March 10, 2011
When Athens calls, Ioannis Arvanitis will be ready with $10,000. Dennis Valerios has no money and no job, but he is willing to pony up $500. Nicos Constantinou says national pride dictates he will probably chip in a few bucks.
Greece is about to take them up on the offer. The country's finance ministry this week put a plan in motion to sell $3 billion of bonds to expatriate Greeks living in heavily Hellenic swaths of the U.S. including the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York, home to Messrs. Arvanitis, Valerios and Constantinou.
"I will do what I can do—I run a business, but I'm not rich," Mr. Arvanitis, 58 years old, said on Wednesday as he served up baklava and espresso to customers at his new cafe Omonia Next Door (a sister to the store next door named Omonia). Mr. Arvanitis, who immigrated in 1974, said he would be willing to buy about $10,000 of the bonds, after getting his wife's approval.
"I'm proud of Greece—we gave the world democracy and history and art, everything," he says. "Greek people are smart people, but they don't know how to run a government."
Greece is hoping Mr. Arvanitis and others in neighborhoods of Boston and Chicago will help it pull out of its €340 billion ($472 billion) predicament. Estimates about the size of the Greek American community vary. Greece's Ministry of Foreign Affairs puts the U.S. Greek community at around 2.5 million.
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