A Bird's - eye View of the Global Crisis
For five years, the post of Alternate Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund has afforded Deree graduate Miranda Xafa a bird's eye view of the global economy, which for the past year has been going through its roughest patch since tha Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet, Xafa, who studied economics at Deree before earing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, is also intimately acquainted with the workings of the Greek economy and the Greek political system. In the early 1990s she served as economic advisor to then-prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis, whose government was the first to attempt wholesale reforms of the Greek economy, mainly by trying to wean Greek business away from its dependency on the bloated and inefficient state sector. In an interview with ACG Magazine, as she prepared to leave the IMF for a senior post in a Geneva-based private asset management company, Xafa spoke about the current global crisis, defended the role the IMF has played in the global financial system, and reminisced about her years at Derre.