Oh no, stop me before I ruin another country for profit.

Goldman Helped Greece Disguise Deficit. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/02/goldman-helped-greece-disguise-deficit.html

Also, I forget where I read it, but Greece's Onassis-type ultra wealthy are a bunch of tax cheats. The number of Greeks who reported incomes over $100,000 (or perhaps euros?) was something ridiculous, like 3,000-15,000 in a nation of millions.

Not only that, but they've been shifting their money out of the country to the tune of several tens of billions of Euros over the past few months. Where are they shifting them to, inquiring minds might wonder? UBS and Credit Suisse accounts?

Wonder when UBS and Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs downgrade Greek debt, and who's hedged against that? Sort of like AIG?

Now they're trying to stick it to Greek public sector workers and German taxpayers. But it would be quite impossible to raise taxes on the ultrawealthy, or track the billions they're shipping out of the country into foreign banks and tax havens.

Sound familiar? Worked in America. Now we're getting greased about our "unsustainable budget deficits" and "unsupportable public sector labor market" with the same type of agitprop we got about Iraq.

I guess Obama's going to have to get rid of Social Security so we can have world war in perpetuity.

... by German taxpayers would severely anger my fellow countrymen. German workers accepted cuts and only modest wage increases over the last decade. Loans to Greece will be grudgingly accepted - freebies on the other hand would be a major liability for any German government. They'd get severely punished for that at the polls.

Also keep in mind that Greece fraudulently hid their debt to join the union as well as to escape sanctions. Of course wherever there is massive financial fraud - as Jonathryn pointed out - Goldman and Sachs is part of the action.

Mostly the EU is just a collection of states. The federal budget is tiny compared to the US budget and about 50% of it consists of agricultural subsidizes ...

But unlike in the USA, the member states can rather easily change their taxation policies. Such a mess state like California is unlikely.

Greece, by the way, doesn't collect 30% of its taxes. Why to give money before they start to obey their own laws in Greece?

The currency union makes possible for Greek private sector to borrow money cheaply when the state can't.

_{-- Do you feel bad for Obama? He’s the president — he kind of asked for it.}

At least here a problem is that short term budgets are financed from volatile tax sources and long term budgets from stable sources. In California they went a rather long way relying on a volatile real estate tax in their financing.

_{-- Do you feel bad for Obama? He’s the president — he kind of asked for it.}

Was the weak sister that allowed the bankers to infect the European monetary system. Now they've got everything boiling up to a crisis point with Italy, Spain, Portuagal, Ireland.

The German press has been screaming bloody murder, as I understand it, pointing to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as the facilitators of the massive off-balance sheet shenanigans that the previous Greek administrations had used, along with .

Seems to me that rather than go to the IMF, rather than put up all their public works and put a toll on every road, that Greece should just default. Burn the creditors who made deals with politicians from another party and in another decade. Burn the Euro if need be. Spurn the IMF. It'd be better to struggle for a while than be placed in a countrywide debt peonage.