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Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

theguardian.com

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Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#61

Post by hackermailman »

pif wrote: post #25
shkkmo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Varoufakis fought to find solutions that would allow Greece to actually be able to repay their debt. When that proved to be impossible, he refused to sit by and lend his name to a deal he didn't believe was in Greece or Europe's best interests.

> Varoufakis fought to find solutions that would allow Greece to actually be able to repay their debt. Default is not a solution to repay a debt. You can choose to default, but you can't expect any credibility later. The message Varoufakis sent to Greeks was: "Let's just say we don't want to pay and everyone will forget about in a couple of years."

Shredding the paper debt and defaulting has worked before for Mexico, Argentina and Solon of Athens.

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#62

Post by EastLondonCoder »

nickbauman wrote: post #59
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece has been cooking the books for a long time, even their entrance into the EU was fradulant. Greece is the blame here via its decades of fraud that finally caught up with it. As a Greek-American with an interest in Greece being successful I think all the finger pointing at Wall Street or Germany is asinine. Greece is horribly corrupt and tax dodging is like its national sport. Its like someone turned Chicago int…

This is a "moral hazard" line of thinking that distracts from the underlying fundamentals of the economics here. Even without the corruption, Greece would eventually be in this situation in the EU because of the structural trade imbalance. Nations like Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc, export far more than they import and do no share the profits. The EU has become a giant capital vacuum cleaner from the poorest nations t…

Correct, its also worth noting that the US do have mechanisms in place to transfer funds from surplus areas to deficit areas.

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#63

Post by _delirium »

captainmuon wrote: post #60
Analemma_ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When he went to Germany and tried to force their hands by feigning he might grexit, to his amazement the private response was more or less, how can we help you gtecit? Despite appearances, he did not want grexit and was a ploy to get better terms.. That's sort of my problem with him though. I don't think of him as either a hero, or a jerk, or a guy doing his job, but simply an idiot. He was trying to bluff with a h…

He's a lot of things, but not an idiot. Varoufakis was one of the few finance ministers who is actually an economist (as opposed to e.g. a jurist), so he was very qualified. But he went into the negotiations thinking that everybody was trying to solve the problem amicably, that they were trying to find a compromize everybody could live with. But no, it was pure power play. Germany and co wanted to keep the status quo…

I think that's part of the problem, Varoufakis is intelligent and an economist, yes, but really not a diplomat, and his job here as Greece's main negotiator was more a diplomat's than an economist's job. He was very naive, as his book somewhat admits, about how EU politics work (and to some extent about Greek politics as well, where he assumed Tsipras was on the same page as he was).

Stathis Kouvelakis, a member of Syriza's Left Platform faction that later split from the party, had this criticism [1] about both Varoufakis and his successor Tsakalotos (another economics professor), which I think has some truth to it:

Tsakalotos said he was very disappointed by the low level of the discussion. In the interview to the New Statesman, Varoufakis says very similar things about his own experience, although his style is clearly more confrontational than Tsakalotos's. From this it is quite clear that these people were expecting the confrontation with the EU to happen along the lines of an academic conference when you go with a nice paper and you expect a kind of nice counter-paper to be presented. I think this is telling about what the Left is about today. The Left is filled with lots of people who are well-meaning, but who are totally impotent on the field of real politics.

[1] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/tsipras-varoufakis-kouvel...

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#64

Post by syoc »

It is interesting to note that Varoufakis worked with Valve on the in-game economical systems for Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive before he got pouched by Greece. His blog posts are really interesting. http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/author/yanis/ Those in the know about the economies in the mentioned games should agree that Valve probably got a good return on his paycheck.

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#65

Post by davrosthedalek »

EastLondonCoder wrote: post #62
nickbauman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a "moral hazard" line of thinking that distracts from the underlying fundamentals of the economics here. Even without the corruption, Greece would eventually be in this situation in the EU because of the structural trade imbalance. Nations like Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc, export far more than they import and do no share the profits. The EU has become a giant capital vacuum cleaner from the poorest nations t…

Correct, its also worth noting that the US do have mechanisms in place to transfer funds from surplus areas to deficit areas.

As does the EU.

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#66

Post by atmosx »

Scea91 wrote: post #4
osullivj wrote: post #2

"The first revelation is that not only was Greece bankrupt in 2010 when the EU bailed it out, and that the bailout was designed to save the French and German banks, but that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy knew this; and they knew it would be a disaster." The treasury departments of the French and German banks had loaded up on GGBs - Greek Govt Bonds because they yielded more basis points than eg German Govt bonds,…

Didn't Greece falsify data for years? That would explain the AAA ratings.

So did Italy and possibly France. It was a very well known, old trick. Of course it's Greece's fault, but everybody else (Germany, France, Italy, etc.) were on the same page. Greece didn't cheat anyone, it just went along with what it was proposed to in order to get in the common currency.

Accusing Greeks of false statistics and what-not was part of political propaganda in Greece and abroad more than anything else.

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#67

Post by atmosx »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #65
EastLondonCoder wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, its also worth noting that the US do have mechanisms in place to transfer funds from surplus areas to deficit areas.

As does the EU.

> As does the EU.

Are you trolling? What kind of mechanism does the EU have? How does Germany have such a high surplus if such a mechanism is in place?!

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#68

Post by atmosx »

mc32 wrote: post #11
IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #3

Varoufakis is a hero to the international working class. His most recent book before this one is also excellent.

He's an interesting guy no doubt, but accounts tell us he was just doing his job. When he went to Germany and tried to force their hands by feigning he might grexit, to his amazement the private response was more or less, how can we help you gtecit? Despite appearances, he did not want grexit and was a ploy to get better terms, but the ecb had already discounted Greece. At least he tried, for sure.

> When he went to Germany and tried to force their hands by feigning he might grexit, to his amazement the private response was more or less, how can we help you gtecit?

That's very poor understanding of what he did. What he said was we won't accept any more loans that we can't pay back and requested a sort of new deal for Greece which of course, included a large debt haircut.

He was never pro-Grexit. He was arguing that even throwing Greece out of the common currency was impossible, etc.

I understand that his way of doing things might confuse some people, but if you take the time to read/watch his interview his thinking is crystal clear: He wants to change the EU from within not disintegrate it. In fact he is trying to save the EU from itself (e.g. Brussels) by democratising the processes (e.g. add mics and records to Eurogrops, etc.).

Plus, I the ECB effectively closed the GR banks he had a plan of putting the ECB (Mario Draghi) against the Bundesbank. His own party kept him down stripping on of his only weapon by re-assuring the ECB behind his back that they'll not allowing him to use it. His plan was very clever.

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#69

Post by atmosx »

elorant wrote: post #13
IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #3

Varoufakis is a hero to the international working class. His most recent book before this one is also excellent.

As a Greek I consider him a jerk. He enforced capital controls due to his incompetence and his ideological approach to financing. Furthermore, he's a pathological liar. While in many occasions he had admitted the faults of the Greek economy he never took specific actions in correcting them. If it wasn't for the group of clowns that constitute the current government and gave him the keys to the economy, nobody would g…

I'm Greek too and I consider him the best thing that happen to our country.

Re: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

#70

Post by nickbauman »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #65
EastLondonCoder wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, its also worth noting that the US do have mechanisms in place to transfer funds from surplus areas to deficit areas.

As does the EU.

It has some sharing, but it's not enough.

For example, California sends 180 billion in tax revenues to the fed while accepting approximately 30 billion in federal spending. In the EU this kind of thing occurs only in the single digit billions.

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