Re: The 2011 Budget of the United State - Alice, you're not going to the moon!
Hmmmm...Maybe Wall Street shenanigans with Greece are causing U.S. taxpayers to help bail Greece out? From today's Casey Daily Dispatch:
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Are you unknowingly bailing out Greece?
It’s not out of the question, thinks Ron Paul.
Here’s what he had to say on the matter:
Greece is only the latest in a series of countries that have faced this type of crisis in recent memory. Not too long ago the same types of fears were mounting about Dubai, and before that, Iceland. Several other countries (Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Latvia) are approaching crisis levels with public debt as well. Many have strong ties to Goldman Sachs, and the case could easily be made that default could have serious implications for big US banking cartels. Considering the ties between the Fed and these big banks, it is not outlandish to wonder if the US taxpayer is secretly bailing out the entire world, country by country, even as our real unemployment tops 20 percent. Unless laws are changed to allow a complete and meaningful audit of the Federal Reserve, including its agreements with foreign central banks, we might never know if this is occurring or not.
Sounds kind of like conspiracy theorist rhetoric, huh?
Perhaps not so much. The strong ties to Goldman Sachs Paul alludes to are most certainly rooted in fact. Just last week The New York Times ran an article titled “Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis.”
To quote the article:
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.
The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.
It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.
So the link between Goldman Sachs and Greece is well established. And everyone knows of the revolving door between Goldman and the Federal Reserve. Paul’s concern probably seems more plausible now, doesn’t it? And he’s right, unless laws are changed to allow a complete and meaningful audit of the Federal Reserve, including its agreements with foreign central banks, we will never know if this is occurring or not.
