Wall St Road Trip to Greece Brings Meltdown Abroad

Today's headlines are another case in point, showing how a lack of transparency and regulation in finance has led the world to the brink of economic disaster. Turns out that Greece had a little help getting to the point of fiscal catastrophe—from Goldman Sachs:

As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.

Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint... a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.

The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards...