Throughout the eurozone crisis the EU has insisted that Greece carry out the impossible in order to stave off the inevitable.
The Financial Times, Lex, 29 June 2011
The obvious question, with an equally obvious answer, is, why? Who exactly benefits from this process, both in the meantime and in the longer term? Nobody in the financial world apparently expects the Greek assets currently put up for privatisation to raise more than a quarter of the sum officially required. So, it must be a planned softening-up process, preparing the way for even more politically unacceptable transfers of state assets to the private sector. Greece today, Portugal tomorrow: soon everyone's going to be doing it.
Our government here is clearly deeply sympathetic. The British of course pioneered this sort of thing decades ago, even without IMFs and ECBs to push them into it, although, to give her her due, Margaret Thatcher did believe the national assets would end up being owned by a nation of Sids rather than a select group of spivs. After cutting their teeth at home, British investment banks, financial wizards and ex-government functionaries turned their honest shillings showing Russians and eastern Europeans how to do it, so creating the wonderful oligarchs who keep our football clubs and newspapers alive today. Who said the public doesn't benefit?
