review

LONDON — If Santa is listening, here’s a suggestion about what to deliver Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and David Davis, her chief Brexit negotiator: a copy of Yanis Varoufakis’s “Adults in the Room.”
Mr. Varoufakis is the former Greek finance minister and his book sets out in excruciating detail the story of the 2015 negotiations between Greece’s government and its creditors. It feels like necessary reading for the Brexit team.

How far should economists engage in day-to-day politics?

“Researchers have an obligation to society to take positions on questions on which they have acquired professional competence,” says French economist Jean Tirole[1]. But how does an academic do this when media are not, in Tirole’s words, his ‘natural habitat’?

It is not often that one’s book is reviewed by a sitting finance minister. But these are strange times.

On 4th November Ireland’s finance minister Paschal Donohoe took the trouble to review my ‘Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A brief history of capitalism” for The Irish Times. To my utter surprise, he had some exceptionally complimentary things to say about my little book, for which I am – naturally – grateful.

“A gripping tale of an outspoken intellectual’s sudden immersion in high-stakes politics,… an attempt to divine why smart, seemingly decent politicians and bureaucrats would continue pushing a pointlessly cruel approach long after its pointlessness had become clear.”

“Varoufakis wasn’t always trying to make waves. And he seems to have approached his chief task with great seriousness.”

Why the Greek Bailout Went So Wrong
 by Justin Fox, New York Times, 17th November 2017 (Click here for the NYT site)

Doug Henwood’s long review of my Adults in the Room follows. Plus a radio interview with Doug for BEHIND THE NEWS.
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Behind-the-News-17_10_12-on-Adults-in-the-Room-.mp3

The Ins and Outs of Europe’s Deep Establishment
By Stan Persky
I.

Not many authors write a book in nine days, and fewer still are likely to announce it in the prologue. Yanis Varoufakis has no qualms about doing so in this brief history of capitalism, structured around the device of talking to his daughter, Xenia, not long a teenager. It was first published a few years ago, when she was even younger, and has been updated for British readers following a further week’s writing.

Yanis Varoufakis begins his account of his half year as Greece’s finance minister in the left populist Syriza government (Adults in the Room, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) with a description of a meeting with Larry Summers. According to Varoufakis, Summers explains that there are two types of politicians. There are those who are on the inside and play by the rules. They can just occasionally accomplish things by persuading others in the room to take their advice.

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