/149066/the-spanish-inquisiti…
I never did trust Greece.
Here is the problem with Greece, it spends about 20 times more than it takes in and they are deep in debt. They need around 100 billion Euros immediately to pay off the bond holders this month. As they have joined the euro and don't have their own money they cannot print their way out of this mess like the UK and USA have done. Ten year Greek bonds yield over 12% and now the Germans are willing to lend Greece the money but are demanding the government slash public spending. This means they have to fire workers and cut salaries by 30%. The Greek public is simply not accepting this and are taking to the streets and going on strikes. The root of this major problem is European laziness. In most of Europe if you don't have a job you will get 1000 Euros to just sit on your ass every month! Greece is certainly no innovator like Germany and the USA.
Another thing irritating the EU is that the constant downgrade of European debt by the American rating agencies. I have no idea why the market believes these crooked agencies anyway. They used to rate the mortgage backed securities triple AAA+ and look what happened to that toxic crap. Plus the EU has repeatedly told the agencies that Europe is in far more better shape than the USA. Why isn't the USA debts downgraded. After all they have over 4 trillion deficit and Europe simply has more reserves and more money and less debt and yet the ratings agencies continue to attack Europe. The ratings agencies work hand in hand with hedge funds and they are probably paid a lot of money to downgrade debt so speculators can short European bonds and the Euro. Just remember the EUR/USD has fallen 700 pips in one week! If you were short from 1.3400 you have made millions if you are a hedge fund.
How this plays for the Euro? The Euro is massively oversold both in the short term and in the long term, I mean it is at all time record shorts and hedge funds want to essentially bankrupt the euro. They want to keep shorting it till it goes below 1.00 and they want to short sell all European debt. This is classic Speculators VS the EU. Similarly to what happened with the Bank of England VS George Soros, we know who won that battle but this time it is very different. The EU has plenty of money, this is not the UK and and with the market so short eur/usd I think the Euro simply has to rally from these levels.
This is why I am so bullish on Asia. While I must admit Asia definitely lacks innovation the society is extremely hardworking and don't depend on government handouts or bailouts for that matter.
The US will only go so far in its lambasting of BB's like Goldman, mainly because Goldman is a baseball-playing, Mcdonalds-eating American institution, and Greece is FUCKING GREECE.
Look at Greece at the street level: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8662366.stm
Not surprising its leaders are using strong language.
these people are pathetic
they brought it upon themselves- their government borrowing heavily to support their lazy, unproductive lifestyles. It's a country that relies on tourism and produces no meaningful goods or services. It's also essentially a welfare state- I remember hearing on NPR (yes, I listen to talk sometimes) that greek government employees get paid based on a 14 month year. now that austerity measures need to be implemented, these lazy, piece of shit, downy growth-on-the-upper lip mediterraneans are upset that they have to be paid based on a 12 month year. Kick greece out of the EU if you ask me-pedophilia,homosexuality and fraternity symbols, that's the only lasting mark Greek culture has left on the world anyways.
HAHA! Harsh but true.
gang raping the spirit of the laws is a very concise and rather eloquent way of phrasing GS
gang raping the spirit of the laws is a very concise and rather eloquent way of phrasing GS
Greece never should have joined the Euro in the first place. By joining the Eurozone, Greece joined a currency that was too strong for its economy. Because of this, Greece had to run a current account deficit to import the things it needs (from Germany in particular). In order to fund these massive import imbalances, Greece needed to borrow from abroad
I explained the situation to my wife last night and she had a good grasp of the situation:
"Sounds like suing McDonalds for making you fat..."
Can we take our part of bailout package back? They are almost as loyal as the French...
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