This Wednesday marks Amazon Prime’s 20th anniversary celebration sale, boasting ‘more deals than Black Friday.’ After you’ve scoured Prime, eBay and Alibaba for Apple, Louboutin and other goods in the category of ‘things never discounted,’ the most covetable item up for grabs might be a piece of Greece.
The flailing country was forced to show a little more skin on its Match.com profile following an all-night mean girls slumber party in a last-ditch effort to prevent its temporary exit from the eurozone, resulting in the creation of a fund to manage the offload of its state-owned assets, amounting to €50 billion in cash, or the equivalent in sales of compromising paparazzi shots of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tapping a leggy, blonde intern anyone.
That Greece, ‘at some point in the future’, will be able to generate such a substantial amount of coin – between a fifth and a quarter of the country’s GDP – seems as believable as Owen Wilson accepting a part in Marley & Me for any other reason besides being a directive from his counsellor on suicide watch.
Of the sweet sum of €50 billion, half will be committed to repaying money borrowed from the eurozone to recapitalize Greek banks, a quarter for investments and a quarter for reducing the government’s debt burden.
Given the issue of the third pledge is the taboo topic that Europe’s proverbial red headed stepsister’s toyed with for the past five years, Greece’s ability to make good on its promise is a bit like the resident high school slob taking the prom queen hostage on the condition he’ll launch the next Facebook and transform into Orlando Bloom for the next 86 years.
While the agreement doesn’t guarantee that Greece will receive its third bailout in five years, it does allow the start of detailed negotiations on a new assistance package for the beleaguered honeymoon hotspot.
Worth noting, is that any easing of Greece’s debt repayment obligations would not include something Greece had previously made a condition of any deal: a handy haircut, or reduction of the overall debt, which currently stands at more than €300 billion.
The latest Greek bailout deal imposes more austerity on Greece, which is tipped to impose an additional squeeze on private wealth, but could very well benefit the world’s one percent residing anywhere else. Billionaire bargain hunters are already on the prowl for tasty property deals, with Russian, Chinese, and even Serbian and Bulgarian investors said to be swooping on the fire sale of Greek islands with the rigor of Jimmy Fallon on a lip sync battle at an East Village bar, eight beers in.
Previously, many experts voiced concerns that Greece’s problems would spill over to the rest of the world and that, if the country pulled a Grexit, it would effectively deliver a dump truck of Anthrax onto global financial markets, eliciting a shock far greater than the collapse of Lehman Brothers, otherwise known as the swaggering Josh Duggar of finance.
Now, because the world has Caitlin Jenner and Giuliana Rancic’s E! News replacement to worry about, many believe that if Greece were to leave the currency union, it wouldn’t be such a shit show. Europe has put up safeguards to limit the so-called financial contagion, in an effort to keep the problems from spreading to other countries. Aside from the deluge of legal problems expected to arise from a possible exit, the thinking is that, by leaving, Greece could finally regain financial autonomy by no longer having to feed itself by begging its neighbors for a pint of milk.
But, like that awkward part in Monopoly when the board is lined with so many hotels that going to jail becomes a good thing, Greece’s masochistic affair with Germany and its eurozone allies is only just beginning. Cue the world’s ultimate yard sale.
As of Monday, the still-developing terms of the agreement state that Greece’s assets will be sold over the life of the loans from the eurozone, which is a nice thing for the country’s unemployed pita ovens, since the loans could have maturities of 10 years or more. According to privatization analysts, only 500 million euros of proceeds were likely to materialize each year, meaning it would take Greece around 100 years to reach the 50 billion euro goal.
With landmark toy story FAO Schwarz set to close its doors in Manhattan on Wednesday in line with the Amazon and mega Walmart rival sale, Greece and its family heirlooms fire sale may be forced to quickly step-up its advertising campaign.
Unless, of course, the U.S. federal government’s alleged plot to install martial law, affectionately known by doomsday conspiracy theorist internet trolls everywhere as Operation Jade Helm, which kicks off in Texas also on the country’s new biggest shopping holiday, takes the spotlight off Greece as the troops roll in across the south-west.
Given that conspiracy theorists have also focused on supposed underground tunnel systems leading to Canada and Mexico and whether the army is turning abandoned Walmart stores into concentration camps, the retail stalwart’s impending sale could be nothing more than an inventory exercise implemented by Barack Obama… #legacy.
