10 Quotes by Athanasios Orphanides

Watching the economies in various parts of the world, I believe that there is scope for improvement everywhere. There is some corruption and inefficiency everywhere.

My mother is from Greece: she comes from Vrahos, a small village in Kastoria.

I would say that fears of the euro area breaking up are unfounded.

Cyprus joined the E.U. in 2004 and immediately wanted to get into the euro area for the express purpose of completing, as quickly as possible, the union with the core of Europe. It was done because the public thought that would be beneficial for political reasons, not economic reasons.

The degree of monetary policy ease should be associated with the level of real interest rates, not nominal interest rates.

In order for the E.U. area to stay together, they needed to form a banking union, which meant they needed to have a common credible deposit insurance guarantee for everybody in the E.U. area.

Near-zero policy rates that may be considerably expansionary in an economy with high inflation could be contractionary when inflation is too close to zero, or worse, deflation has set in.

Sometimes you have Harvard undergraduates who stun you with the depth of their knowledge. That is why it is great to be at a university like this.

In my min,d there is arguably a greater risk of a default on the debt of a U.S. state than there is on the debt of a euro-area member. I consider it unthinkable that a euro-area country would default.