I would be more sympathetic to this argument except that: 1. The Greek government that engaged in this transaction was formed following a free and fair electio

I would be more sympathetic to this argument except that: 1. The Greek government that engaged in this transaction was formed following a free and fair election. The CCS was not some dictator's scam. 2. GS didn't screw their customers. If they screwed anyone, it was the buyer of the CCS, a Greek bank, who certainly should have known better. The net result of this trade was that the Greeks screwed themselves; if you think of the trade as a chemical reaction, GS was just a catalyst. 3. The other EU countries also have democratically elected governments that chose to participate in bailing out Greece rather than cutting it loose in the first place. Those same governments also deliberately overlooked not only sketchy off-balance-sheet stuff like this but also rampant overspending and excessive on-balance-sheet indebtedness by EU members both large and small over a period of many years. The only real sympathy I have is for the anti-EU minority across Europe who keep voting against these scams and keep getting stuck with the bill anyway. But that's the universal failure of democracy for you; it's not only the EU that suffers it.