debt robbery

I was reading a short crime story by Greek author Costas Mouzourakis; it's set in post-crisis (or perpetual-crisis) Athens and I thought the following was really apt.

A successful lawyer explains to our ex bank robber, middle aged hero how the system works:

"...despite common belief, state intervention is crucial in the jungle of the neoliberal market economy. For example, the so called "state injections", are often selective: The government sells out to [private businessmen] underpriced public property, buys expensive money from abroad, and in order to stimulate the economy "injects" it into the banking system, where the [private businessmen] borrow from in order to buy public property, which the government sells out cheap in order to pay back for the expensive money it borrowed, and so on and so on. And everyone is happy - excluding the moron, i.e. the owner of the public property. But that's how it goes; going after the highest possible profit by any means is capitalism's foundational principle. Andrew Young, once a US ambassador to the UN, has said nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it."

Costas Mouzourakis, Oplismeno Skyrodema, p.267

How do they manage? Well, nobody could do it without help from their international cronies. IMF/EU/ECB are against any Greek default. On the contrary, they wish to be able to govern whole economies through the managing of their debt. It's time to start a conversation of what debt is; I just got a hold of David Graeber's book on debt, who poses all relevant questions. One of the main arguments relates debt with violence. I'm still at the beginning, but I couldn't resist posting another quote, of an old vaudeville gag, quoted by Graeber:

"I was walking down the street with a friend the other day and a guy with a gun jumps out of an alley and says "stick 'em up."

As I pull out my wallet, I figure, "shouldn't be a total loss." So I pull out some money, turn to my friend and say, "Hey, Fred, here's that fifty bucks I owe you."

The robber was so offended he took out a thousand dollars of his own money, forced Fred to lend it to me at gunpoint, and then took it back again."

David Graeber, Debt: The first five thousand years, p.7