As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Greece has been, in many ways, a partially dysfunctional society. For example, the wealthy barely pay taxes... to an extent, that's true elsewhere, including the United States, but it's been pretty extreme in Greece.
I am not going to let Athens affect the rest of my life.
Those who have a lot of money in Greece invest in housing abroad. It's all immoral. The Greek crisis is structural, but also political.
I am personally convinced - and I think the Greek people share this belief in a fundamental way - that we can achieve fiscal consolidation more effectively and we can restore competitiveness in a more fundamental and permanent way within the euro area than outside.
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
I will always be upfront with the Greek people, so we can solve the country's problems together.
What, ultimately, is Greece if it is not the people who live in this country? It's not the mountains and the plains.
The Greek people do not want to exit the euro. And I believe the Greek people already have shown that they have made major sacrifices to stay in the euro zone.
There's no more place in the euro zone for well-meaning laxness when dealing with deficits and failings. If the demands on Greece aren't taken seriously, we'll get stuck in quicksand. In the worst case, this would make it acceptable for one tranche to not be paid out. It is in the Greeks own interest not to test that.
This is Port of Spain to me, a city ideal in its commercial and human proportions, where a citizen is a walker and not a pedestrian, and this is how Athens may have been before it became a cultural echo.
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