Lucas Papademos Quotes

I think there will be no government bankruptcy in Greece.

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

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

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

The Greeks do not have the option of borrowing because nobody will lend to them.

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.

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.

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.

I think it's often discussed that leaving the Euro is an option for Greece. I think this is really not an option.

Greece's debts are all denominated in euros, but it isn't clear who holds how much of those debts. For that reason, the consequences of a national bankruptcy would be incalculable. Greece is just as systemically important as a major bank.

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.

I think when the bottom started to drop out, we didn't recognize it.

Despite the deep reforms we are making, traders and speculators have forced interest rates on Greek bonds to record highs.

More cuts were needed to avoid exiting the eurozone.

I'd be kidding if I said that I predicted the financial collapse.

What you have in legacy countries is long-term insolvency.

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

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.

The Greek debt issue, for example, is such a threat because if that country ever defaulted, it might cause some bank that's 'too big to fail' to actually fail.

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.

Brexit is a disaster, Italy won't be real about its debt, and the European Union is in trouble.

The path we're on has taken the USA to the brink of bankruptcy.