Well, you had to be a bit surprised.
All this chatter in recent weeks in Germany about Berlin (the city) going and expropriating or seizing privately-owned apartment buildings, and making them city-owned property.....thus setting the rent at what people think is fair......is pretty much what Greece came out to suggest today.
For the Greece reparations deal....they (the Parliament) are suggesting to go and seize German-government property (yes, expropriating).
Kinda amusing, since the Germans brought up this topic internally in Berlin, and the basic idea is flashing around all of German major cities now. So Greece said this is a fine idea, and we will copy it.
Now, you can ask.....just how much German government property could they go and grab in Greece, and I think it's pretty much limited to a couple of Goethe Institut buildings around the country. The embassy and the embassy housing....would be against international law.
However, this brings up an odd topic, could Greece go and enter into the EU court system, and demand German state-owned properties within Germany....be expropriated/seized, and given to Greece in terms of ownership? 250 to 300 billion Euro worth?
If the Berlin authorities reach the stage where their expropriation game works.....why couldn't the Greeks go and copy it.....seizing property as well?
One might wonder if this has opened up a can of worms, and Germany has to lay out some harsh chatter and hire up some five-star lawyers to prevent some public 'joke' from occurring.
The other angle to this whole game? Well....if you peeved off enough Germans about Greek vacations, you could see a 10-to-20 percent cut in Greek vacation income. Germans spend a fair amount of money on Greece tours.
Might be worth watching over the next six months.
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