Greece for sale!

FluffyMcDeath

FluffyMcDeath

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To be allowed to borrow more money from their masters in Europe, the Greeks must sell their country according to [url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7b4829a-85a1-11e0-ae32-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1Nscf2SyY]FT.comhttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7b4829a-85a1-11e0-ae32-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1Nscf2SyY[/url]. (subscription required).

Government would immediately proceed with sale of stakes in OTE Telekom, Postbank, the ports of Athens and Thessaloniki, and the Thessaloniki water company “to frontload its ambitious privatisation programme”, Mr Papaconstantinou said.​
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Here is the classic ridiculous privatization ploy that has left many of the worlds countries (and their "citizens") owned by the banks. For a state asset to be sellable it has to have profitability which means that states end up selling all the assets that they COULD use to pay off loans. The more assets they sell off the harder it is to pay the loans until the only thing the states have left is the citizens and their ability to pay taxes.​
The Greeks have to tell Europe to get lost and return to using the Drachma. If they submit to these demands they will never get out from under the European boot.​
 
Looks like I picked a bad time to give up credit cards.
 
Canada didn't slide into the abyss when it sold off it's crown corporations (CBC, Petro-Canada, HBC, etc), but it's the end of the world for Greece? The way I see it, Greece should have done this decades ago. Governments shouldn't be running phone companies and shipping ports anyway. Greece should have done this decades ago, and had they done so they would probably be in a far more solid position today. Better late then never.
 
Glaucus said:
Canada didn't slide into the abyss when it sold off it's crown corporations (CBC, Petro-Canada, HBC, etc),
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CBC is still public, it hasn't been sold.

Petro-Canada, yes, sold to Suncor. Not a great idea - we'll never get it back and the Government has lost revenue - and people pay more than they should. Hey, profits gotta come from somewhere - they come from you.

HBC? That was NEVER public. Hudson's Bay Company was established before Canada as a foreign owned corporation to exploit the territory. While it was never owned by the government of Canada it did function as the government of the region working on behalf of it's British owners.

The way I see it, Greece should have done this decades ago. Governments shouldn't be running phone companies and shipping ports anyway.
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Those are precisely the sorts of things governments SHOULD be running. They are vital civilian infrastructure and should be owned by and under the control of the citizenry.

Countries need to think about the long term. While a company will think quarter by quarter and maybe if they are forward looking they will think in 5 years, countries need to think in terms of centuries. Selling all that you have to pay a debt may be the thing to do if you are a single person with no kids but not if you plan to exist for a long time. It's as pointless as selling your house to someone else so that you can pay off the mortgage - because you still need somewhere to live so what are you going to do? You need to rent the house back but now you are still paying the mortgage but for someone else and you will never own the house again.

Or, it's like selling your job to someone else to pay off part of a debt. Now how will you pay off the rest?

Imagine if the Government of Canada sold off all its land to the US to pay off a huge debt (hypothetical). Now, where would you live? How would we grow food? Transferring the ownership of your country to small groups of usually foreign private individuals does NOT preserve your independence - it gives it away.
 
As to whether Canada has slid, we are in a much more precarious position now than we were back in the 80's. Not only have we lost sovereignty, but we have lost a lot of our industry too - now owned by foreigners - which means they get to tell our government what to do far more than we do.
 
You can see the devastation this has caused all over Africa, in order to secure loans from the IMF mostly. I remember one case vaguely where an African country sold off it's railway network - the core of it's entire private economy, for peanuts. The company who bought it then ripped up all of the track and sold the metal on for scrap. You can pretty much guess at the result of that.
 
Ok, so I should have put more thought into the examples I picked. You're right about CBC and HBC, not sure what I was thinking. But AirCanada, CNR and Manitoba Telephone System (MTS, now Allstream) are examples of crown corps going private.

Those are precisely the sorts of things governments SHOULD be running. They are vital civilian infrastructure and should be owned by and under the control of the citizenry.
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Sorry, can't say I agree with that. The government should be regulator, and regulating an industry it's actively competing in is a conflict of interest. I'm glad AirCanada is not run by the government. The issue of revenue isn't the strongest deciding factor.

Countries need to think about the long term. While a company will think quarter by quarter and maybe if they are forward looking they will think in 5 years, countries need to think in terms of centuries. Selling all that you have to pay a debt may be the thing to do if you are a single person with no kids but not if you plan to exist for a long time.
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It's a nice little analogy but it completely misses the point where the government makes the bulk of it's money by skimming off the economy (aka, taxes). A strong economy leads to increased revenue. Selling off a telephone company also has the effect of breaking up a monopoly and bringing in competition, thus at the very least diversifying your economy. This isn't what I call short term gains at all. I don't believe Greece's plan to sell off the state owned phone company is done purely for short term gain.

It's as pointless as selling your house to someone else so that you can pay off the mortgage - because you still need somewhere to live so what are you going to do?
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Except it's not that simple. We're talking about a government who will manage to make money off that house even when it doesn't own it. A better analogy for the situation is: someone who's scared to sell a rental property to pay off some debt, even though they own 10 other rental properties along with their own residence.

Transferring the ownership of your country to small groups of usually foreign private individuals does NOT preserve your independence - it gives it away.
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Independence can be preserved. Canada is a great example there. How many US based telecos are there in Canada? None that I'm aware of, and that's because of strong government regulations that mandate the owners of such companies have to be mostly (or entirely?) Canadian. Telus, Rogers, Bell, etc, all Canadian (and all bastards, but that's a different issue - I actually would welcome some competition in that sector and I couldn't care less where they were based out of).
 
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