Greek Crisis Quotes

Puppet Papademos is in place, and as Athens caught fire on Sunday night he rather took my breath away - he said violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country.

Those who have a lot of money in Greece invest in housing abroad. It's all immoral. The Greek crisis is structural, but also political.

I think that the real tragedy of Greece - aside of the savagery of European bureaucracy, Brussels bureaucracy and northern banks, which was really savage - is that the Greek crisis didn't have to erupt. It could have been taken care of pretty easily at the very beginning. But it happened and Syriza came into office with a declared commitment to combat it, and in fact as I recall they actually called a referendum, which horrified Europe.

It is true that no member state can be required to make payments to others. But if countries want to offer voluntary assistance, as in the Greek case, this isn't only allowed, but it's also in Germany's interest. We all benefit by ensuring the stability of the euro zone.

We should not be borrowing money from the Chinese to bail out the Greeks. What's coming next? Intergalactic bailouts?

We Greeks want change. We know there are problems in our system. We have great potential but we need to manage our country well. Now that hasn't been done over the last decades. And that is, of course, what we are paying for.

If I was a Greek citizen I'd be out there trying to bring down this monstrosity that has been put upon those people.

... maybe we can all agree on one lesson from the Greek crisis, namely that, to maintain a friendship, you should lend only as much money as you are ready to give away anyway.

Many people have been pontificating, and patronizing, and moralizing, and scapegoating, saying you Greeks, you are the problem. I would say we Greeks have a problem. We are not the problem.

Greece isn't a democracy now it's run through a troika - three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and can't do.

At the moment we have a critical situation in Greece. Even as we speak, where there is an open attempt by the EU to destroy Syriza by splitting it. There is a German obstinacy and utter refusal to seriously consider an alternative. The reason isn't even a lack of money, because money swims around the EU coffers endlessly, and they could write off the debt tomorrow if they wanted. But they don't want to do so, because of the election of a left-wing government. They want to punish Syriza in public, to humiliate it so that this model doesn't go any further than Greece.

Even though I resigned as Papandreou's adviser early in 2006 and turned into his government's staunchest critic during his mishandling of the post-2009 Greek implosion, my public interventions in the debate on Greece and Europe have carried no whiff of Marxism.

I think it is incumbent on the rest of us - and I would suggest that includes other European leaders - to pause in what has become a very popular game of telling the Greeks how to run their lives.

Greeks have to know that they are not alone ... Those who are fighting for the survivor of Greece inside the Euro area are deeply harmed by the impression floating around in the Greek public opinion that Greece is a victim. Greece is a member of the EU and the euro. I want Greece to be a constructive member of the Union because the EU is also benefiting from Greece.

Greece, alone, is in a very vulnerable position. If the Greeks had had support from progressive left and popular forces elsewhere in Europe they might have been able to resist the demands of the Troika, but they had almost no support. Not even from Portugal, Spain, or other left forces. They were left alone.