Peer Steinbruck Quotes

No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.

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

A country does not go bankrupt.

When debts are not paid because they cannot be paid, the best thing to do is not talk about them, and shuffle the cards again.

Well obviously the economy is critical to everything we do and we need to get the economy back in shape, the deficit down, the debt paid off, so that the economy can grow again and grow properly.

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.

You know the most important thing the Americans did for Iraq apart from liberating the country from Saddam was helping Iraq reduce its debt. The United States worked very hard to reduce 80 percent of Iraqi debt.

Refinancing doesn't reduce your debt, it just restructures it, so be clear about what you want to achieve with a refi.

A beautiful deleveraging balances the three options. In other words, there is a certain amount of austerity, there is a certain amount of debt restructuring, and there is a certain amount of printing of money. When done in the right mix, it isn't dramatic.

The restructuring theme can be of various kinds. Some amount of debt gets serviced out of cash flows, some gets back-ended and resolved with sale of non-core assets of the company, and some debt gets converted into equity which might today look like a haircut.

Tough decisions have to be made to close our fiscal gap, stabilise our debt, and restore our state-owned enterprises to health.

The more comprehensive and convincing a debt reduction program is, the less likely it is to fail. And remember, just as Germany is grateful to America for the Marshall Plan, Italy would be grateful to Germany for helping it lower its refinancing costs.

Well, I feel that we're kind of fortunate that this book gives the whole world a lesson in economics and how to get out of the mess that we're all in. It's basic message is to try and stop spending as much and try to release some of your assets to pay off your debt.

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.

The Government has to stop borrowing as much money; if we don't, quite frankly New Zealand will be downgraded and interest rates will go up for all New Zealanders.

I see nothing that points to a recession in Germany. But I see considerable long-term tasks ahead of us that have to do with markets regaining confidence in Europe and that have a lot to do with reducing debt.

The build-up of personal and collective debt in America and Europe should have sent warning signals to anyone familiar with the biblical institutions of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, created specifically because of the danger of people being trapped by debt.

As I think through the issue of funding the rebuilding of Iraq, I think about the analogy of a bankruptcy proceeding. There is no doubt that Iraq as a country is bankrupt.

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.

What Africa needs to do is to grow, to grow out of debt.

If you're trying to get out of debt, you have to be willing to treat everything as expendable.

A clear lesson of history is that a 'sine qua non' for sustained economic recovery following a financial crisis is a thoroughgoing repair of the financial system.

I have done everything I can to move Britain out of the financial danger zone.

The world is still in deleveraging.

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.