economists-from-greece

"When I took over as Prime Minister, I had already known Andreas for more than thirty years. There were very few PASOK cadres who had been with him for such a long time. Political commentators highlighted our conflicts, the distance that separated us in life and politics, our different behaviors. However, they overlooked our many commonalities: our resistance to the junta, our struggles for the establishment and development of PASOK, our confrontation with the Right, our cooperation for an effective government. We maintained a stable relationship between us, despite any friction."

"State authority cannot, and must not, dominate economic and social activity."

"Populism transfers the social problem from the plain of ideology to a level that does not disturb the status quo of social relations. The assistance of the state and the benefits derived from it is the sole objective of political struggles in Greece."

"Our political practice followed the same track as that of the right-wing governments; many times we implemented ad hoc policies; we maintained clientelistic relations between government and voters; we made selective allocations of funds and we introduced measures benefiting specific groups. The principle governing our political practice was that the party and the government were always right and that their actions had to be justified;... we do not need attractive slogans that create rising expectations but systematic programming and well-planned action."

"Δεν υπάρχει τέλος της ιστορίας. Το σήμερα έχει συνέχεια το αύριο. Από εμάς τους ίδιους εξαρτάται η συνέχεια αυτή."

"Simitis is good, but he is not PASOK."

"Each leader has the privilege of choosing the way he will leave [the political scene], [...] Andreas Papandreou chose to deny reality."

"National Independence, Popular Sovereignty, Social Liberation, Democratic Process."

"He's one of the most fascinating characters [modern] Greek history has produced, but after all the sound and fury, he signifies nothing."

"There are many scandals in Greece [...] The only difference in my case is that here someone is saying, himself, what he did with Papandreou."

"Andreas was not a philanderer. He was a serial monogamist."

"He's an unpredictable, very irresponsible man, ruthlessly ambitious, Andreas has to be Prime Minister of the world to be happy. But he has always had very generous feelings toward the Greek people."

"Andreas is an actor who does not believe in anything. He loves himself, power and women, and that's all."

"One of the most courageous and committed politicians I have ever met."

"Andreas Papandreou corrupted the Greek psyche and gave to Greeks an entitlement culture based on their existence and not on their ability to work and take risks."

"He [Andreas Papandreou] wanted to build a state with better salaries and services. But in the end, the money just went into the bureaucracy and not to the people. In fact, we built up such a large state that we had to keep borrowing just to pay its expenses. This was a terrible mistake."

"Greece's only successful fascist regime probably was Andreas Papandreou's [...] Both the military regime of John Metaxas, from 1936 to 1941, and the junta from 1967 to 1974, never achieved a broad level of popular response to their message, which was seen as artificial, even ridiculous. By contrast, Papandreou's posturings and habits reassured a people who harbored a mistrust and envy of the West that their way of life was legitimate. Much like Mussolini, Papandreou succeeded as the embodiment of a nationalist-populist resentment. He was the ideal Greek every-man. He threatened America and backed up these threats by embracing America's enemies—Qaddafi and the terrorists. Papandreou danced the traditional Greek dances in public. He distributed the wealth to his partisans as a reward for their loyalty. Even with the Liani affair, in a male-oriented society like Greece's there was a certain resonance. Papandreou projected the Mussoliniesque image of the nation's first lover. His divorce and humiliation of Margaret Chant not only reinforced his (and Greece's) break with America, but also with another threatening demon of the Greek male, feminism."

"I may not believe in a Turkish threat, you may not believe in a Turkish threat, but the Greek public believes in it, and that makes it Greek reality and you have to deal with it in those terms."

"Simitis is good, but he is not PASOK."

"It might be expected that an official would offer himself a present, but not one as big as 500 million drachmas."

"Don't worry, I’ll stop the audit. As long as I'm prime minister, nothing's going to happen."

"I no longer trust anyone, not even myself."

"I'm grateful to no one about anything."

"Power to the people."

"Tsovola give it [to them] all. (Τσοβόλα δώσ'τα όλα.)"

"The Greeks have betrayed me."

"I accuse my accusers."

"Greece is rich but the Greeks are poor."

"We consume more than we produce."

"Greece belongs to the Greeks.("Η Ελλάδα ανήκει στους 'Ελληνες.")"

"There are no institutions – only the people rule this country."

"Time for "Change" has come."

"The Paraskevopoulos government was our last chance for avoiding a military take-over. With your [Andreas'] militant stand against it, with your strong statements against the King, with your distrust you instilled in the American contingent here, this became inevitable."

"Think, Andreas, if you die in America, how many people will come to your funeral? Then think how many will follow your casket in Athens if you stay."

"He was glorified while in hiding, but vanished when he appearing."

"I made a decision that will burden me for the rest of my life. I don't know if we did the right thing, however I do know that we felt like we had no other choice but do what we did."

"The overall framework of the euro zone is in crisis — not from Syriza or the left, but because of the policies of austerity. Unless Europe moves in a more just and socially democratic direction, then it’s in danger."

"In any transition period there is a clash of realities. In the 1930s people considered the eventual solutions, at first, to be unrealistic. It’s the same this time round. At first, in the euro crisis there was to be no bailout. Then no buying of government debt. Then no QE. Each of these things have happened. Some things which are now seen as unrealistic will change with the political balance of forces."

"I cannot hide from you that I am quite nervous. I am not taking on this job at the easiest point in Greek history."

"It's a difficult deal, a deal for which only time will show if it is economically viable."

"It is a very tough agreement, with many thorns, and as for the question of who will implement it, that depends on who the Greek people trust to negotiate debt restructuring."

"It takes Greece forward in the sense that the financial system should be much more stable from now onwards. There is a promise of recapitalization of the banks, without any of the depositors having to bail in or anything to worry about. The process of reversing the negative effects of capital controls will start very quickly and will speedily return the banks to where they were before, hopefully on a far firmer footing. Any deal is only as good as what you make of it. Let's hope the Greek people will be able to make the best of this deal."

"Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders … What we’ve been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony."

"Without the dollar's and America's global dominance, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or German capitalists would not have been able continually to extract colossal surplus value from their workers and then stash it away in America’s rentier economy."

"Why did he call it dark? Because it was founded on a dark, unspoken, implicit pact between America's ruling class and foreign capitalists and rentiers."

"A Chinese official once described to me globalization as something that was founded on a "dark deal" – that's how the Chinese official put it to me: a dark deal."

"America was now a fully fledged deficit country, with a big trade deficit. But it was nothing like any other deficit country in the world. You see, Argentina, France, India, Greece needed to borrow dollars. America didn't need to borrow dollars to back up its currency. It didn't need to raise interests rates in order to prevent an exodus of dollars. The exodus of dollars was the foundation of American hegemony."

"The dollar suddenly became something like an IOU issued by the hegemon. Before long, the global financial system was backed by IOUs issued by a hegemon who decided what foreigners holding those IOUs could do or couldn’t do with the IOUs issued by the hegemon."

"And how right Nixon was. As the American – the US, I shouldn't say American – as the US deficit skyrocketed, the world was flooded with American dollars. And the banks, the central banks outside the United States, were forced to use these American dollars, since they could not be converted to gold anymore, as the reserves with which they backed their own currency."

"What did they understand better than we did? They understood better than we did the new, audacious imperialism that was born in 1971, when Bretton Woods collapsed, and the United States dollar was no longer convertible to gold, prompting [President] Richard Nixon to send a message to Europeans, European governments, and the world's capitalists, saying: "The dollar, as of today, is your problem"."