June 29, 2011
“No more fooling around, not in this place.
We’ll pull our pants up and make a pile of money.”
Alexis Zorba . . . the Greek
Today, the Greek Parliament approved an austerity plan – favorable to Greek debt bondholders, if not to the mass of actual Greeks. Supplementing this, the parliament must approve a $70 billion privatization program permitting the government to sell public power and transportation companies, and other state-owned assets. This would continue an asset sale program already in place.
Drilling for Assets. EXXONis not especially known for its non-oil businesses, but this is going to change because of its “Buy Greece Now!” program announced this morning by Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil. He explained, “It’s simple, we’ve got a kaboodle of cash just sitting in U.S. banks and a sh*tload of decaying T-Bills. Greece is a fairytale buying opp. We’d love to invest in the United States, but until it falls into a real 1930’s depression, public lands and other federal and state assets are not at rock bottom prices we prefer. We’ve inquired about buying the Grand Canyon, for example, but GPO is still asking too much. We’d surely love to drill there, but . . . Now Greece! A copper-plated U.S. penny will get you a sawbuck’s worth of value. We’re all in.”
ExxonMobil hopes this will assist Greece in its struggle to avoid economic and social cataclysm, yet it’s shopping list is clearly aimed at buying low and generating income. Chairman Tillerson revealed that ExxonMobil had on June 28th already made an initial purchase of a “property in Athens that has for many years occupied a perch overlooking the entire city. We feel we can develop this property for many uses and will be conferring with the Disney imagineers soon. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to operate it at a loss as a tourist attraction. We do have an option to sell back the property should it fail to produce something.”
Below is a photo of the property the day prior to its sale to ExxonMobil. They despair that this site has been maintained in this state for millennia, without significant modernization.
Alarmingly, though, for EXXON, the Parthenon asset sale program has drawn the attention of Donald Trump who envisions leveling the “mound of disgustingly ugly ruins to transform it into a beautiful family fun putting green and casino.”
