Monday, January 30, 2012

'Goldman Sachs cooked Greece books'

Press TV has interviewed Max Keiser, economic expert from Paris in a discussion that explains how Greece got into the financial mess that it's in and talks about the lack of enforcement of banking regulation and accountability of bankers and why that is. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.




Press TV: You talked about regulations, that there need to be more regulations - Can you expand on that? What needs to happen, exactly?

Keiser: There needs to be enforcement of regulations. There are regulations in place, but none of the banks obey the rules; they don't obey the regulations and there's nobody really enforcing the regulations.

So, this is a problem, it's called 'moral hazard'. If you can get away with, as Goldman Sachs did, by cooking the books of Greece to join the Euro and taking 300 million dollars in fees to commit that fraud and there is no penalty then there is no reason not to continue to commit these frauds as they're doing today along with those other banks like JP Morgan.

So, we need some enforcement of those regulations that are on the books, but unfortunately the regulators are in the pockets of the politicians. In the US, Barak Obama is supported by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. In the UK, David Cameron is supported by HSBC, Barclays and the City of London and the speculators. And in the European Zone we have the same thing happening in European banks who are controlling the bankers as well.

I would like to add that as bad as the situation in Greece looks, I would still like to point out that the US dollar is in a lot worse shape and is really going to suffer catastrophically before the Euro does. The Euro is still, relative to the dollar, in pretty good shape.

The capitalist system is the best system we could have?

Well, I would differ with the thought that the banks are not the root of the problem. Yes, it's true it is a global problem. Greece is not a one-off, we are seeing the problem in every country in the world because the globe's central banks now are in possession of 15 trillion dollars of toxic debts according to the Wall Street Journal as a result of the inability to perform as viable legitimate banking institutions that should have gotten a handle on this many years ago.

But because they are essentially corrupt and unregulated and committing acts of larceny, we have this global problem, which is created by global banks, perpetrated by global banks for the profit of the bankers. And this is not in question - everyone understands this from the Financial Times to the economist William Black of the US who put 1,500 bankers in jail in the 1980s. Nobody disputes this. Anyone who still thinks bankers are not the problem are on the payroll of the bank or are just completely uninformed.

No comments: