Some Greeks Fear Government Is Selling Nation

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By RACHEL DONADIO and STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: June 22, 2011

ATHENS — They are the crown jewels of Greece’s socialist state, and they are now likely to go to the highest bidder: the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki; prime Mediterranean real estate; the national lottery; Greek Telecom; the postal bank and the national railway system.

And then comes the mandated deeper round of austerity measures, which will slash the wages of police officers, firefighters and other state workers who are protesting in Athens, and raise the taxes of citizens already inflamed by a recession-plagued economy and soaring joblessness.

After winning a pivotal confidence vote on his new cabinet on Tuesday, Prime Minister George Papandreou now has an even tougher task: to carry out a radical remedy of forced auctions and fiscal austerity for a sickened economy already in a deep slump.

The European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, known as the “troika,” say that is the only way out for a heavily indebted Greece, while some economists say the program resembles medieval bloodletting — a dose of pain highly unlikely to revive the patient.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/world/europe/23greece.html

The theft continues.Selling Greece by the euro...

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1. Critical point in article:

The Greeks have already reduced their deficit by five percentage points of the gross domestic product, “unprecedented cuts in a modern economy,” Mr. Tilford said. “But the cuts have had a much stronger negative impact on the economy than the troika imagined, and fiscal austerity has pushed the economy deep into recession. Debt can only be paid out of income, and that means growth.”

Not that our leadership is listening, either.

[blindpig]

2. The Troika doesn't care.

Just like Wall Street, they want the money. But I think there is more to it than that, the ruling class wishes to roll back what improvements to society, however modest, have been obtained by bitter struggle over the last century, that stuff gets in the way of maximizing profit.