Every human being on the planet suffers from such rip-offs ……….

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/what-goldmans-conduct-reveals/?ref=business

The Matrix is currently being re-loaded - everywhere.

Greece has a national debt of around $400 billion. How much of this has been caused or due to GS? GS may be up to dodgy shenanigans all the time, but even they are not capable of creating a crisis of this proportion.

They are connected. Part of the present out of control financialization system - one follows the connections - and this is a simple one; if so bloody blatantly cancerous in its simplicity. Time for serfs and soveriegns to wise up on these rip-off equations. Greece, once again, is both particular and universal.

Successive corrupt and inept Greek governments is what caused their current problems, and there is now a systematic level of tax evasion or avoision in the country, as well as an almost completely broken pension entitlement system. To be honest, if Greece were a private company, it’d be pretty much insolvent and in danger of conducting reckless trading right now.

Taibbi has a bit more elegant a sharp bite alrite! This is just one of a large number of rip-off equations that these moguls subject us to - solely to their own ends. Gotta stop …

“Not that Goldman was personally at any risk. The bank might be taking all these hideous, completely irresponsible mortgages from beneath-gangster-status firms like Countrywide and selling them off to municipalities and pensioners — old people, for God’s sake — pretending the whole time that it wasn’t gradeD horseshit. But even as it was doing so, it was taking short positions in the same market, in essence betting against the same crap it was selling”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine/4

Not just wild sovereign stallions ………………. but also Financial Moguls … that need a bit of tough-taming medicine to bring them back into sense and reality ……….

“S.E.C. Accuses Goldman Sachs of Fraud on Mortgage Deals

Goldman Sachs, which emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis, was accused of securities fraud in a civil suit filed Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which claims the bank created and sold a mortgage investment that was secretly devised to fail.

The move marks the first time that regulators have taken action against a deal that helped investors capitalize on collapse of the housing market. Goldman itself profited by betting against the very mortgage investments that it sold to its customers.

http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na

Agree. Solidarity is a two-way street. For all EZ members, not just Greece. And yes, if a member continues to act recklessly - well, tough. Think this is the next level of Governance …

I think Peter Boone & Simon Johnson lay it out well here in relation to Portugal,

http://baselinescenario.com/2010/04/15/the-next-global-problem-portugal/

the obvious implication that even if the current illegal bailout proceeds it will simply not be affordable to bail out the other bigger players. Hence it’s fairly obvious.

“It is 50-50 whether the eurozone breaks up” - George Soros

Yes, there is an immediate problem in Greece that needs to be dealt with now but what we need is a proper lasting solution and not a fudge that has to be revisited again soon. There are lots of people criticising the proposals that have come from Germany - what proposals have those critics offered??? Is their position that the status quo is OK??

I suspect (having spoken to a couple of friends in Athens last week) that the Greek population think that the government have now made all the ‘adjustments’ that were needed. They have a very rude awakening coming their way. There may be trouble ahead….

The big question here is, is Greece capable of the structural reforms that are needed and which constitute their part of solidarity? I have my doubts.

Greece reaches for the bazooka.

Well argued.

This why in EU we need The ‘Solidarity Bond’ - the most valuable intangible bond of all if Europe is to figure itself out, prosper, and perhaps reinvent itself again. I’d pay a lot more than 5% for it; luckily enough at the mo noone can ever fully figure this bond out (but I wouldn’t put it past the Derivatives Club to be gambling with what they can sense of it right now - this form of gambling has to be banned in the EU). I’m for keeping up this momentum. Beck is perhaps a little harsh on Chancellor Merkel … but he gets his point on the dangers of a bubble in nationalism in certain areas, with social and economic consequences for the development of the whole. Politics is still politics. Here’s to Chancellor Merkel and Minister Lagarde taking a few hedgehammers to the ominous structures that allow these casinos that play with nations to operate.

As I’ve noted before, I would gladly have taken a few “faceless bureaucrats”, representatives of European deliberative democracy, from Brussels, Frankfurt, Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, etc. to mention a few, to cast both a general and a specialist eye on the welfare of the Irish citizenry and in the overall interests of the European Citizenry. Just look around here! Irrefutable. Ireland in Europe? Europe in Ireland? Both simultaneously. Ouzo anyone?

“If you have a bazooka in your pocket and people know it, you probably won’t have to use it.”

Shame it didn’t work out for Hank. (See: http://bit.ly/9ESxd8 )

I hope Mr Lenihan asks for some nice security on Ireland’s Eu 450 million cheque. Here’s a nice idea from German politicians: http://bit.ly/9Q93Pc

I write this in anticipation of the coming furor about faceless bureaucrats in Brussels and Frankfurt deciding our economic future. Our politicians have done such a good job of codding us that the electorate is likely to act in opposition to its own interests.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100004933/greece-dred-scott-and-the-american-civil-war/

So how will the parliments deal with it?

“LONDON (MarketWatch) — Greece moved a step closer to tapping a joint European-International Monetary Fund emergency aid program Thursday, requesting talks with the IMF after investors again fled Greek government bonds and pushed the government’s borrowing costs to potentially unsustainable levels.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bond-market-pushing-greece-toward-emergency-plan-2010-04-15

That also applies to Ireland. What most complain about is the loss of potential wealth, proving they do not deserve it in the first place, if ethics has a place in this. Reform the system. Stop the “who you know” crap that was at the centre of Iceland’s demise. Rent seeking is corruption.

Ciaran
I suggest it is politics. The Germans have many greedy voters… like Ireland. They have to appear to be reluctant, as they should be, but using a spade instead of a trowel?
Then the fiat currencies have to devalue. So every crisis becomes a drama!
Ireland is rich. Just ask FF!