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Yanis Varoufakis is full of teasing paradoxes. As a radical economics guru, he expounds on the state of the world with a mixture of burning grievance and brimming, almost imperious, self-confidence. Aged 57, his personal baggage includes a keen sense of the wrongs of recent Greek history, which overshadowed his parents’ lives, and the glories of the ancient Greek heritage. But his real obsession is with the future.

Mark Lawson, in today’s Guardian, previews my Annual Shakespeare Rose Lecture, ahead of tonight’s delivery. He begins with its title ‘Shake the Superflux’ and the statement: ‘The beauty of King Lear is that it encourages us to think about inequality’.

Donald Trump is perhaps the US president best equipped to understand that some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. His personal business plan always involved racking up enormous deficits and debts, before finding a way to unload them on to others – his employees and creditors mostly. Last week the US president imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

In this interview LA STAMPA sought my views on the outcome of the Italian elections. My original answers (in English) appear below. The gist? Italy’s election result is yet another example of the political centre’s implosion as a result of the establishment’s perseverance with failed, austerity-based policies, pretending that they were the solution to our continent’s systemic crisis.

“Europa es exactamente lo opuesto a democracia”, asegura el ex ministro griego de Finanzas y cofundador de DIEM25, que ajusta cuentas con los protagonistas de la crisis del euro en  “Comportarse como adultos“

“El Gobierno español actuó firmemente en Bruselas contra los intereses de la inmensa mayoría de los españoles”
“El bitcoin es una espléndida burbuja y nunca podrá operar provechosamente como moneda”

Back in 1991, a left-wing friend expressed his frustration that “really existing socialism” was crumbling, with exaltations of how it had propelled the Soviet Union from the plough to Sputnik in a decade.

I remember replying, under his pained and disapproving gaze: “So, what? No unsustainable system can be, ultimately, sustained.” Now that globalization is also proving unsustainable, and is in retreat, its liberal cheerleaders resemble my friend when they proffer similarly correct, yet irrelevant, exaltations of how it lifted billions from poverty.

El exministro de Finanzas griego ha publicado un libro sobre las entretelas de la política europea

Yanis Varoufakis, exministro de Finanzas de Grecia. Barcelona, 9 de noviembre de 2017 ALBERT GARCIA

Inappropriate behaviour, inciting debauchery and credible accusations + this day in history w/the murder of Sergey Kirov and our song of the day by Morrissey on your Morning Monarchy for December 1, 2017.

Yanis Varoufakis is telling me about the birth of his daughter, Xenia. “What I felt was an immense weight of responsibility,” he says. “Absolutely blind love and the sense of focusing on one individual.” But the experience didn’t make him feel like a different person. “It didn’t change my internal constitution or the way I looked at the world.”

L’ancien ministre des Finances de Tsípras, qui a lutté bec et ongles contre l’austérité et vient de publier un livre au vitriol, dénonce les «mensonges» de la crise grecque. Et regarde d’un œil plus que sceptique la politique de Macron.