PM Papademos “We Shouldn’t Miss This Opportunity”

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos addressed the nation on Friday night, after the successful completion of the Greek bond swap. In his usual understatement tone, Papademos spoke of a ‘historic opportunity” and urged that “we should not miss it”, “we should learn form the mistakes” and mentioned even the (small) investors who loss lots of money due to the PSI. 

Caretaker PM Papademos promised that “My first priority now is liquidity in the market and change in environment, in the business environment, as soon as possible”.

Development and growth above all. But when and how?

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos on Friday hailed an unprecedented bond swap between the government and private investors, which would relieve Greece of more than 100 billion euros of its debt burden, as a “window of opportunity and hope.”

“From within a deep recession, and the trials of the Greek people, there rises the hope for an exit from the worst crisis since World War II,” Papademos said in a televised speech on Friday night.

“We do not have the right to waste the money that we will save in interest and debt repayments,” the premier said. “We must use it to modernize our infrastructure, make our economy more competitive, put the state in order.”

The debt swap, and the expected approval of a second bailout for Greece in the next two weeks, will help the country emerge from the “quicksand of the past few months,” the premier said. “For the first time Greece is not adding to but reducing the debt burden on its citizens and the next generations,” he said.

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has hailed the success of the bond swap deal with private lenders to keep the country solvent.

During a speech on state television Friday, Mr. Papademos said, “for the first time, Greece is not adding, but taking debt off the backs of its citizens for generations to come.”

Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos had struck a similar tone. “We owed it to our children and grandchildren to rid them of the burden of this debt,” he told a press conference on Friday (further reading Kathimerini)

PS We got the message: Numbers blooming, people starve…