to talk about all this and more, we are delighted to welcome dominique strauss-kahn. ng director of the imf, as well as an important political figure in europe and france. he is often mentioned as a potential candidate for the presidency of france. dominique strauss-kahn, thank you very much. >> i'm happy to be here. >> when people look at greece, as you know, some people in the united states have been saying, look at greece's problems. this is where we're headed. neil ferguson, a very distinguished economic historian at harvard wrote a piece in the "financial times" saying america should worry about the greek problem, because this is going to be america's future. do you worry about it? >> historians are not always right when they talk about the future. and i'm not sure that the situation of greece can be compared to one of the united states. united states is the leading economy, has nothing to do with greece. so if what ferguson means is the high level of debt is a problem, is a problem for greece, will be a problem for the u.s., he's right. will be a problem for ever

dominique strauss-kahn, who is the head of the imf, says that greece needs to have a multiyear depression to put its fiscal house in order. the hint therefore is that the imf is going to demand even more austerity than the greeks have so far put in place. maybe the greeks don't have the stomach for that. so maybe they won't activate the plan either. either way, default is not off the table. it's off the table probably in the short-term. it's not off the table in the long-term. greece, has a huge deficit that it's got to deal with. it's got to cut its primary deficit. we're going to see a lot of austerity. a lot of pain. and whether or not they have the chops for that, we're going to have to wait and see. a lot of people are questioning that story here today. the market reaction has been the obvious reaction. front end of the curve's gone -- >> looks like we just lost our shot with guy, who again is standing by in athens. but as he was mentioning, there are some more details, and the devil may be in the details when it comes to the deal with europe. we was just talking about the market rea