A Greek Central Banker at Home in America

Wall Street Journal
November 18, 2010

George S. Tavlas, the No. 2 official at the Bank of Greece, drew nervous laughs Thursday in Washington when he reflected on being back in the U.S., where he once worked at the International Monetary Fund, the State Department and the Brookings Institution.

That, and the fact that the U.S. has a budget deficit that is about 10% of gross domestic product like Greece’s, struck a familiar cord for him.

“It feels like home,” Mr. Tavlas joked with an audience at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank where he was invited to participate in a panel. It’s hard to find a country that has the same fiscal problems that Greece has, the Director General at the Bank of Greece told the audience to some awkward laughter. He earned his PhD from New York University.

More