[Toddsterpatriot]

The foreign investors valued the four banks at about $800 million, which is more than three times less than their current market value of $3 billion.

They added $6.42 billion in capital to banks that had a market value of $3 billion.

And how the hell is something three times less? It's one third of the value, not three times less the value. Aren't there editors to check these stupid articles before they're published?

Those same buyers then swooped in and bought up controlling shares of the banks.

Yeah, controlling shares of money losing banks with $114 billion in non-performing loans.

That was the ripoff.

The headline said a $400 billion ripoff. If they stole the entire market value of these banks, that would have been $3 billion.

[Praxeologue]

The Greeks are now displaying the same neurosis as the Argentinians:

Our creditors are robbing us!

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

The $400 billion is the approximate amount Greece has been able to borrow from lenders in order to try and salvage its economy. One of the hard assets Greece had was its controlling shares of banks (these four banks have assets of $358 billion according to the article).

The maneuver stripped control of the banks out of the hands of the Greek government, and without having hard assets to use as collateral, it becomes much harder for Greece to get more cash to keep from default.

I’ve said before that there is no good way out of this disaster for Greece, but this move takes away a major crutch for the terminally ill nation.