Greece aims to raise €50bn from privatizations between now and 2015. Good luck. Since 2000, the country has already netted €10bn through privatization, but the new target means doing five times more, in half the time. And although many of the properties in the privatization list are already on offer, there have been no takers so far. Maybe it is not surprising that people are reluctant to invest in a country so corrupt, or in companies with such an appalling work culture… The real objective in Greece should be to turn round loss-making state-owned monopolies and make them profit-making, tax-paying, competitive enterprises. Having a privatization deadline might help that process. In the UK, it was only the fact that nationalised industries like British Steel and British Airways knew that they would be privatized that made them squeeze out waste and make themselves into proper commercial companies. Once you have made a company fit, paid off its debts and cleaned up its accounts, then you can sell it. Not before. So the prospect of future privatization presents a real reform opportunity. And it sends the markets a message too that Greece is serious. Whether any of that will happen, though, I doubt. This is Greece, after all.