<story><title>Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Scea91</author><text>Didn&amp;#x27;t Greece falsify data for years? That would explain the AAA ratings.</text></item><item><author>osullivj</author><text>&amp;quot;The first revelation is that not only was Greece bankrupt in 2010 when the EU bailed it out, and that the bailout was designed to save the French and German banks, but that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy knew this; and they knew it would be a disaster.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The treasury departments of the French and German banks had loaded up on GGBs - Greek Govt Bonds because they yielded more basis points than eg German Govt bonds, but also had AAA rating. The AAA was culpable negligence by Moodys, S&amp;amp;P, Fitch rating agencies. Ignoring the credit quality implication of the discount built into the market price of the GGBs was culpable negligence on the part of the treasurers at the French and German banks. Yes, the Greek Govt was culpable too. But the Greek people are bearing years of economic pain while the French and German banks and the ratings agencies have got off scot free because Merkel &amp;amp; Schauble put the fix in and parked the dodgy GGBs in the ECB.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ravingraven</author><text>It borders on the impossible to fake data on this scale and in such amounts. The deficit forecast for 2009 (the year the crisis started) was 3.7 which got revised to 12.5 percent at the end of that year. Any sufficiently large institution or cooperation that wanted to have access to the real data, could have done so with minimal effort, you can&amp;#x27;t hide a 10% budget gap.&lt;p&gt;The false data Greece reported to get into the Eurozone was an open secret, I vividly remember it being talked about extensively in Greek cafes after 2001.</text></comment>
<story><title>Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Scea91</author><text>Didn&amp;#x27;t Greece falsify data for years? That would explain the AAA ratings.</text></item><item><author>osullivj</author><text>&amp;quot;The first revelation is that not only was Greece bankrupt in 2010 when the EU bailed it out, and that the bailout was designed to save the French and German banks, but that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy knew this; and they knew it would be a disaster.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The treasury departments of the French and German banks had loaded up on GGBs - Greek Govt Bonds because they yielded more basis points than eg German Govt bonds, but also had AAA rating. The AAA was culpable negligence by Moodys, S&amp;amp;P, Fitch rating agencies. Ignoring the credit quality implication of the discount built into the market price of the GGBs was culpable negligence on the part of the treasurers at the French and German banks. Yes, the Greek Govt was culpable too. But the Greek people are bearing years of economic pain while the French and German banks and the ratings agencies have got off scot free because Merkel &amp;amp; Schauble put the fix in and parked the dodgy GGBs in the ECB.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cafard</author><text>Were the banks truly deceived, or just hoping that they could cash in and be bailed out?</text></comment>