George Papandreou Quotes

The moment a large investor doesn't believe a government will pay back its debt when it says it will, a crisis of confidence could develop. Investors have scant patience for the years of good governance - politically fraught fiscal restructuring, austerity and debt rescheduling - it takes to defuse a sovereign-debt crisis.

Spain is finding it very difficult to finance itself with sovereign debt risk premium so high.

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

Everybody’s kicking the can down the road of too much public and private debt. The can is becoming heavier and heavier…

Greece could default on its debts and even exit currency bloc if it cannot deliver reforms.

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 real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time.

The interest on our debt is going to collapse this country.

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

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

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.

If we continue to allow the federal government to live beyond its means, we will all soon have to live beneath ours.

Italians have always had a high savings rate. They love putting their money into their own government bonds - even more than in houses, stocks and gold. The higher rates climb, the happier they are to invest. So if austerity plans drive rates up, it's music to Italian ears.

Dealing with Greece's problems will be more difficult if Greece is not a member of the eurozone.

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.

In normal times, investors should pay more attention to the credit markets because it's the energy by which everything is driven. It's the oil in the engine.

Greece is an extreme case: a country where both the level of spending and the level of taxation were unsustainable!

More cuts were needed to avoid exiting the eurozone.

There's no more place in the euro zone for well-meaning laxness when dealing with deficits and failings. If the demands on Greece aren't taken seriously, we'll get stuck in quicksand. In the worst case, this would make it acceptable for one tranche to not be paid out. It is in the Greeks own interest not to test that.

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

The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.

The World Bank is now the biggest culprit in the debt crisis.

I think, my generation, it's hard to have hope when you got a $700-trillion derivatives debt to pay and a bubble about to explode and $500 trillion worth of GDP.