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Greece: From dire to diabolical

If you want to see how bad things are in Greece - and it almost certain to be contagious in and for Europe - read this piece from The Age below......

"When you hit hard times, it is time to pawn or part with the family silver, and an unprecedented clearout is now under way in Athens.

Greece has announced it will sell anything it can do without - and in the case of the debt-choked nation that means letting go of islands, royal palaces, prime real estate, marinas, airports, roads, the state-owned gas company, lottery and post office. Indeed anything, really, that can be sold.

The downsizing now also includes diplomatic residences abroad. ''There is a decision to lease and sell properties that for various reasons are not being used,'' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Gregory Delavekouras. He said the ministry's finance department was hard at work evaluating ''market conditions''.

The sell-off emerged on Wednesday, a day after Athens' finance minister revealed what most Greeks feared but had never been officially told: with national income projected to fall 25 per cent by 2014, their economy is slipping inexorably into a 1930s-style depression. Officials are now working frantically to get a fire sale off the ground."

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