Tag Archives: Op-ed

Last April, again in The Guardian, David Adler and I called for a particular Green New Deal to be implemented internationally. Now that a new recession is ante portas, we are renewing this call, suggesting that we cannot afford yet another ‘good’ economic crisis to go to waste. Our latest piece in The Guardian follows: Brexit, Trump’s trade wars, the crisis of our democracies, the failure to address climate...

ATHENS – During his tenure as President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi forged a variety of weapons that he deployed to shield the eurozone from menacing deflationary forces. Without them, the euro would have been history. However, the deflationary specter haunting Europe was never truly defeated and is now back with considerable vengeance. In the dying days of his presidency, Draghi is throwing...

ATHENS – Ever since Boris Johnson moved into 10 Downing Street vowing to re-negotiate the United Kingdom’s withdrawal agreement with the European Union, the conventional wisdom among many Brexit opponents has been that the UK’s new prime minister is “doing a Varoufakis” and will be crushed in similar fashion. The BBC’s Katya Adler reported from Brussels that she met with EU officials who spoke of “Varoufakis the...

Jeremy Corbyn must expose Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit as a Trump-deal Brexit and put forward Labour’s plan to end the interminable Brexit ordeal immediately, suggests Yanis Varoufakis Boris Johnson is the first British prime minister in a long time who is free of dilemmas regarding his approach to the European Union. For better or worse, Johnson’s strategy for attaining power has left him with only one viable...

Christine Lagarde was a key member of the infamous troika – Greece’s official creditors – who crushed our people’s resistance to perpetual debt bondage. The other key figure alongside the International Monetary Fund’s then managing director was Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, who played a central role in that drama by engineering the closure of Greece’s banks. Now, four years later, Lagarde...

Theresa May’s sequence of strategic errors has rendered impossible a soft Brexit. By adopting red lines consistent solely with a hard Brexit, while denying herself the option of walking out without a deal, the Prime Minister engineered the current stalemate. Now, Mrs May is about to bequeath a poisoned chalice to her successor. The next Tory Prime Minister must, to begin with, avoid any temptation to promise to...

ATHENS – The eurozone country that has become synonymous with insolvency is today proving to be a treasure-trove for some. Traders who bought Greek assets a few years ago have good reason to celebrate, having banked returns that no other market could have provided. But, as is often the case, an opportunity that seems too good to be true probably is. And this one could portend the next phase of our global...

Forget the People’s Vote: the upcoming elections for European Parliament have become the new second referendum. To one side, Nigel Farage hopes to gather the Leave vote behind his new Brexit Party. To the other, a splintered coalition of Greens, Changers, Lib Dems, and Labour candidates are campaigning for Remain. Both sides agree on the primary purpose of these European elections: “vote so you can be heard on...

Should Jeremy Corbyn adopt an unequivocal commitment to holding a second referendum? Under normal circumstances, it should be an easy question to answer: democrats who think of referendums as a useful injection of direct democracy into our system of representative government, should be in favour. And those who are sceptical of referendums should be against. Alas, our circumstances have stopped being “normal” from...

By Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler: In times of crisis and catastrophe, children are often forced to grow up quickly. We are now witnessing this premature call to action on a planetary scale. As the adults in government accelerate their consumption of fossil fuels, children are leading the campaign against our species’ looming extinction. Our survival now depends on the prospects for a global movement to follow...