Tag Archives: English

I warned Jeremy Corbyn about Brexit – now Labour must regain its radicalism Yanis Varoufakis on a radical vision for Brexit. 1st September 2017 (Click here for the original NS site) From the beginning of my conversations on Brexit with the Labour leadership, I advocated a “radical Remain” stance: the UK should be for the EU, but not this EU. The labour movement in Britain and elsewhere has been critical of the...

ATHENS – Western capitalism has few sacred cows left. It is time to question one of them: the independence of central banks from elected governments. The rationale for entrusting monetary policy fully to central banks is well understood: politicians, overly tempted during the electoral cycle to create more money, pose a threat to economic stability. While progressives have always protested that central banks can...

The news that “documenta 14 Cancels ‘Auschwitz on the Beach’ Performance Amid Intense Criticism” should worry us all. Censorship is the coward’s way out of controversy. Dialogue, fierce disagreement and, hopefully eventual synthesis, is the hard road that democrats dare to tread. Back in early July Franco Bifo Berardi wrote an open letter, addressed to myself and to DiEM25, explaining why he is resigning from...

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In this BBC World at One program dedicated to the Crash of 2007-8, I try, in the space of two and a half minutes, to explain why those momentous events, ten years ago, changed the world in a manner that it no longer makes sense in terms common prior to 2007. Of why I claim that 2007/8 was to capitalism what 1991 was to socialism...

Yanis Varoufakis, der linke Star, erzählt, wie die EU sein Land zu einer Kolonie gemacht hat. Er hat recht von Alpha bis Omega. Yanis Varoufakis, der wilde Marxist, der kluge Ökonom, kritisiert in seinem neuen Buch die Europäische Union. Bild: Keystone Der frühere griechische Finanzminister Yanis Varoufakis hat vor Kurzem ein Buch vorgelegt («Die ganze Geschichte: Meine Auseinandersetzung mit Europas...

Why do I refuse to be impressed by the news of Greece’s return to the markets? “It is because the Greek state and the Greek banks remain deeply insolvent. And, their return to the money markets is a harbinger of the next terrible phase of Greece’s crisis, rather than a cause for celebration”. The above was my answer in a BBC interview on 9th April… 2014! It is also the only answer that fits today’s announcement...

In a Guardian interview (24 July), the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, having admitted to “big mistakes”, was asked if appointing me as his first finance minister was one of them. According to the interviewer, Mr Tsipras said “Varoufakis … was the right choice for an initial strategy of ‘collision politics’, but he dismisses the plan he presented had Greece been forced to make the dramatic move to a new...

On 20th July 2017, the University of Sussex conferred upon me the degree of Doctor of the University Honoris Causa. Professor Andrea Cornwall, who kindly presented me to the Chancellor and the Congregation, explained the rationale of the award: “[F]or his contribution to our understanding of the global economy, for his advocacy of an authentic internationalism, for his intellectual bravery and his passion for...

In a recent article entitled “Varoufakis and the 2015 debt talks – behind closed doors”, published on the English language site of Kathimerini, Yannis Paleologos is putting forward an innovative new criticism of my 2015 negotiating stance regarding Greece’s public debt. His criticism’s first leg is standard troika-speak, insisting that by pressing for a deep re-structuring of Greece’s public debt I brought “the...