It depends who you mean by "Greece"?
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Imperialism used to work by going into third world countries and stripping them of all their natural resources. Gold, silver, sugar, wood, etc.
But after the various wars of independence, it got a little more complicated. Now they go in and pay off the native rulers to join the globalization game.
^^^^^ CB; Even before the success of many national liberation movements in overthrowing paleo-coloniaism, in the early 20th Century, imperialism added to ripping off natural resources exporting capital to colonies in a transition from exporting goods to them. The export of capital or investing in neo-colonies or post-neo-colonial globalized national economies is still there as a main dynamic together with the payiingoff native rulers. Running away industry around the globe is export of capital. IMF or World Bank loans are export of capital. Neo-liberal opening up state enterprises to private investment and ownership is export of capital. Globalization is export of capital.
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This can be done by a process like the following:
-- money is loaned to build an export market...or whatever -- money is either paid back from profits from export market or -- money is paid back through asset stripping and austerity measures
What is now being bought and sold is not so much the natural resources, but the labor power of the natives -- one way or another.
^^^^ CB: Indeed, export of capital is establishing capital/wage-labor relations in the "developing" nations (Capital is a relationship between capital and wage-labor concerning things, not a thing).
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The fact that the loan should not have been made in the first place doesn't matter. The basic rule is that there should be no risk involved in the loan. No matter which way it goes, the lender must win. In that way, it is like the mortgage market.
Note that although the export market profit strategy looks promising, it is a rigged race to the bottom type of game and must be played very intelligently and ruthlessly for the natives to win. Maybe China managed it; it remains to be seen.
Joanna
^^^^^ CB; That's cause China's playing based on a Marxist-Leninist understanding of capitalism, which is a better understanding of capitalism than the capitalists and their economists have.