Athanasios Orphanides Quotes

More cuts were needed to avoid exiting the eurozone.

After everyone has had a chance to bluster, posture, and pontificate, we are left with one basic question: under any foreseeable circumstance, would it be in our national interest to default on our debt? The answer is unequivocally no.

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.

There is absolutely no way that the U.S. will ever default on its debt. We are not going to do that.

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

So you know, everyone points out Greece's default record, but the history of a lot of sovereign nations is not a good one when it comes to lending them money.

The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.

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

Defaulting on the nation's debt would be cataclysmic. The U.S. Treasury's Aaa rating is the one constant in the world's financial system. When times are bad anywhere on the planet, global investors flock to Treasury bonds because they know they will get their money back.

I want to see an end to sovereign risk questions over Australia.

I think there will be no government bankruptcy in Greece.

What is very negative is that in every country in Europe, the largest owner of that country's sovereign bonds are that country's banks.

The most important thing is to defend the euro.

I think some people don't truly understand the situation, and they think, you know, the debt limit, it doesn't really mean anything, and they don't understand the implications on the U.S. economy and on the global markets.

We saw in Greece how dangerous it is if a country has a bigger and bigger debt, and I hope that we will not have a second Greece in our neighbouring country, Italy.

By creating the European Central Bank, the member states exposed their own government bonds to the risk of default. Developed countries that issue bonds in their own currency never default, because they can always print money. Their currency may depreciate, but the risk of default is absent.

It is hard to imagine that, having downgraded the US, S & P will not follow suit on at least one of the other members of the dwindling club of sovereign AAAs. If this were to materialise and involve a country like France, for example, it could complicate the already fragile efforts by Europe to rescue countries in its periphery.

We are near, very near, to an end to the eurozone crisis... The worst - in the sense of the fear of the eurozone breaking up - is over. But the best isn't there yet.

Eurobonds are absolutely wrong. In order to bring about common interest rates, you need similar competitiveness levels, similar budget situations. You don't get them by collectivizing debts.

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

Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.

Bond investors want growth much like equity investors, and to the extent that too much austerity leads to recession or stagnation then credit spreads widen out - even if a country can print its own currency and write its own cheques.

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.

If we were the problem, it would be very convenient - kick Greece out, everything's fine. What would happen to Spain, what about Portugal, what about Italy, what about the whole of the euro zone? We need more cooperation and less simplification and prejudice.

Markets themselves are looking for stability, and I think we have underestimated the capacity of Europe... to actually create a more stable framework for the whole issue of debt management, bonds, and so on.