MATT TAIBI: Just to clarify, since I had a few queries last night: when I said that the Greek situation was similar to Jefferson County, what I meant was that both deals involved governments getting into complex swap deals in order to mask current debt problems and/or push them into the future. Obviously the specifics were different (JeffCo was interest rate swaps, Greece was cross currency swaps), but the basic idea was similar, with similar results, i.e. both deals eventually blew up on politicians who inherited the messes created by predecessors in conjunction with unscrupulous investment banks.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/taibbi-joins-yves-smith-on-moyers-20120625#ixzz1yuZm0YwG