Experience Stern | News & Events

Excerpt from CNN -- "No country ever pays back its debt - the United States doesn't, Britain doesn't, nobody does. What they do is service it - they pay the interest on it. And Greece is extremely likely to have most of its debt held by the European partners and by the stability mechanism; that debt right now has an interest rate of about 1.8%. So though it [the debt] is huge, it has a very small servicing cost and Greece can in fact service it. The crucial question for Greece is to get out of this cycle of asking for money, to reform its economy, to do well, to grow, and be able to pay the debt. I don't think there will be any problem whatsoever paying the money forever for this debt if Greece grows. So the crucial thing we should aim for in any agreement is how do we get the Greek economy to perform better, to be more competitive, to be in better shape compared to the rest of the world and be able to grow. Once we do that, once we get there, Greece will do great."

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