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Comment by TheAlan | Hacker News Reader

The raping of Greece's assets will now begin. EVERYTHING will get privatized, just like a third-world country.

The privatization of Germany in the 90s was so bad that it has now one of the strongest economies and enough money for Greece. And obviously became a third world country.

My guess is that a large-scale privatization in Greece would look more like Eastern Europe's privatizations than like Germany's, i.e. firesale sales to well-connected businessmen.

I think it did work for Poland. The only economy in the EU that did not shrink during the financial crisis.

There's nothing wrong with privatizing i.e. selling to the highest bidder.

The real "raping of Greece"s assets" will be that IMF/EU will impose both buyers and price. They'll call it privatization maybe, but it won't be one.

Yes, that is what I believe too.

Independently of who is going to benefit from what will happen from now on, the Greek government will be forced sell everything that belongs to the Greek people at ridiculously cheap amounts just to pay back the loans...

It has happened before, everywhere that IMF went...

Well, sure. Greece is a third-world country. And when you owe more than you can pay you have to cough up some assets.

Privatizing too much too quickly to pay off loans is analogous to chopping off limbs when you can't pay the mob. It makes the people owed money feel better, but means that they will never really get paid back, because the debtor can no longer function.

I do not agree with you. As far as I know, the loans did not involve collateral ( at least not until now ), so investors are just entitled profits from interest and have no claim on assets.

I don't know if Greece is a third-world country, but definitely the Greek government managed this crisis are such, so it looks like Greece is going to share their fate.

Greece looks First-world to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

Meh. Outdated definition.

I was in Greece a few months ago. It's definitely not a third-world country, but it 'aint no Switzerland either.

Greece is a sovereign borrower not subject to asset seizure. Their debt is not collateralized.

You are thinking too literally.

http://www.google.com.au/search?&q=greece+austerity+priv...

Corriere della Sera (an Italian newspaper) claimed that Finland wanted the Acropolis of Athens as collateral for their part of the loan, so yeah, you can actually ask for way too much.

Good luck with that. Half the Acropolis has been in London for the past two centuries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles)

If only they would.

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