Wolfgang Schauble Quotes

So it won't be a surprise when the Greek default actually happens and we expect it one way or the other to be relatively soon.

The vast majority of Greeks accept the need for reform and want to keep our country inside the euro zone.

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.

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

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

Greece is a medium-sized country in Europe. Our debt accounts for only 2.5 percent of the total of all members of the euro zone.

More cuts were needed to avoid exiting the eurozone.

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.

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.

Greece's debt is going to be a function of a lot of factors down the road.

Few in Europe imagined the incompetence and dishonesty of Greek economic managers would bring the entire European project into question.

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

I'm the finance minister of a bankrupt country!

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

A very difficult year is ahead of us. We must continue our efforts with decisiveness, to stay in the euro, to make sure we do not waste the sacrifices and do not turn the crisis into an uncontrolled and disastrous bankruptcy.

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

When governments are selling, you should be buying. And when governments are defaulting, we should look at that as an opportunity.

There is a difference between strategic or technical default and default where you really don't have the economy to support the spending. We are not at that point yet. We could be. We could be, like some European nations.

Financial crises require governments.

The International Monetary Fund is the doctor to sick economies.

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

The Netherlands has been severely hit by the debt crisis, and the solution is to lower taxes, get government finances in order, and make room for investment.

The very welfare state the Occupy Wall Street protesters so eagerly applaud is what has saddled Greece with colossal debt and left its economy on the brink of collapse, igniting violent protests across the nation.

I'm a pessimist about the euro, but not about Europe. So the southern periphery, Spain, Italy, Greece, leave - Italy might be the first to go - and the rest stay. That will work just fine. But unless they want to give up democracy, I don't see greater fiscal union as the answer.

At this time - we're in a dramatic crisis - euro bonds are precisely the wrong answer. They lead us into a debt union, not a stability union. Each country has to take its own steps to reduce its debt.