“Big business” is, by default, greedy and voracious and quite often it is not satisfied by reasonable profits. Some do not hesitate to strangle the Markets in order to document huge profits in their books.
Even worse: they are not content with their legal profits from transaction in the international stock exchanges etc… Often, the international gamblers set things up so that they can generate super-profits by milking States and subverting the social fabric.
After this “leftist” introduction, let us see what is going on in pour country – and how ultimately the greed of foreign “investors” will possibly save our “silverware” from foreign raids.
The majority of people seem to have accepted the policy of privatization – namely the sale of State-owned businesses to domestic and foreign investors (and speculators) – as a necessary evil.
Of course all sorts of entrepreneurs are trying to get the best cut for themselves and leave the bones behind. At present and with regards to the Greek “silverware”, it seems that the speculators have lucked out. The Greek State’s inability to implement its privatization plans within set timeframes has increased the unrequited appetite of vultures. Based on the understanding that the longer the delay for evaluation and put on sale, the cheaper they will buy the prime cuts of state property, they wait with the expectation that as time goes by the value of property to be privatized will plummet!
Indeed, the Greek state has proven itself useless and unwilling to serve the government choice of privatizations to fill the public treasuries. This choice though may have saved the “silverware”.
Since there is light at the end of the tunnel, the government must reevaluate its intentions and values. The foreign investors, who expected to buy public enterprises for free, gambled and lost, betrayed by their own market: there is another way.
The State can assign/lease the management of businesses and organization to those in the international markets and a few years later it will collect a lot more from auctions.
All that this requires is courage and Kalamata nerves!
Stavros P. Psycharis
– Originally published in the Sunday print edition
