Did Goldman Sachs Help Britain Hide Its Debts Too?

Much noise this morning surrounding the news that Goldman Sachs (and a number of other banks) allegedly helped Greece to hide the full scale of its ballooning government debts through financial jiggery-pokery over the past decade or so. Eurostat has now demanded an explanation from the Greeks for $1bn of currency swaps it says it was unaware of (though Greece seems to be insisting the authorities did know).

So, the obvious question goes, what about the UK? Did Britain hide its debts? Was Goldman Sachs involved? Should we panic?

To which the answers, respectively, are: yes, yes and no. Britain has been finding various ways to hide its debt off its balance sheet for years; Goldman Sachs was one of the prime movers in this industry, through its infrastructure arm; but the fact is we (and by extension, one presumes, investors) have known about this for quite some time. The chief modus operandi here was the private finance initiative, something which helped the Government remove just south of £50bn from the official balance sheet. Goldman was a big player in the industry. But let’s not get carried away by vampire squid criticism here – it was one of many players in a well-established industry.'

Read more...