Oh, yea, thanks for reminding me about that.
Papademos’ appearance as an appointed (not elected) PM in November of last year was most interesting. The prior PM, the socialist Papandreou, got forced out. Papandreou was an interesting character, but an indication of what is to come.
His father was an economist. His grandfather was in Greek politics and was PM of Greece a couple/three times. His handling of the debt fiasco in Greece was an abject failure, starting with his witless “discovery” upon taking office in 2009 that the deficit was four times what the Greek government had been reporting to the EU. By November, 2011, he was forced out of the government. But the central point was that Papandreou wasn’t Greek by birth, only by heritage.
Yes, that’s right — the former Greek PM, George Papandreou, was born in Minnesota. Educated at Amherst (undergrad) and then the LSE in economics.
Papademos was also educated in the US. Undergrad in physics, MSEE, then PhD in Economics from MIT. That’s a very strange combination. If you have a physics/EE background in the era when he graduated, you could write your ticket to fame and fortune. Instead, he decided to become a PhD in economics...
Papademos was a senior economist at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank in the early 80’s as I recall.
Economists are fools in the real world. They’re very used to being in academic or banking situations, where their actions have little consequence other than “Oops, we missed projections.” All those press releases that say “XYZ indicator moved unexpectedly up/down last month?” Yea, the people doing the expecting were economists.
The brutal truth is that they’re just idiots when it comes to trying to apply their crackpot theories to the real world. The only thing worse than having a nation led by a philosophy major would be a nation led by an economist - and Greece now has the misfortune of being led by two economists in a row. That’s a large part of what dooms them. Papademos is doubling down on the failed ideas of his economic predecessor.
My Grandfather/Popou was instrumental in putting Greece back together after WW2. He was their economic finance minister. He used to meet with US Presidents and other high ups back then. He used to speak 7 languages and wrote a few books.
My Dad told me that he was a huge socialist.
He probably started this mess.lol
Oh well.