Op-ed
The Greek Watergate – UNHERD
, 23/09/2022
Nothing surprises me more than politicians professing to be surprised that their phones have been tapped. In the world revealed to us by Edward Snowden almost a decade ago, no phone is beyond the reach of motivated eavesdroppers. This is not to say, however, that phone-tapping political opponents has lost its capacity to poison democracy. […]
Are we Greeks insufferable nationalists? UNHERD
, 18/09/2022
We Greeks have a reputation for being insufferable nationalists, most of whom genuinely believe that Greek culture is superior to that of other nations and peoples. We were even anointed the most culturally chauvinistic Europeans in a recent Pew survey. At the risk of confirming that stereotype, I shall blame it on… foreigners, with their immoderate […]
Time to Blow Up the Electricity Markets – Project Syndicate
, 18/09/2022
The European Union’s power sector is a good example of what market fundamentalism has done to electricity networks the world over. With the end of cheap natural gas, retail consumers and businesses are paying the price for their governments’ embrace of a shoddy theory. ATHENS – The blades of the wind turbines on the mountain […]
Inflation, socialism’ for corporations & austerity for workers: FORTUNE comments on Yanis Varoufakis’ take
, 18/09/2022
Known for sporting a leather jacket in meetings with foreign dignitaries during his brief stint as Greece’s finance minister in 2015, Yanis Varoufakis has become a bit of a rebel in economic circles. A member of Greece’s Hellenic Parliament and founder of the left-wing European Realistic Disobedience Front, or MeRA25 party, Varoufakis hasn’t historically pulled any […]
Inflation as a Political Power Play Gone Wrong – Project Syndicate op-e
, 30/07/2022
The blame game over surging prices is on. Was it too much central-bank money being pumped out for too long that caused inflation to take off? Was it China, where most physical production had moved before the pandemic locked down the country and disrupted global supply chains? Was it Russia, whose invasion of Ukraine took […]
Here is what Central Banks could do to stem inflation without crushing the poor or killing off the Green Transition – The Guardian
, 16/04/2022
Inflation is a disease that disproportionately afflicts the poor. Even before Vladimir Putin unleashed his brutal war on Ukraine, whose byproducts include soaring energy and food prices, inflation was already over 7.5% in the US and above 5% in Europe and the UK. Calls for its taming are, therefore, fully justified – and the interest rate rise in the US, […]
Cloudalists: Our New Cloud-based Ruling Class – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 12/04/2022
Capital is everywhere, yet capitalism is on the wane. In an era when the owners of a new form of “command capital” have gained exorbitant power over everyone else, including traditional capitalists, this is no contradiction. ATHENS – Once upon a time, capital goods were just the manufactured means of production. Robinson Crusoe’s salvaged fishing […]
Why Stop at the Russian Oligarchs? Project Syndicate op-ed
, 12/04/2022
At a time when Russian bombs are destroying Ukrainian cities, there is good reason to focus on the oligarchs supporting the Kremlin. But do American multi-billionaires and Saudi princes enjoy less political clout, stash less money abroad, and use their influence any better? ATHENS – No sooner had Roman Abramovich, newly targeted by the United […]
Putin’s criminal invasion, Europe’s response, America’s role – AVVENIRE interview (English version)
, 05/03/2022
Avvenire wanted to know my opinion of Putin, of his invasion, of Europe’s and America’s role, of what this war means for Europe and, of course, they wanted me to explain my support for a diplomatic solution based on the idea of an independent, free, neutral Ukraine. Here is the original English text. What is […]
How the euro divided Europe, and why countries like Bulgaria should not join – Project Syndicate, Oxford Union video & Keynote audio
, 26/01/2022
This January marked the 20th anniversary of euro notes and coins circulating. In an op-ed published by Project Syndicate I argue that the euro was an unmitigated failure even by the criteria of its architects. This is an updated analysis of a keynote I delivered a few years ago at the Oxford Union – see […]
Why We Must Challenge Zuckerberg’s Ring of Power – Project Syndicate
, 26/01/2022
Learning to appreciate that control is an illusion is hard, especially when we are prepared to sacrifice almost everything, to pay any price, to control others. But if we are to stop others—Mark Zuckerberg, for example—from controlling us, it is a lesson we must learn. Once upon a time, in the ancient kingdom of Lydia, a […]
On Brexit and the task of confronting technofeudalism – Interview in The Morning Star
, 03/01/2022
ONE YEAR since the final deal for Brexit was announced, it remains one of the most divisive political subjects for a generation. Perhaps unknown to most, the incendiary B-word had its genesis in the term “Grexit” — coined during tumultuous years after the 2008 credit crunch when a Greek exit from the EU was speculated, […]
Defining wealth in 65 words for SPEARS magazine
, 27/12/2021
Spears asked me, and three others, to define WEALTH in fewer than 70 words. Their rationale was that, at the time of Spear’s founding, in 2006, there were fewer than 1,000 billionaires world-wide; their combined net worth a little under $3 trillion. Today, there are 2,755 billionaires, according to Forbes, and they have a collective […]
The West’s Wasted Year – Project Syndicate
, 06/12/2021
A year that began hopefully is ending grimly. Western political elites, unable (and perhaps unwilling) to turn a deadly pandemic and climate crisis into a life-preserving opportunity, have only themselves to blame. ATHENS – The silver lining in the gloomy cloud of the pandemic was the opportunity it gave the West to mend its ways. […]
A Progressive Monetary Policy Is the Only Alternative – Project Syndicate
, 06/12/2021
Torn between inflationary jitters and fear of deflation, central bankers in the major advanced economies are taking a potentially costly wait-and-see approach. Only a progressive rethink of their tools and aims can help them play a socially useful post-pandemic role. ATHENS – As the coronavirus pandemic recedes in the advanced economies, their central banks increasingly […]
LA STAMPA interview on the Italian edition of ANOTHER NOW: From Marinnetti & the Sex Pistols to Hephaestus & favourite books
, 17/11/2021
On the occasion of the publication of my ANOTHER NOW in Italian (Un Altro Presente), La Stampa put to me some quirky and irreverent questions. Just in case you wanted to read them, and my answers, in the English original, here they are. Have fun! Marinetti and the Sex Pistols are milestones for Costa: is […]
What’s behind the Cop26 fraud? – The Guardian
, 16/11/2021
There are three reasons Cop26 proved such a spectacular debacle: A planet-wide collective action problem over “free-riding”. A global coordination failure. And… capitalism! “Make no mistake, the money is here, if the world wants to use it,” said Mark Carney, the former Bank of England Governor who today serves as UN climate envoy while also representing […]
What’s behind our #yourNHSneedsYou campaign: DiEM25 ushering in a new way of doing progressive politics – The New Statesman
, 06/11/2021
A new campaign to save the NHS from privatisation-from-within (#yourNHSneedsYou) is going from strength to strength in the UK. In this New Statesman article, Yanis Varoufakis, Nathalie Bennett and John McDonnell explain why and how the NHS is being eaten up from within by Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Business more generally. What makes […]
Merkel’s tenure condemned Germany to wealth-fuelled decline & the EU to debt-fuelled stagnation – JACOBIN
, 28/09/2021
Angela Merkel’s tenure will be remembered as Germany’s, and Europe’s, cruelest paradox. On the one hand, she dominated the continent’s politics like no other peacetime leader — and is leaving the German chancellery considerably more powerful than she had found it. But the way she built up this power condemned Germany to secular decline and […]
Angela Merkel’s austerity condemned Europe and Germany to decline – The New Statesman
, 28/09/2021
At the height of the eurozone crisis, one of Angela Merkel’s close advisers explained to me her driving ambition: to bequeath to her successor a stronger chancellery than she inherited. If so, as Merkel prepares to retire, she should be delighted. Germany’s trade surpluses, and thus political clout, are far greater now than when she took office […]
Gillian Tett & Yanis Varoufakis, through their books Anthrovision & Another Now, revisit capitalism – An IQ2 event, live and in situ, Union Chapel, London, Monday 4th Oct 2021
, 20/09/2021
SPEAKERS Yanis Varoufakis: Greek MP & former finance minister of Greece and author of Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present Gillian Tett: Chairman of the US editorial board and U.S editor-at-large at the Financial Times Gillian Tett is the pioneering columnist who has spent the last decade documenting the rise of ‘conscious capitalism’, a movement led […]
My farewell to Mikis Theodorakis – Der Freitag
, 09/09/2021
I must have been 6 or 7 years-old when I got whiff of the significance of Theodorakis’ music. It was around 1968 when my parents warned me not to tell anyone at school or in the neighbourhood that they owned records of his – and certainly not to admit that we listened to them. “Even […]
Lessons from this summer’s calamitous Greek forests inferno – The Guardian
, 31/08/2021
After the second world war, Greece’s countryside experienced two debilitating human surges – an exodus of villagers, then a most peculiar human invasion of its fringes. These two surges, aided by a weak state and abetted by the climate crisis, have turned the low-level drama of naturally redemptive forest fires into this summer’s heart-wrenching catastrophe. […]
A central bank cryptocurrency to democratise money – Project Syndicate & Jordan Times
, 02/08/2021
The history of money has been the history of the struggles to control the payment system and the money tree. Today, with control over both resting in the hands of bankers, central banks’ efforts to boost business end up amplifying inequality while failing to address either economic stagnation or the looming climate disaster. The time […]