Like I said in Part I, all analogies will collapse if pushed far enough. That still goes, so give me a break.
Say you are Goldman, and I am Sachs (or vice-versa). We own a bank. We have a rep for being able to solve anyone's financial problems. It is also well known that we are extremely risk averse, so our fees are high, and our profits must be assured.
Mr. Zorba comes to us having a real bad problem. He wants to join a very exclusive club whose members are all snobs of European descent. The people in the club don't think you're rich unless you hold Euros. The club has high admission standards, and requires potential members to prove that they have short-term debts of no more than 3% of their annual incomes, and long-term debt of no more than 60%. Zorba explains that he can't meet either standard, and he needs to put some cash on the books, because he wants to join the club real bad.
Zorba says he's heard that we helped his acquaintance, Salvatore, get into the club in the past. We can neither confirm or deny this, but we say that if Zorba gives us the ugly truth about his finances, we'll see what we can do.
Zorba's financial statement shows that he holds a lot of real estate, and recently bought a parking garage in Little Tokyo. To buy the business, he borrowed Yen. To buy real estate, he borrowed Dollars. Interest costs are eating him up.
We explain to Zorba that his interest expenses on his debt could be reduced if it were expressed in Euros, but while this would be good, he couldn't really put any cash on the books by a break-even transaction in the present spot currency market.
And so...
We suggest that we could pick out an historical exchange rate that would be quite favorable for him, and we could acquire his debt at that rate, paying him in Euros. But he couldn't tell anyone. This would give him the equivalent of $1 billion right away, and maybe $9 billion more in the long term. Of course, he'd have to pay us back with a balloon payment in 15 or 20 years. This sounds good to Zorba.
Then we go see an insurance agent named Otto. He charges us $200 million for a policy insuring us against Zorba's default on the $1 billion. Of course, Zorba has to pay for our credit risk. That would only be fair.
With Zorba's balance sheet now looking pretty good, he applies for admission into the club. He gets in, and is very happy.
Now all we have to do is sell Zorba's debt to somebody else, and, you know, "buyer beware". This won't be too tough, because, after all, he just got into a very exclusive club, and everyone in the world knows that to get in, your financial statement has to be in great shape. Besides, the "currency swap/loan" was off the books. He'll have to deal with all the deferred interest payments the best way he can, if he can. Not our problem. We got him in the club, and we're off the hook. Plus we made money.
This is basically how Goldman Sachs helped Greece get into the European Union by falsifying its balance sheet and concealing its true debt levels. Then they underwrote Greek debt and sold it, knowing it was shaky.
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