Unherd
How will Europe, Britain & China react to the Trump shock: On TIMES Radio & Unherd’s Undercurrents
, 03/04/2025
In this interview, I argue that how Trump’s Shock pans out will largely depend on whether Europe and China will act in concert or turn against one another. As for the UK, Trump has given Brexit a major boost. And here is another interview with Emily Jeshinsky of Unherd’s Undercurrents on the same subject: Trump’s […]
Will the Trump Shock prove as momentous as the Nixon Shock? UNHERD op-ed & on BBC tv
, 03/04/2025
“My philosophy, Mr President, is that all foreigners are out to screw us and it’s our job to screw them first.” With these words, the US Treasury Secretary convinced the President to deliver a colossal shock to the global economy. In the words of one of the President’s men, the objective was to trigger “a […]
Crypto’s role in Trump’s economic masterplan (with special emphasis on stablecoins) – UNHERD
, 19/03/2025
After dismissing Bitcoin as a scam during his first White House stint, Trump warmed to cryptocurrencies during his re-election campaign. To complete his conversion, on the 6th of March the 47th President signed an executive order to set up a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a US Digital Asset Stockpile”. The United States government sensibly stockpiles […]
Liberals should be outraged by Cǎlin Georgescu’s election ban – UNHERD
, 11/03/2025
Whatever happened to the notion that, faced with the enemies of democracy, we should fight their ideas but, equally, for their right to express them? The answer, unfortunately, is that it died an ignominious death on Sunday, as Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau, with the full support of the European Union’s liberal establishment, banned far-Right candidate Cǎlin Georgescu […]
Trump’s tariff chaos explained – TIMES RADIO
, 09/03/2025
“He wants to reduce the value of the dollar… in order to make American exports more competitive and imports into the United States more expensive. At the same time he wants to maintain the hegemony of the dollar.” Yanis Varoufakis explains the secret behind Trump’s tariff strategy, and his new obsession with cryptocurrency. This interview […]
Donald Trump’s economic masterplan – UNHERD
, 21/02/2025
Faced with President Trump’s economic moves, his centrist critics oscillate between desperation and a touching faith that his tariff frenzy will fizzle out. They assume that Trump will huff and puff until reality exposes the emptiness of his economic rationale. They have not been paying attention: Trump’s tariff fixation is part of a global economic […]
Rachel Reeves’ unbearable acquiescence to the City bankers – UNHERD
, 16/01/2025
The curse of finance ministers whose country’s business model is broken is that they are powerless to transform the economy, yet too powerful not to take the blame. But when the economy is merely stagnating, not yet in free-fall, preventing the descent into a financial crisis should require no more than average competence. Sadly, the […]
Star Trek: A humanist communist manifesto for our times – UNHERD
, 04/01/2025
On 9 February 1967, hours after the US Air Force had levelled the Port of Haiphong and several Vietnamese airfields, NBC aired a Star Trek episode featuring a concept that clashed mercilessly with what had just happened in Vietnam: the Prime Directive – a general ban on its Starship captains from using superior technology (military […]
The roots of European farmers’ anger were baked into the EU – UNHERD
, 22/02/2024
Manos, a sixth-generation farmer from Thessaly, put it to me bluntly when I asked him to explain why he was prepared to drive his tractor 400km to Athens to camp outside Parliament: “If I don’t, my farm will soon follow our village school, co-op, post office and bank branch into oblivion.” His story is neither […]
NATO from the perspective of having grown up under US-sponsored neofascism – UNHERD
, 12/01/2024
It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel […]
UNHERD interviews me on TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 05/10/2023
In his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis, the Leftist economist and former finance minister of Greece, suggests that the capitalist age has already come to an end. He argues that a new global economic and political system has stealthily replaced the old order, with the emerging dominance of tech monopolies like Amazon and Google. He […]
What’s behind this summer’s unnaturally huge Greek forest fires – UNHERD
, 31/08/2023
My grandmother had the theory that, as we get older, our mind subconsciously cleanses our memories of a myriad misfortunes, leaving a sanitised version of the past for us to feel nostalgic about. The optimism of remembrance, she called it. Little did she know that her reasonable hypothesis would, one day, become the climate change […]
On the shameful deal Osborne-Mitsotakis are hammering out over the Parthenon antiquities – UNHERD
, 24/03/2023
From the very beginning, Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon’s statues and friezes caused something of a discursive British civil war. On one side were humanists, like Lord Byron; on the other were Empire apologists, who defend Elgin’s actions and support the British Museum’s inalienable property rights to the artefacts it, eventually, purchased from him. Over […]
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 […]