Monday, March 8, 2010

Prime Minister of Greece in USA this Week

The Prime Minister of Greece is here in the US this week and gave a speech this morning at the Brookings Institution.

The speech mostly focused on economic issues facing Greece and the EU in general. He is very articulate and provides harsh accusations of the negative effects that speculation has had on the economic situation in Greece and perhaps some other EU countries. I'm sure this topic is high on his list of items for discussion with US officials this week.

Link to video at C-SPAN here.

In what I think to be a related matter, the EU announced their plans to form a "lender of last resort" for the Eurozone (I thought that's what central banks were for?!), in the form of an IMF style lender of Euros, and a crackdown on derivatives.

Perhaps our leaders here in the US could take some "Greek lessons".

2 comments:

googleheim said...

As for social ramifications, I would like to point out that there will be the usual outpourings from Greece :

1. Anti-semitism : nationalism like over the fight over the use of the name "macedonian" by the non-greek neighbor, could erupt to a small degree - blame Wall Street and blame those who work there.

2. Anti-fascism : communist and socialist elements of Greece will blame the central bank of Europe and mainly German banking - just as hard as Wall Street and just as fat in the wallet.

A dichotomy that will pull Greece to the left and right and shake things up for sure.

Matt Franko said...

Goog,
I read where some Greek backbenchers said Germany still owed money for WW2 and some German backbenchers said Greeks should get up earlier or sell some islands, etc...this type of rhetoric I think is what got the EU to engage over the weekend to propose this 'EMF' as a lender of last resort and hopefully calm this situation down. It will eliminate any risk of Greek default and put such fears to rest.

My question is how will they fund this new Euro Monetary Fund?