Walter Wriston Quotes

I'm the finance minister of a bankrupt country!

If a company can declare bankruptcy, why can't a country do so?

Greece will not manage to get back on its feet without restructuring its debt. There is no way around it. The country's creditors will have to reduce a portion of its debts by extending maturity dates, lowering interest rates or giving them what's called a 'haircut' in financial jargon.

One needs a comprehensive concept that decides just how much debt states like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy can sustainably bear.

I hope Greece is going to remain in the Euro zone.

The International Monetary Fund is the doctor to sick economies.

Defaulting on our [national] debt is defaulting on America.

Ireland, once an impoverished backwater from which generations fled, conjured an economic miracle…. After 2007, the party ended in a morass of insolvent banks, bad mortgages, and unpaid public debt, ultimately sending the proudly independent country begging to the International Monetary Fund.

From my point of view it's impossible to cut debt in a country with new debt from another country.

For the next three years, we're going to see different economies work out different problems. For European economies, especially Greece, it would be through default.

A default on our debts as a result of not meeting our obligations would be a disaster for the stock market, and Americans would see their retirement funds shrivel up.

By the time most people file for bankruptcy, their credit is already trashed, they have a high debt-to-income ratio - a key indicator lenders look at - and they've likely defaulted on more than a few accounts.

A beautiful deleveraging balances the three options. In other words, there is a certain amount of austerity, there is a certain amount of debt restructuring, and there is a certain amount of printing of money. When done in the right mix, it isn't dramatic.

We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis.

Together with a team of financial and legal experts I have spent months exploring all possible alternatives to bankruptcy but to no avail.

I can't think of another enterprise other than being a homeowner that can't have its debt restructured in bankruptcy. Corporations can but a homeowner can't? Now with securitization the homeowner can't go to the owner of the loan and work things out.

I think there will be no government bankruptcy in Greece.

If the financial system collapses, it's really, really hard to put it back together again.

There's no more place in the euro zone for well-meaning laxness when dealing with deficits and failings. If the demands on Greece aren't taken seriously, we'll get stuck in quicksand. In the worst case, this would make it acceptable for one tranche to not be paid out. It is in the Greeks own interest not to test that.

Government bonds have basically been sold in the domestic market, so there is some sense of stability, but the amount of public debt is really severe... Japan must manage its finances with a sense of urgency.

You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, 'Don't go in that door!' because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends.

The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.

The World Bank is now the biggest culprit in the debt crisis.

In this age, if the currency of a major nation collapses, or its access to borrowing ends, it just can't function.

Well what would happen is that if Greece defaulted and couldn't pay its debts, all the Greek bonds that are held in other banking systems across Western Europe would suddenly have no value. You could as a knock-on effect create a banking crisis in Western Europe.