Lucas Papademos Quotes

A Greek exit from the E.U. and the euro would mean the Greek economy would be difficult to sustain.

Not all Greeks are ready to do whatever is necessary to stay in the euro.

Observers and even some officials raise questions about the future of Greece as part of the Eurozone, while the Eurozone itself struggles to deal with fundamental flaws at the heart of its architecture.

The shadow of an exit of Greece from the euro zone takes on ever clearer shape, repeated apparently final attempts to reach a deal are starting to make the whole process look ridiculous. There is an ever greater number of people who feel as if the Greek government is giving them the run-around.

It will not be possible to solve the current crisis with euro bonds.

We will do whatever we could do to keep Greece inside the euro and inside Europe.

The Euro was a terrible mistake, one that is very difficult to unmake.

Those who are saying that Mario Draghi is in the camp of those trying to push Greece outside the Euroarea, are wrong.

Greece is at a dangerous crossroads. Other countries-Portugal, Ireland, maybe Spain-are coming behind it.

I think the facts reveal that the European partners have taken extraordinary measures to help Greece address its problems.

It's a European Union of economic failure, of mass unemployment and of low growth.

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.

But despite historic levels of obstruction, President Obama was able to bring the economy back from the verge of a second Great Depression.

I described the euro as a burning building with no exits and so it has proved for some of the countries in it.

Austerity policy without currency devaluation can only hamper economic growth.

Over the last decade, economists seemed to share a broad consensus about economic policy, with the old splits between monetarists and Keynesians apparently being settled by events. But the Great Recession of the last two years has changed everything.

I know people are looking at what's happening in Washington and then they also look at events in Europe, in Greece and Portugal and other places and worry about that.

Europe and the euro zone have no reason, rationally, to push Greece out of the euro. But this is a system in which many parties, many countries, many governments, many electorates participate and we could have events which, rationally, are not controllable.

In a normal time, I don't think economic policy makes a large difference one way or another. But in times of crisis it makes all the difference in the world.

Discussions of the economy, especially during times of crisis, are often framed in terms of lessons we supposedly learned during the Depression of the 1930s. If we are not to endure terrible times like those again, we are told, we must support whatever form of state intervention is currently being peddled.

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.

As austerity measures were foisted upon Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and other highly indebted countries, growth was rendered even more elusive, aggravating unemployment

One of the arguments I make for the failure of the euro is that, at the time it was being constructed, there was a 'neo-liberal' ideology which said that all we need to do to make this thing work is to get deficits low, keep inflation low, and take down barriers, and then everything would be fine.

While it was an experiment to bring them together, nothing has divided Europe as much as the euro.

The emphasis so far on fiscal austerity, while to a degree necessary for the countries facing market funding difficulties, is excessive when carried out across the board.