Lucas Papademos: The New Man In Greece

Former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos has been named as Greece’s new prime minister, following days of negotiations.

Papademos, 64, said he was taking over at a “critical point” for Greece.

Leaders of the three main parties making up a new government of national unity had been meeting the Greek president to try to reach a deal.

Papademos, who is not a member of parliament, will head an interim government until elections can take place in February.

The government’s main task will to ensure debt-laden Greece gets its latest bailout payment, by approving a new 130 billion euro ($177 billion) international rescue package from eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund.

“The president, after recommendations by political leaders who attended the meeting, has instructed Lucas Papademos to form a new government,” the president’s office said in a statement.

The new government will be sworn in on Friday.

In the broadcast Thursday Marco Werman talks with Richard Parker, senior adviser to outgoing Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, about Papademos.