Essays
Discussing the Labour Party’s fitness for government, Brexit et al – on BBC 2’s Politics Live
, 01/10/2018
Yanis Varoufakis and Conservative MP Ken Clarke join Andrew Neil, along with Camilla Tominey from the Telegraph and Labour’s Rupa Huq. They discuss whether Labour is ready to govern, Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit meeting with the EU’s Michel Barnier and the Salisbury poisoning suspect reported to be a Russian military officer.
Discussing Europe, Brexit, capitalism, DiEM25 and almost everything in between with Ruth Wishart at the Edinburgh Book Festival, August 18, 2018
, 01/10/2018
Is Neoliberalism destroying the world? A. Admati, S. Gindin, P. Mirowski & Y. Varoufakis interviewed by CBC Radio
, 01/10/2018
Deregulation. Infinite growth. Self-correcting markets. All are hallmarks of neoliberal thinking. But they’re more than just assumptions about the economy. They undergird much of the most influential thinking about governance right now, and dominate political and economic thinking everywhere. The results, according to some, have been disastrous. Investigative journalist Bruce Livesey asks four experts about the rise […]
, 01/10/2018
ATHENS – As deadlines approach and red lines are redrawn in the United Kingdom’s impending withdrawal from the European Union, it is imperative for the people of Britain to regain democratic control over a process that is opaque and ludicrously irrational. The question is: How? Democracy can never aspire to being more than a work […]
Is the world safer than it was in 2008? Ten Guardian writers think not
, 17/09/2018
Yanis Varoufakis: Risk has not been diminished, just taken out of sight Ten years after its near-death experience, capitalism is back to its old ways. Bailouts for the few and austerity for the many have caused global debt to rise 40% since 2007. Yes, British and European banks have contracted (as US authorities required Barclays, Deutsche […]
Our Progressive International movement will fight, at once, two authoritarianisms: The National International and the Financialised Globalists who paved the ground for them – Yanis Varoufakis & Bernie Sanders in THE GUARDIAN (13th September 2018)
, 14/09/2018
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Our new international movement will fight rising nationalism, its underlying fascist moment, and the pseudo-liberal establishment whose policies gave rise to it (Click here for The Guardian) Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of a globally unifying rightwing – a Nationalist International – that sprang out of the cesspool of financialised capitalism. […]
Lessons from 2008 for beyond 2018: Keynote this Friday 14th September at the OECD, Paris
, 12/09/2018
Before 2008 we could all see that global trade imbalances were growing inexorably, creating a glut of savings in surplus countries that flowed into deficit countries, causing house price, stock exchange and debt bubbles whose bursting would never end well. What few could see, however, was that, behind the dominant narrative of unfettered competition and […]
Ten Years After Lehman’s Collapse: What caused the Crash of 2008 is now shaping our post-modern 1930s – der Freitag
, 10/09/2018
In the autumn of 2008 events unfolded in Wall Street that the crushing majority of people around the world had been led to believe could never occur. It was the financial equivalent of watching the sun spinning out of control soon after it rose above the horizon. Humanity watched on in collective disbelief. The […]
Im Reich der Gier – der Freitag
, 10/09/2018
Mythos Der Kapitalismus ist entzaubert und bringt uns das größte Faschismusproblem seit den Dreißigern Was im Herbst 2008 an der Wall Street geschah, hatten die allermeisten Menschen bis dahin für unmöglich gehalten, schließlich hatte man ihnen jahrelang weisgemacht, dass etwas Derartiges schlichtweg nicht passieren könnte. Es war, als ob man dabei zuguckt, wie die Sonne, kurz […]
Democracy, Socialism, Europe and Scottish Independence – four clips on STV
, 05/09/2018
PART 1 – WHY SOCIALISM? Interviewer: You are meeting with Jeremy Corbyn to discuss socialism. Why? Varoufakis: Because democracy needs a healthy democratic socialist movement to be part of the political process in order to be healthy PART 2 – REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL PART 3 – DEMOCRATS MUST GET TOGETHER ACROSS PARTY POLITICAL AND NATIONAL […]
The three tribes of austerity: enemies of big government, Germany’s social democrats, and tax-cutting Republicans – op-ed in Project Syndicate
, 31/08/2018
No policy is as self-defeating during recessionary times as the pursuit of a budget surplus for the purpose of containing public debt – austerity, for short. So, as the world approaches the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is appropriate to ask why austerity proved so popular with Western political elites following […]
Έσπρωξαν την Ελλάδα στον γκρεμό και γιορτάζουν το γκελ που έκανε στον σκληρό βράχο της Μεγάλης Ύφεσής. Έφτιαξαν μια έρημο και την ονόμασαν ειρήνη – άρθρο στον χτεσινό The Observer
, 27/08/2018
Την περασμένη εβδομάδα οι τίτλοι και τα πρωτοσέλιδα των ΜΜΕ «γιόρτασαν το τέλος της οικονομικής διάσωσης της Ελλάδας, ακόμη και τη λήξη της λιτότητας, ενώ παρουσίασαν την οκταετή παρέμβαση της Ευρώπης στην Ελλάδα ως πρότυπο συνετής ευρωπαϊκής αλληλεγγύης στο “μαύρο πρόβατό” της, μια περίπτωση “αυστηρής αγάπης” που φέρεται να λειτούργησε. Όμως μία πιο προσεκτική ματιά αποκαλύπτει μία […]
Greece was never bailed out; it remains a debtor’s prison and the EU won’t let go of the keys – op-ed in The Observer
, 27/08/2018
Over the past week, the world’s media have been proclaiming the successful completion of the Greek financial rescue programmemounted in 2010 by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Headlines celebrated the end of Greece’s bailout, even the termination of austerity. Buoyant reports from ground zero of the eurozone crisis portrayed Europe’s eight-year long Greek […]
Farewell Uri Avnery (1923-2018), Israeli humanist who demonstrated that there is no such thing as an Arab-Israeli conflict – just a constant struggle against racism, colonialism & misanthropy
, 27/08/2018
Humanism is poorer this week. Uri Avnery has died. Soldier number 44410 of the Israel army, spent the following decades defending human decency in the land that he loved and struggled to make a welcoming home for Jews and Arabs alike. From his 1953 report of the raid on Qibya in Jordan, where an Israeli unit commanded by […]
Greece was never bailed out and remains in debtor’s prison – Bild Zeitung interview
, 22/08/2018
BILD meets Yanis Varoufakis – the man who was THE symbol of the Greek left-wing government’s resistance against the targets set by the bailout troika for the broke state of Greece. We met the professor of economics – who co-founded left-wing movement DiEM25 – in his summer house in the mountains of the sunny island of Aegina. BILD: Mr. Varoufakis, […]
Der Spiegel – Verdammt zu 60 Jahren Entwürdingung
, 22/08/2018
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/griechenland-krise-beteiligte-und-betroffene-ziehen-bilanz-a-1221081.html
On the Deep State – an audio essay in seven parts
, 19/08/2018
Is there a Deep State in our western liberal democracies? If so, is it a conspiracy or something more ‘interesting’ than that? These are questions that the Left has been traditionally engaged with, especially when facing undercover campaigns to prevent progressives from winning power or, on occasion, to unseat or destabilise left-wing governments. However, more recently, the Alt-Right […]
CRASHED: Long version of my Observer review of Adam Tooze’s new book on the Crash of 2008
, 13/08/2018
Every so often humanity manages genuinely to surprise itself. Events to which we had previously assigned zero probability push us into what the ancient Greeks referred to as aporia: a state of intense bafflement urgently demanding a new model of the world we live in. The Crash of 2008 was such a moment. Suddenly, the […]
Greed, ineptitude and austerity fanned the flames of the Greek wildfire – The Sunday Times
, 30/07/2018
ATHENS: A biblical calamity befell the Attica region last Monday. I saw its first sign in the late morning at Athens airport, where I was seeing off my daughter to Australia. A strong whiff of burning wood caused me to look up to the sky, where a whitish-yellow sun beckoned, surrounded by the tell-tale eclipse-like […]
Behind Greece’s forest fires: a tragic reminder of our collective responsibility as Europeans
, 27/07/2018
ATHENS – A biblical calamity befell Attica last Monday. I saw its first sign in the late morning at Athens airport, where I was seeing off my daughter to Australia. A strong whiff of burning wood caused me to look up to the sky, where a whitish-yellow sun beckoned, surrounded by the telltale eclipse-like daytime […]
On The Jolly Swagmen podcast, discussing economics, the economy, politics, Europe & Greece
, 26/07/2018
Joe speaks with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, the man who defied Europe to save Greece – and failed. Yanis, the suave economics professor turned unexpected politician, has recently announced he will run for Prime Minister of Greece at the next national elections. He is the author of multiple books including And The Weak Suffer […]
Ushering in a new school of principled politics: a discussion between Yanis Varoufakis (DiEM25) & Aldo Cazzullo (Corriere Della Sera) – openDemocracy
, 20/07/2018
“The reason we formed DiEM25 was the diagnosis that old wine in new bottles will not help revive the spirits of progressives in Italy or in the rest of Europe.” Aldo Cazzullo, Corriere Della Sera (AC): Let us start from the beginning? Why did you decide to resign after OXI’s victory in the Greek referendum? Yanis […]
Reality & Nightmare: A brief assessment of the Eurozone’s ‘reforms’ – in Der Freitag, Issue 26, 2018
, 19/07/2018
The official version reads as follows: Europe is on the road to recovery, the consequences of Brexit are under control, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron would now create the new foundations on which Europe will establish a stronger alliance. Even the Greek debt crisis, it is said, was over after the decision of the […]