[embedded content] The good folk at Cambridge Union invited me to deliver a talk over the internet during our lockdown days. I chose to deliver a speech, or text, reciting what I fear might prove an accurate assessment of our BLEAK TWENTIES from the perspective of, say, December 2030. My great hope is that it is proven grossly inaccurate. But my fear is that it won’t…...
Read More »The Brown University Journal of PPE interviews Krugman, Pinker & Varoufakis on Inequality, Financialisation, and Populism
JPPE: Many economists have their explanations about where inequality comes from, such as financialization, credit, globalization, technology, and bad policy. When thinking about the causes of inequality in the last thirty years, are there specific areas you think we ought to devote our attention to? Yanis Varoufakis: Well, there’s one word that answers your question: financialization. Financialization came...
Read More »Dann wäre morgen die Revolution – KONTEXT Wochenzeitung
Unter Meteorologen braucht es keine Meinungsvielfalt – so lange die etablierten Methoden fundierte Prognosen liefern. In den Wirtschaftswissenschaften, wo die Vorhersagen “allenfalls per Unfall” richtig lägen, sei das anders, meint der Ökonom und DiEM25-Initiator Yanis Varoufakis. Wenn die herrschende Lehrmeinung die Realität nicht mehr treffend beschreiben kann, brauche es alternative Blickwinkel. Der...
Read More »From an Economics-without-Capitalism to Markets-without-Capitalism – University of Tübingen (video available)
A lecture organised by University of Tübingen economics students, delivered on Monday 3rd February 2020 on the theme From an Economics-without-Capitalism to Markets-without-Capitalism. Click here to watch the video of the lecture Mainstream economic models lack some important features of really-existing capitalism, including money, time and space. Its models offer ideological cover for a capitalist system...
Read More »From an Economics-without-Capitalism to Markets-without-Capitalism – University of Tübingen lecture tonight (livestream available)
The student initiative Rethinking Economics Tübingen presents the final lecture to its series ‘Introduction to Plural Economics. It will be delivered tonight – Monday 3rd February 2020 by Professor Yanis Varoufakis on the theme From an Economics-without-Capitalism to Markets-without-Capitalism.Mainstream economic models lack some important features of really-existing capitalism, including money, time and space....
Read More »Why is economics not a force for good and what must we do to make it so? Cambridge 8th NOV 2019
[embedded content] On 8th November, at the invitation of Professor Antara Haldar of Cambridge University, I presented this talk in the context of a fascinating group of academics who gathered in the Cambridge Union’s upstairs seminar room to revive Keynes’ original idea of the Cambridge Circus – a radical circle of economists seeking the kind of economics that can be a force for good....
Read More »Sophisticated Heretic – Interview with the Cambridge Union magazine TCS
Yanis Varoufakis has been adamant that he is not a politician. He might be an economist, though his conversation with Margaret Levi – a Stanford political scientist – at the Cambridge Union last Thursday evening on 7th November 2019 smashed the academic boundary walls of economics in style. His critical principles come from his characteristic cool iconoclasm – he has ‘zero respect for economists’ – but this is a...
Read More »“Brexit, for all its ills, has reinvigorated British democracy” – Cambridge Union address, 8 NOV 2019
[embedded content] Last Friday (8th November 2019), I delivered a Cambridge Union address on (what else?) Brexit. My opening message was: “Instead of moaning about the state of British institutions, rejoice! For all its many ills, Brexit has reinvigorated British democracy.” Unlike most continental European parliaments, the House of Commons remains at the heart of decision making and, to...
Read More »Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford University
[embedded content] The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to do with… really-existing...
Read More »Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – Oxford University, Taylor Lecture, 12/2/2019
The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. In my book was addressed to my daughter regarding the economy I tried to offer her a simple, though not simplistic, account on how capitalism works and how it fails. Critics, correctly, pointed out that the book’s criticisms of capitalism (couched in parables borrowed from...
Read More »