A CLASSY MAYFAIR FIRESALE!!!
For those poor deluded souls who still think that "their" government is driving the fiscal policy in their respective countries, the extract below helps to clear the smoke from the bankers and bond markets smoke and mirrors illusion. Austerity cuts, as I keep spouting, have nothing to do with deficit reduction, it is all to do with flogging off everything in sight to the corporate world at "firesale" prices. Everything must go, ports, airports, land, anything that the corporate world can make money from will be handed to them on a plate, social services will be starved of funds letting the corporate world step in and sell the service to you at a price and profit to them, all of this at the dicate of the IMF and ECB. "Your" government is selling "your" country and the money raised will of course, not go to those who actually own these assets, the people, no, it will all go to the bankers and bond markets to cover their losses, and "your" government will comply, even if it decimates the living standards of the people, even if the people take to the streets in mass protests making it quite clear that they do not want this policy to continue. The state's minders will also be on the streets dealing out brutal repression with baton and tear gas, and if that doesn't work their is always the army. So much for democracy.
The short extract below was taken from from an article that appeared in The Guardian June 29 and was written by Aditya Chakrabortty and titled, Greece crisis. As Athens erupts Mayfair hosts a classy firesale,. The full article is well worth reading. The graphics are not The Guardian's.
'At first, yesterday's meeting looked like a thousand other upmarket business events; suits gathered at Claridge's hotel in London's Mayfair for a day's discussion of how to reform Greece and its economy. But listening to the presentations from Greek ministers and officials about the airports, the ports, the land they were auctioning off to the highest bidder, the real purpose of the day came into sharp focus. Here in an art deco room with five chandeliers and too many mirrored surfaces to count, was the beginning of a classy firesale.
The men from Athens were not calling it that, of course. “A professionally run privatisation plan” is how George Christodoulakis, the man in charge of Greece's asset sales preferred to describe it. But even he conceded that the pace and scale of the government's scheme to flog €50bn (£44.8bn) of assets within the next five years had been forced on it. “One can say; is this the best time to sell assets?” '
