Matt Taibbi, "The No-Pay Movement"
by Matt Taibbi
Keiser in an interview basically says that the debts countries like Greece owe to banks like Goldman, Sachs for loans and rate swaps are illegitimate since they were criminal deals, made with the intent to cook Greece’s books and defraud the citizens of Greece out of their tax money. He therefore proposes that Greece should simply stiff Goldman for those obligations and that, furthermore, American banks should be expelled from the country while the government temporarily nationalizes its banking system and establishes its independence from the financial services industry.
I’m not sure I know enough about what the consequences of a plan like that would be to say whether this is feasible or not. But I think Keiser’s idea does underline an important point about the situation, which is that as powerful as these Wall Street banks may seem, they are also exquisitely vulnerable. Right now virtually all of them are dependent upon the government keeping accounting standards lax enough for all of them to claim to be functional businesses. It is generally accepted that if the major banks on Wall Street were forced to mark all of their assets to market tomorrow, they would all be either insolvent or close to it.
I think it’s an interesting question and would like to hear what knowledgeable people in the field have to say about it. But the big picture, to me, is that these companies are almost totally dependent not only upon the continued good faith of aggrieved debtors, but upon the government recognizing the (sometimes fraudulent) loans made to those debtors as fully performing. I’m waiting for some canny politician to use those two facts as a hammer to make them all get in line. Thoughts?"
- http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/04/06/the-no-pay-movement/
*Max Keiser interview, "They are literally stealing a hundred million dollars a day. Goldman Sachs is stealing every day on the floor of the exchange. They should be in the Hague, they should be taken on financial terrorism charges. They should all be thrown in jail" Well, at least one person says what he thinks...
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/max-keiser-goldman-sachs-are-scum.html
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