And so the Greek government has gone on the offensive now with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou saying Greece is looking at suing the US banks which got the country into so much trouble. Banks, for example, like Goldman Sachs which helped create the financial crisis by showing the Greek government how to hide its debt.
Christoph Schwennicke in Der Spiegel makes the point that bankers, like the oil company executives behind the oil slick now swamping the entire southern coast of the US, need to be made accountable. "To be clear, the principal blame for the financial crisis lies with those states – and Greece, in particular – that have been driven into or toward the crisis by their own inefficiency and corruption,'' Schwennicke writes. "At the same time, it's also true that speculators working at major banks around the world swarmed these ailing countries and downright harried them to death. Like gamblers at a horserace, they put wagers down on Greece, Spain and Portugal — in this case, betting that the horse would stumble mid-way through the race. In essence, they bet against the euro. In fact, the reasons for having the winners of this game help shoulder the costs brought on by its consequences are even more compelling than they are in the case of the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico."
Still, it's a strange situation. The Greeks are talking about suing the American banks, not the European ones, presumably because the American banks have more money (because they have been funded by US taxpayers).
So here we have the US helping to bail out a sovereign nation through the International Monetary Fund which is in turn planning to sue sections of the US financial services sector, instead of repaying its debts. The Greek economy has been keeping afloat for years on other people's money and it's not exactly like they told the banks to go away. At the same time, however, those investment banks played a role in the meltdown now engulfing Europe and threatening the global economy. They need to be brought to account.
This crisis is becoming more surreal by the day.
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