(a) "Sure it was scummy, but it wasn't technically illegal when we did them" and (b) "others did it too".
How do Mr. Corrigan and his kind live with themselves? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8529111.stm ---------------------------------------snip A Goldman Sachs boss has defended the bank's 2001 debt-swap deal with Greece that may have allowed the country to mask the extent of its debt woes. [....] Speaking before the UK's Treasury Committee of MPs, Mr Corrigan said the deal was far from unique at the time. "It is true that a family of currency swaps that were entered into jointly by Greece and Goldman Sachs were of a nature that they did produce a small, but not insignificant reduction in Greece's deficit and debt," he said. "They were very much consistent and comparable with the standards and behaviour of measurements used by the European Community [at the time]." Mr Corrigan added that since EU rules on the matter were modified in 2007, it suggested they "were more liberal than they could have been back in 2001". He added that such currency swaps at the time were "not limited to Goldman Sachs and Greece", but said he did not know which other banks or countries may have had similar deals in place. Greece's Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou also insisted last week that his country was not the only one using such financial arrangements back in 2001. He added that such deals had now "been made illegal, and Greece has not used them since". Mr Corrigan was giving evidence to the Treasury Committee as part of its enquiry into the global banking sector. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
