Yanis Varoufakis: Thoughts for the Post-2008 World

ATHENS – A biblical calamity befell Attica last Monday. I saw its first sign in the late morning at Athens airport, where I was seeing off my daughter to Australia. A strong whiff of burning wood caused me to look up to the sky, where a whitish-yellow sun beckoned, surrounded by the telltale eclipse-like daytime darkness that only thick, sky-high smoke can cause. By the early evening, the news began cascading...

Joe speaks with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, the man who defied Europe to save Greece – and failed. Yanis, the suave economics professor turned unexpected politician, has recently announced he will run for Prime Minister of Greece at the next national elections. He is the author of multiple books including And The Weak Suffer What They Must?, Adults in the Room,...

[embedded content] No one can be free if one person is in chains, let alone a whole people. It is in the interests of all, Jews & Arabs, Europeans & Americans, Asians & Africans that the blockade of Gaza and the collective abuse of its people ends now!

Yanis Varoufakis, ancien ministre des Finances grec, auteur de Et les faibles subissent ce qu’ils doivent ? : comment l’Europe de l’austérité menace la stabilité du monde, chez Actes Sud. L’ancien ministre des finances grec Yanis Varoufakis lors de la manifestation internationale du 1er mai 2018 à Athènes. •Crédits : GIORGOS GEORGIOU / NURPHOTO – AFP CLICK HERE FOR THE PODCAST Contre une Europe de l’austérité,...

“The reason we formed DiEM25 was the diagnosis that old wine in new bottles will not help revive the spirits of progressives in Italy or in the rest of Europe.” Aldo Cazzullo, Corriere Della Sera (AC): Let us start from the beginning? Why did you decide to resign after OXI’s victory in the Greek referendum? Yanis Varoufakis (YV): Because that very night, when I spoke to Prime Minister Tsipras, he declared...

The official version reads as follows: Europe is on the road to recovery, the consequences of Brexit are under control, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron would now create the new foundations on which Europe will establish a stronger alliance. Even the Greek debt crisis, it is said, was over after the decision of the Eurogroup last week! Unfortunately, a closer look reveals a deep gap between...

Even before Donald Trump drove to tears of dismay NATO’s leaders, Theresa May, the EU’s officialdom and Washington’s own ‘intelligence community’, the writing was on the wall: Trump is methodically dismantling a world order that he no longer believes to be in the interests of the United States’ ruling class. Mon 11 Jun 2018 16.23 BST Donald Trump’s early departure, and his subsequent refusal to endorse...

As you grow up and experience more of the ups and downs of the economy, you will notice a piece of mindbending hypocrisy: during the good times, bankers, entrepreneurs—rich people in general—tend to be against government. They criticize it as a “brake on development,” a “parasite” feeding on the private sector through taxation, an “enemy of freedom and entrepreneurship.” The cleverer among them even go so far as...

How do we choose between what is fair and just, and what our debtors demand of us? Yanis Varoufakis was put in such a dilemma in 2015 when he became the finance minister of Greece. In this rousing book, he charts the absurdities that underpin calls for austerity, as well as his own battles with a bureaucracy bent on ignoring the human cost of its every action. Passionately outspoken and tuned to the voices of the...

[embedded content] [embedded content]  “I wanted a Germany that was hegemonic and efficient, not authoritarian and caught up in a European Ponzi scheme. That was in 2013.” Excerpt from the Munich Seminar. This CESifo group Munich seminar took place on June 11, 2018 in Ludwig-Maximilian University, in Munich, in the Grosse Aula of the Ludwig-Maximilian University. The euro crisis has...