'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).

The original story about Goldman’s involvement appeared in Der Spiegel last week (though the theme has been the subject of investigation by the excellent euro blog A Fistful of Euros for some time), and over the weekend the New York Times produced an excellent feature filling in the gaps. One of the more intriguing lines from that latter piece says: “Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.”

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

Read more: Et Tu London: Goldman Sachs Helped Britain Hide Debt