Reading Varoufakis: Frustrated Strategist of Greek Financial Deterrence (click here for the original site)
by Adam Tooze
Adam Tooze holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute. He is currently at work on a history of the global financial crisis 2008-2018, which will appear in time for the anniversary in September 2018.
ATHENS – Europe is at the mercy of a common currency that not only was unnecessary for European integration, but that is actually undermining the European Union itself. So what should be done about a currency without a state to back it – or about the 19 European states without a currency that they control?
The logical answer is either to dismantle the euro or to provide it with the federal state it needs. The problem is that the first solution would be hugely costly, while the second is not feasible in a political climate favoring the re-nationalization of sovereignty.
Extracts from an event that took place on 3rd December 2016 in Zagreb’s National Theatre.
This is a superbly written account of the struggle to alleviate the austerity imposed upon the Greek people by the eurozone. Greece, argues Varoufakis, has been put in a debtors’ prison and robbed of autonomy and dignity for the indefinite future. Critics would argue that he failed as finance minister in 2015 because he was insufficiently politic. More plausibly, he could never have succeeded, such were the vested interests arrayed against him. This outcome was — and is — a tragedy, because he was — and is — right. The bulk of Greek debt should indeed be cancelled outright.
It is no surprise that Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, turns up to our interview without a tie. The 56-year-old famously arrived at Downing Street in 2015 for a meeting with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, with his shirt untucked.
More surprising is that the left-wing economist, who led negotiations with creditors during the 2015 Greek government-debt crisis, is wearing a suit jacket.
“We have a major imbalance between savings and investment. We have the highest savings rates in the history of capitalism and lowest level of investment. You only have to state that to realise what the source of our troubles are.”
