Welcome to this E-Sype podcast. My name is Frederick Erickson, and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Alex Patelis, who is the chief economic advisors to Greece's prime Minister, Kariakos Mitsotakis.

Alex has had a distinguished career in economics and finance.

He did his PhD in economics in America under the supervision of Ben Bernanke,

the former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve,

was deep into the weeds of monetary policy and asset returns.

He's been at several big Wall Street institutions like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch,

and he was the chief economist at the macro hedge fund, PSQR.

And in 2010, he launched his own boutique advice and research consultancy.

But it's now right at the heart of Greek and Europe economic

policymaking. Alex, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Frederick. It's a great pleasure to be here.

So we're going to cover several issues in our conversation and we will come to future-oriented

economic issues for Greece and Europe in a while.

But I wanted us to start this discussion in Greece and in its economy going into the pandemic.

Some listeners, and especially those outside Europe, may have the feeling that Greece has fallen off the radar.

Ten years ago, it was at the center of various Eurozone crises

and went through a really turbulent time in its economy, its politics, and of course, its

broader society. There were rescue packages from the IMF and the Eurozone. Greece's debt

had to be renegotiated and restructured. Yet still, there was a lot of commentary suggesting that Greece

wouldn't make it, that the austerity and debt servicing conditions were too harsh to be

sustainable over time, and that its economic growth was going to be demoted to permanently

low expectations. So, Alex, can we start here? What has happened after the tumultuous years, and how was the economy

performing when the pandemic started? Thank you so much, Frederick. So indeed, when the pandemic

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