Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 116
November 3, 2017
Puerto Ricans Deserve an Escape from “Permanent Debt Prison” – on Democracy Now tv
As the White House finally agrees to release FEMAdisaster aid with more flexibility to try to help rebuild Puerto Rico’s devastated power grid and other infrastructure, we speak with economist Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister, about the history of the island’s debt crisis and what to do as it recovers from Hurricane Maria.
November 2, 2017
Η πολιτική πρόταση του DiEM25
Οι επτά τομές που χρειάζεται η χώρα για να μπει στον δρόμο της ανάκαμψης, όπως παρουσιάστηκαν στη πρώτη μεγάλη ανοιχτή συγκέντρωση του DiEM25 στην Αθήνα στο Γήπεδο Σπόρτιγκ. “Όσο εκείνοι ψηφίζουν τα μέτρα της δήθεν «αξιολόγησής» τους, εξαναγκάζοντας το Κοινοβούλιο σε έναν ακόμη αυτο-εξευτελισμό, εμείς, χωρίς θυμό αλλά με ανεξάντλητη αποφασιστικότητα, επαναφέρουμε την Ελπίδα, την Λογική και την Αξιοπρέπεια.” Αθήνα 19 Μάη 2017.
Long, personal interview with William Leith in The Guardian on ‘Talking to my Daughter About the Economy’
He was in an odd situation. Xenia was born in Australia. But Varoufakis himself was “not exactly” living in Australia. “My daughter came to life as the result of a broken-down marriage. “My former wife and I managed to do that which I always loathed when people did it. We managed to have a child when we were breaking up. Not a good idea … but it turned out brilliantly.”
It was 2004. “Thirteen years later, everything is absolutely fantastic.” But at the time, it didn’t feel fantastic. He was torn. Bonding with Xenia, having split up with her mother. His heart in Australia, his head in Greece. Emotionally, he was being ripped apart. He tries to describe it. “A major tragedy,” he says.
He had met Margarite, Xenia’s mother, in Australia; he was working in the economics faculty at the University of Sydney. Margarite, who is Greek-Australian, is an academic, too – a historian. They fell in love, got married and moved to Athens. “We broke up in Greece, we tried to patch things up, we broke up again, we tried to patch things up. In the end, when we decided we were going to part … conception happened.”
[image error] Yanis Varoufakis speaks to the press in Athens after resigning as finance minister after the referendum on Greece’s bailout package in July 2015. Photograph: Fotis Plegas G/EPA
Margarite moved back to Australia, not knowing she was pregnant. Then she found out. They talked on the phone. About “arrangements”, how they would do this. Varoufakis “rushed back” for the birth. After Xenia was born, he persuaded Margarite to come back to Greece “to see if we could make things work”.
It lasted a year. “Which was fantastic; I changed nappies for a year … incessantly and exclusively, fearing that every day would be the last day of me having the child.” Margarite was “always meaning” to go back to Australia, he says. “The relationship was not working. It was not patched up. And then she went back. That was a nightmare. Because I was missing my daughter so badly.”
He wondered what on earth he was going to do. But at least there was Skype. “I had a Skype screen installed next to her bed, and I would read to her, every night, a bedtime story. And she would fall asleep with Skype.” Xenia would close her eyes in Sydney at the end of the day. Varoufakis, watching in Athens, would look up, and his day would be just beginning.
I am with Varoufakis at his publisher’s office in London. A lot has happened since Xenia’s birth. He has remarried, worked in the economics faculty at the university of Athens, tried, and failed, to persuade the German government to stop squeezing Greece for every last euro; and written several books. The most recent of his books is aimed at Xenia. It’s called Talking to my Daughter About the Economy.
“In a sense,” he says, “one of the reasons why I wrote the book was because it allowed me, during the hours when I was imagining I was talking to her about the economy, [to feel] that I was close to her.”
In the book, he explains the history of capitalism. It is very clear and easy to understand. At first, we were apes. Then we came down from the trees, learned to speak, and over-hunted our prey. So we were forced to invent farming. Suddenly, we had a surplus of goods, namely grain, which we kept in communal silos. Hence the need for writing, to keep track of who owed what to whom. We wrote on shells, which became money. Next, we minted coins. Markets developed. The few who were literate invented religion to justify their power.
For Varoufakis, the world changed massively in the 17th century. Global trade had made merchants rich. Feudal lords were being left behind. So they kicked the serfs off their land, and re-hired them as debtors. In other words, serfs became entrepreneurs; in practice, these new entrepreneurs were never out of debt.
[image error] Yanis Varoufakis with his daughter Xenia Photograph: Courtesy of Yanis Varoufakis
“It’s the Great Reversal, as I call it,” says Varoufakis. Originally, the economy had been driven by what people produced. Now, it was driven by debt. “The Great Reversal makes debt the economic turbocharger.”
What then followed was the modern world – the Industrial Revolution, factories, empires, great inequality – and, eventually, the huge backlash of communism.
Varoufakis’s father, Giorgios, was a communist. Born in the 1920s, Giorgios, whose parents were Greek, grew up in Cairo before going to the University of Athens to study chemistry. But he was caught up in the civil war. Asked by the police to denounce communism, he refused. He was imprisoned in a jail for communists for four years – which turned him into a communist. Afterwards, when Giorgios resumed his degree, a woman from a rightwing group was told to keep an eye on him. This was the woman who became Varoufakis’s mother, Eleni.
Giorgios’ left-wing ideas prevailed over Eleni’s conservative ones, and they both ended up towards the left of centre. Varoufakis tells me his family home was “modest”. Giorgios, a steel engineer, had trouble getting or keeping work during the far-right regime in the 50s. As a communist, he kept getting fired. “The secret police would come and ask the employer to fire him.” Eventually, one company, Halyvourgiki, hired him as personal assistant to the boss, at a massively reduced rate. “He was exploited,” says Varoufakis. “The nice ironic twist,” he says, “is that my father is the chairman of the board of that company. And he occupies the office of that man. To this day. As we speak.”
We talk about Varoufakis’s up-and-down life. He fizzes with energy. He tells me how his mother’s brother was arrested and jailed; the young Varoufakis visited him in his cell. It seemed liked a big adventure, he says. After the rightwing regime collapsed, the family’s fortunes took a positive turn. Yanis was sent to the private Moraitis School in Athens, and later studied maths and economics at Essex and Birmingham universities. After that, he became an academic. He got a job at the University of Sydney, met Margarite, and after a crazy few years, found himself back in Athens, looking at a baby on a Skype screen.
One day, during this period, he went to an art gallery in Athens, and something strange happened. In his heightened emotional state, he walked into a dark room in which there was an installation. “It’s dark. The floor is covered in red soil – thick red soil. There is a spotlight in the middle of the room creating a red circle on the floor. There was a very powerful soundscape. Deep breathing, like –”
Varoufakis breathes deeply. “And the whole of the floor in the middle was moving up and down. The whole room, the soil, the earth, was breathing … and I thought, Wow.” This was Breathe, a work by Danae Stratou – who is, incidentally, the person Jarvis Cocker wrote about in his song Common People. (Varoufakis won’t confirm this officially.) Shortly afterwards, Yanis met Stratou, who is from a very wealthy background, at a dinner party. They fell in love. Now he lives in Athens with Stratou and her two children.
Meanwhile, capitalism looks unhealthy, to say the least, and he has been trying to explain this to Xenia. “I try not to be negative in the book,” he says. “I try to tell her what is fascinating and what is wrong. All in one. Because you really don’t want to dump on a child with gloom and doom. Do you think my book is gloomy? If it is, I’ve failed.”
Well, I say, it has to be gloomy in some ways.
“In some ways, yes.”
Life, he says, is “fantastic”. It is certainly better than it was. He has just spent a month on the island of Aegina, with Danae, her two children, as well as Xenia, and Georgios, who is now 93. He has started the Democracy in Europe movement, an attempt to reform the EU. He will go to Sydney at Christmas to see Xenia. “She’s an Aussie kid,” he says. “But she’s also Greek. She’s very down to earth. She’s very bookish. She reads a lot … she’s a happy kid, I think.”
• Talking to My Daughter About the Economy by Yanis Varoufakis (Bodley Head Adults, £14.99). To order a copy for £10.49, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p of more than £10, online only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
For The Guardian’s side click here.
Q&A with Esquire Magazine plus a warning for Trump, 2nd November 2017
AS TOLD TO ASH CARTER, NOV 2, 2017
Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and author of Adults in the Room, discusses his abysmal first salary, negotiating with the IMF, and what he would say to Donald Trump.
Money was always very scarce in my household. Greece was a poor country. My parents were extremely fiscally conservative. Credit cards and loans and mortgages were abhorrent to them. I don’t think they were ever in debt, even when they were very poor. This is something that people find hard to fathom, but in 1980, Greece had the lowest level of debt in Europe. We were save, save, save, like the Chinese are today. Financialization, which is a global phenomenon, hit Greece around then. Suddenly, this culture of parsimony evaporated.
I had a choice when I completed my master’s in statistics: I could opt for a very handsome salary or I could opt for a Ph.D., not even knowing if I would get an academic job in the end. (Tenure, of course, was always iffy.) I chose to condemn myself to permanent poverty, but I never looked back. The fact that I could choose what I researched and I didn’t have anyone cracking a whip—to me, that was priceless.
“I CHOSE TO CONDEMN MYSELF TO PERMANENT POVERTY, BUT I NEVER LOOKED BACK.”
My first salary came in 1983, when I got my first lectureship at the University of Essex in Britain. I remember the salary well because it was abysmal: £7,520 annually, gross [about $11,500]. That number will always stay with me.
There is no money in the highest form of economic theory. When economists refer to the price of coffee, in the back of their mind they’re using a metaphoric marker: how much coffee you get, let’s say, for one pound of sugar. In physics, the more complicated and abstract the theory, the closer you get to understanding nature. In economics, it’s the opposite. The more abstract and complicated the theory becomes, the less related it is to real, existing capitalism.
I take risks with my own financial affairs, because in the end, I will only have myself to blame. But when it came to carrying a whole nation, I was extremely conservative, and my bargaining strategy was to lay all my cards on the table from the beginning and say, “This is it. Now you can do anything you want, you can shoot me, but I’m not going to budge.”
It’s difficult to negotiate with creditors who do not want their money back—who care only about humiliating you, about making an example of you for others. And this was, I’m afraid, the situation I was facing with Greece’s creditors: the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. Their great nightmare was a mutually advantageous agreement, because then the Spaniards, the Irish, the Portuguese, and the Italians would interpret this as weakness on their behalf.
We need a new global financial system that is closer to the one that John Maynard Keynes proposed at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. Imagine that we have a common currency that is totally fictitious. It’s an accounting unit, managed by the IMF—let’s call it the “kosmos”—and countries that have a trade surplus, like Germany, get taxed. That way, you create a fund that can be used for investment purposes in the parts of the world that need it the most.
Mr. Trump, don’t you dare mess around with China, because you are playing with fire. If the Chinese economy goes into a recession as a result of your shenanigans, you, mate, are in deep trouble.
“IF THE CHINESE ECONOMY GOES INTO A RECESSION AS A RESULT OF YOUR SHENANIGANS, YOU, MATE, ARE IN DEEP TROUBLE.”
My view of money is that of the ancient Athenians: It is a fantastic thing to have and a terrible thing to try to get. If you asked me how much I would want, I would say, “An infinite quantity.” If you asked me what I was prepared to do to get it, the answer would be “Nothing.”
I believe in hedonism. If somebody has money, and they haven’t stolen it, and it isn’t exploitative—they’re not destroying the rain forest or using slave labor—they can spend it on whatever gives them pleasure. I am not judgmental. But I do not understand why anyone would get pleasure from gambling.
Money is what we will not need in a good society. The good society is Star Trek. (I’m a Trekkie, by the way.) You have replicators producing everything, and people can just sit around the bridge of the USS Enterprise discussing philosophical issues about alien species.
October 30, 2017
Lesbos’s Ghosts, Europe’s Disgrace – Project Syndicate op-ed, 31st October 2017
Oct 31, 2017 YANIS VAROUFAKIS , GEORGE TYRIKOS-ERGAS
In September alone, another 2,238 refugees arrived in Lesbos, despite Turkey’s attempts to cut the flow. A camp designed for 2,000 people now “houses” three times that number, behind rows of barbed wire, in a magma of mud, refuse, and human excrement.
ATHENS – In 2015, hundreds of thousands of refugees landed on Greece’s island shores. Many had perished at sea. Today, the international public has been lulled into believing that Greece’s refugee crisis has abated. In fact, it has become a permanent scourge blighting Europe’s soul and brewing future trouble. The island of Lesbos was, and remains, its epicenter.
The story of Shabbir demonstrates how starkly reality clashes with Europe’s official storyline. Shabbir, 40, lived with his wife and two young children in a midsize town in Pakistan, where he ran a car rental business. One night in December 2015, a local group of Islamist extremists petrol-bombed Shabbir’s neighbor’s home and waited outside for the fleeing family.
Shabbir’s neighbors were Christian, and the extremists were keen to evict them and convert their home into a madrasa (religious school). Instinctively, Shabbir rushed to his Christian neighbors’ defense. Designated an “apostate,” his business was burned down, his brother was brutally murdered, his wife and children fled to neighboring villages, and Shabbir, together with his elderly father, took the long, cruel road, via Iran and Turkey, to imagined safety in civilized Europe…
For the rest of the article please click here.
Συνέντευξη στην Guardian (μεταφρασμένη στα ελληνικά) επί τη ευκαιρία της αγγλικής έκδοσης του “Μιλώντας στην κόρη μου για την οικονομία”
Η κόρη μου είναι ο πιο σκληρός κριτής μου, οπότε, ακόμα κι αν της αρέσει κάτι, είναι πολύ φειδωλή στις φιλοφρονήσεις. Υπό αυτή την έννοια, χάρηκα με τα ενθαρρυντικά της λόγια που ήταν κάτι του τύπου:”Δεν είναι πολύ κακό.”
Την ενδιαφέρουν τα οικονομικά;
Καθόλου, αλλά ενδιαφέρεται πολύ για την πολιτική, αν και δε θα το έλεγε η ίδια. Ενδιαφέρεται για πολιτικά θέματα όπως ο φεμινισμός, ο ρατσισμός και η ανισότητα. Δε θα έλεγε ποτέ επί λέξει “Με ενδιαφέρει η πολιτική.” Αλλά η ουσία είναι που μετράει και όχι οι ταμπέλες.
Πως ήταν να γράφετε για την οικονομία σε με σχετικά απλή γλώσσα; Σας έκανε να αναστοχαστείτε σχετικά με τις απόψεις σας;
Ήταν μια διαδικασία πολύ διασκεδαστική και συνάμα πολύ απαιτητική. Ήταν χαρά μου να απευθύνομαι σε αναγνώστες χωρίς θεωργτικά βαρύδια, αλλά και μεγάλη πρόκληση να πρέπει να μιλήσω για τον καπιταλισμό χωρίς να αναφέρομαι καν στον… καπιταλισμό. Εν τέλει, πρέπει να μπορείς να το κάνεις αυτό για να αποδείξεις στον εαυτό σου ότι ξέρεις πραγματικά για τι μιλάς. Η εμμονή σε περίπλοκους τεχνικούς όρους κρύβει αδυναμία καταννόησης.
Θέλετε να βελτιώσετε τον καπιταλισμό ή να τον εξαλείψετε;
Both. Capitalism cannot end by sheer willpower. As we all know, it was a spectacular failure of the left to try to end capitalism. Capitalism has to be moderated and stabilised, because its deep crisis, as we see today, is that it does not encourage humanism. It encourages misanthropy. We must stabilise the situation and have a discussion about how the new technologies can be put to use for humanity.
Και τα δύο.Ο καπιταλισμός δε θα εξαλειφθεί μόνο με τη δύναμη της θέλησης. Όπως ξέρουμε, η Αριστερά απέτυχε θεαματικά να εξαλείψει τον καπιταλισμό. Ο καπιταλισμός πρέπει να σταθεροποιηθεί, γιατί, όπως βλέπουμε σήμερα, η κρίση του δεν ενθαρρύνει τον ανθρωπισμό αλλά τη μισανθρωπία. Πρέπει να σταθεροποιήσουμε την κατάσταση ώστε να αρχίσουμε να συζητάμε σοβαρά το πως οι νέες τεχνολογίες μπορούν να βοηθήσουν ουσιαστικά την ανθρωπότητα υπερβαίνοντας την καπιταλιστική οργάνωση της ζωής μας.
Γράψατε το βιβλίο στο πανέμοφρο σπίτι σας στην Αίγινα με θέα το Σαρωνικό. Θα θέλατε ένα κόσμο όπου κανείς δε θα μπορεί να απολαμβάνει τέτοιου είδους υλικά προνόμια;
Όχι, θα ήθελα έναν κόσμο όπου είμαστε όλοι προνομιούχοι, και κατά μία έννοια είμαστε, γιατί πιστεύω ότι η ομορφιά μας περιβάλλει, αρκεί να επιτρέπουν οι κοινωνικές συνθήκες να την απολαύσουμε, να παύσει το κέρδος του ενός να βασίζεται στην δυστυχία ενός άλλου, και βέβαια να μην καταστρέφουμε το περιβάλλον. Το πιο σημαντικό συστατικό της ευτυχίας είναι να μπορείς να έχεις τον έλεγχο της ζωής σου, να διαλέγεις αυτούς που σε συντροφεύουν, τα πρότζεκτ στα οποία δουλεύεις. Αν μπορείς να το κάνεις αυτό, ο κόσμος γίνεται ομορφότερος γύρω σου. Πιστεύω αυτό είναι ένα προνόμιο που όλοι μπορούμε να έχουμε.
Γράφετε ότι δεν επιτρέπουμε στον εαυτό μας να σκεφτεί ότι η φτώχια των άλλων μπορεί να είναι αποτέλεσμα της ίδιας διαδικασίας που οδήγησε στα δικά μας αγαθά ή κέρδη. Απολαμβάνετε τις όποιες ανέσεις σας λιγότερο γνωρίζοντας τα παραπάνω;
Πρώτα απ’όλα ναι, έχετε απόλυτο δίκιο. Τα προνόμια προέρχονται από την εκμετάλλευση. Κανείς δεν μπορεί να έχει εκατομμύρια στην τράπεζα (κάτι που δεν ισχύει στην περίπτωσή μου, παρά τις περί του αντιθέτου ανοησίες που γράφονται) και να πιστεύει ότι τα κέρδισε με τη δουλειά του. Όμως, δευτερευόντως, να αναφέρω ότι γείτονάς μας στην Αίγινα είναι ένας αγρότης που έχει ακριβώς την ίδια θέα. Πιστεύει ότι είναι προνομιούχος κι αυτός, αλλά με άλλη έννοια. Η ευτυχία σπάνια είναι σε συνάρτηση των προνομίων που μοιράζει τόσο άνισα ο καπιταλισμός.
Στη συμβουλευτική επιτροπή του DiEM25 βρίσκεται ο Τζούλιαν Ασάνζ, ένας Αυστραλός που διαφεύγει του ευρωπαϊκού νόμου στην πρεσβεία του Εκουαδόρ. Είναι το κατάλληλο πρόσωπο να συμβουλεύει για την Ευρώπη;
Εϊμαι περήφανος για τη φιλία μου με το Τζούλιαν. Θα προσέξατε ότι η Σουηδή εισαγγελέας απέσυρε κάθε σκέψη άσκησης δίωξης εναντίον του. Φαντάζει τουλάχιστον περίεργο που θεωρείται ένοχος ενώ δεν απαγγέλθηκαν καν κατηγορίες εναντίον του. Ο Ασάνζ διώκεται ουσιαστικά για έναν απλό λόγο: γελοιοποίησε τις μυστικές υπηρεσίες των ΗΠΑ και έβγαλε στην επιφάνεια εγκλήματα πολέμου. Τα Wikileaks είναι ένα λαμπρό παράδειγμα του πως μπορεί κανείς να αποκλαύψει τις πράξεις και το ποιόν του Μεγάλου Αδελφού στρέφοντας την ίδια του την τεχνολογία εναντίον του. Για αυτό ο Τζουλιάν είναι, επί της ουσίας, κρατούμενιος στην πρεσβεία του Εκουαδόρ στο Λονδίνο υπό συνθήκες που ο ΟΗΕ χαρακτήρισε “παράνομη κράτηση”.
Να πιστέψουμε δηλαδή ότι οι κατήγοροί του συμμετείχαν σε σκευωρία με σκοπό την έκδοσή του στις ΗΠΑ;
Δε με ενδιαφέρουν οι εικασίες. Αυτό που ξέρω είναι ότι στη Σουηδία δεν κατηγορήθηκε τελικά για τίποτα. Τώρα οι ΗΠΑ δήλωσαν ξεκάθαρα ότι βρίσκεται εν εξελίξει δικαστική δίωξη εναντίον του για “κατασκοπεία”. Αν καταλήξει να δικαστεί στις ΗΠΑ με αυτή την κτηγορία, η δίκη θα είναι μια παρωδία, μια ντροπή: Οι δικηγόροι του δε θα λάβουν καν στα χέρια τους τη δικογραφία. Θα διεξαχθεί κεκλεισμένων των θυρών και θα τον εξαφανίσουν σε μια φυλακή υψίστης ασφαλείας για πάντα. Κανένας φιλελεύθερος άνθρωπος δεν μπορεί να δεχτεί μια τέτοια διαδικασία.
Διατηρείτε κάποια σχέση με τον πρωην φίλο σας, τον κύριο Τσίπρα;
Όχι, γιατί δεν πιστεύω ότι έχει κάτι που να μπορεί να μου πεί. Για να μπορεί να συνεχίζει την πορεία που επέλεξε, πρέπει να πείσει τον αυτό του με ένα αφήγημα που και ο ίδιος ξέρει ότι είναι αβάσιμο. Άρα κάθε συζήτηση μεταξύ μας θα ήταν σύντομη και ανώφελη.
Πιστεύετε ότι στο βάθος ο Κόρμπιν ήταν υπέρ της παραμονής της Βρετανίας στην ΕΕ;
Πιστεύω ότι πείστηκε από επιχειρήματα όπως αυτά που του εκφράσαμε ο Τζον ΜακΝτόνελ κι εγώ. Δεν είναι ασυνέπεια να πιστεύεις ότι δεν έπρεπε να μπεις στην ΕΕ, αλλά, άπαξ και μπήκες, ότι είναι λάθος να φύγεις. Η κριτική που του γίνεται ότι δεν είναι παθιασμένος με την Ευρώπη είναι γελοία. Κανένας δεν μπορεί να παθιαστεί με αυτή την Ευρώπη. Κάνουμε σφοδρή κριτική στην Ευρώπη αλλά δεν προτείνουμε να βγούμε από αυτή. Πιστεύω πως αυτή είναι η θέση την οποία κατέληξε να υποστηρίζει και ο Τζέρεμι Κόρμπιν.
Mε τι άλλο αχολείστε αυτή τη στιγμή, εκτός από τη συγγραφή και το DiEM25;
Το μέγα μέρος του χρόνου μου το επενδύω στο DiEM25 και στην συγγραφή άρθρων και βιβλίων. Περί την μία φορά τον μήνα κάνω εμπορικές διαλέξεις – εν μέρει για τα προς το ζην της οικογένειάς μας και εν μέρει για να υποστηρίξω οικονομικά το DiEM25. Είναι συναρπαστικό να πηγαίνω στο Αμβούργο και να δίνω δύο διαλέξεις σε μια μέρα – το πρωί σε 500 Γερμανούς τραπεζίτες και το απόγευμα σε 1000 ακτιβιστές του DiEM25, να εκφωνώ τον ίδιο πάνω-κάτω λόγο, και να εισπράττω τη ίδια θερμή αποδοχή και από τα δύο ακροατήρια! Αυτό επιβεβαιώνει σε τι βαθιά κρίση βρίσκεται η Ευρώπη!
Φέτος είναι η 100η επέτειος της Οκτωβριανής Επανάστασης. Βλέποντας την κληρονομιά που άφησε, πιστεύετε ότι είναι μια επέτειος που αξίζει εορτασμού;
Απολύτως. Φυσικά, όμως, όπως κάθε επανάσταση στο τέλος κατέληξε άσχημα. Για αυτό οι εορτασμοί όμως πρέπει να περιέχουν πολλά στοιχεία κριτικής. Εϊναι μια διαλεκτική διαδικασία κατά την οποία γιορτάζουμε και θρηνούμε ταυτόχρονα. Αυτό που ισχύει όμως όχι μόνο για την επανάσταση αλλά και για κάθε καλό έργο τέχνης, θεάτρου, κινηματογράφου…
ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΣΥΝΕΝΤΕΥΞΗ ΑΥΤΗ ΣΤΑ ΑΓΓΛΙΚΑ, ΟΠΩΣ ΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΤΗΚΕ ΣΤΗΝ GUARDIAN, ΠΑΤΗΣΤΕ ΕΔΩ.
October 29, 2017
POINT DE VUE. Le bon chemin du Grec Yanis Varoufakis
Son livre (1) le dit simplement : l’Union européenne et la zone euro, nos vies en Europe, celles des riches, celles des pauvres, sont aujourd’hui soumises à un risque majeur « d’inintelligence politique » entre États membres. Selon Varoufakis, les dirigeants politiques européens ne sont pas sur le bon chemin.
Le summum de l’incompréhension est visible entre les pays économiques excédentaires, Allemagne et Pays-Bas, et les autres. Les dirigeants de ces deux-là feraient bien de tendre l’oreille. En effet, le risque d’instabilité économique et sociale est élevé et nous n’avons pas encore mis en oeuvre ensemble, au moins dans la zone euro à dix-neuf, les moyens d’apprendre à faire mieux que la dernière fois. Certes, la Banque centrale européenne, au-delà de son statut et de sa légitimité, a fait du travail de sortie de crise. L’abondance de liquidités a pu créer une opinion favorable au statu quo dans l’Union économique et monétaire. Mais pour Varoufakis, il est urgent de régler quatre troubles : mauvaise gestion de la dette privée et publique ; pas assez de préparation de l’avenir par les investissements d’avenir ; crise bancaire larvée (en Italie, par exemple) ; pauvreté redoutée (avec ses conséquences dans les électorats).
Des conseils à Macron
Selon Varoufakis redevenu professeur d’économie, l’heure est à la vérité. Premièrement, avec le trop d’épargne de la zone euro, la souscription d’Eurobons doit financer dans chaque État la préparation de l’avenir, à hauteur d’un plan de 5 % du PIB européen en faveur d’une société post-carbone et intelligente (recherche, éducation, santé).
Deuxièmement, un Fonds monétaire européen doit être prêt à recapitaliser les banques qui vont entrer en position de faiblesse. Troisièmement, un accord intergouvernemental doit décider que les bénéfices de la Banque centrale européenne alimentent des cartes de débit de type « coupons aux plus pauvres », qu’ils soient d’Allemagne de l’Est ou de Grèce. Au plan tactique, le conseil politique et tactique de l’adulte (non-mélenchoniste) Varoufakis à l’adulte Macron est celui-ci : oui au plan vertueux sur cinq biens communs (la sécurité et la stratégie européenne de défense et de sécurité civile, la réponse au défi migratoire hors du droit d’asile inconditionnel, les partenariats avec l’Afrique, la transition écologique efficace et équitable avec une taxe du carbone aux frontières, le numérique européen). Mais il lui faudra convaincre les États de la zone euro.
De la volonté politique, il en faudra à tous les chefs d’État. Macron, européen convaincu dans son discours du 26 septembre à la Sorbonne, écoutera-t-il l’économiste grec quand il lui conseille d’aller jusqu’à menacer de la politique de la chaise vide ?
En tout cas, Macron peut lire Varoufakis. Merkel aussi, elle qui vient de déclarer : « Je ne vais rien exclure ni tracer des lignes rouges. » Varoufakis est devenu un adulte qui assume le clivage en vue d’améliorer la zone euro. Macron-Merkel, pourrez-vous marquer l’histoire en «proposant pour l’Europe autre chose que le doute » ?
(1) Conversations entre adultes. Dans les coulisses secrètes de l‘Europe. Yanis Varoufakis. Éditions les liens qui libèrent. Octobre 2017.
October 28, 2017
Doug Henwood’s review of ‘Adults in the Room’ (Baffler) & a radio discussion between us
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
FINANCE MINISTERS RARELY BECOME CELEBRITIES. Sure, there was a moment in the 1990s when Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary Robert Rubin came close. But that was because so many people thought they were getting rich off the dot-com bubble—and Rubin’s fifteen minutes of fame passed once the tech crash took hold.
A notable exception to this rule is former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who served the Syriza-led government, and is best known for his efforts to resist International Monetary Fund–mandated austerity measures during Greece’s own economic collapse.
Varoufakis is out with Adults in the Room, a very substantial, well-written memoir of his brief but highly consequential ministerial career. When Varoufakis took office in January 2015, Europe was six years into its debt crisis; Greece, one of the most debt-ravaged partners in the European Union, had already endured several rounds of austerity; it was the most acute in the fraternity of nations on the European periphery known as PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain). These ill-timed reductions in public spending—successive rounds of deep cuts in government budgets in countries already in depression—was supposed to lead to recovery, according to fanciful theories developed by rich people and their hired hands. But in Greece, as in the other PIIGS states, austerity only produced deeper misery. Varoufakis challenged that routine, and was out of office by midyear.
The harsh rallying cry of austerity wasn’t a new refrain on the Greek political scene. Indeed, the long-running, and self-compounding, ordeal of austerity and crisis was what led to the political collapse of the established parties and a victory in the January 2015 elections by Varoufakis’s Syriza party, which is a Greek acronym for a name that translates as “Coalition of the Radical Left.” Founded in the early 2000s as a confederation of left-of-center groups, it turned itself into a unitary party in late 2013—the next year, Greek unemployment hovered around 27 percent, nearly three times its pre-crisis low of 8 percent. Though Syriza’s leader, Alexis Tsipras, had served several terms in parliament, none of its principals could be described as seasoned political pros.
In this era of neoliberalism, Varoufakis’s “modest proposal” seemed almost otherworldly.
Given Greece’s miserable economic condition, the finance minister would inevitably be in the spotlight, and Syriza chose someone well suited to life in the public eye. Varoufakis is an attractive, charming economist, who gets around on a motorcycle, and has a glamorous, aristocratic artist as his wife. His English is not merely fluent but often stylish. That all made for good press, at least at first, but it left him wide open to charges, which came from right, center, and left, of being a showboater and a narcissist. He’d also developed a name for himself as a public critic of orthodox economics and the European authorities’ horrifically inhumane and disastrous management of the crisis. (I should say that I interviewed Varoufakis many times on my radio show, starting in 2008, and like and respect him a lot.) In 2010, Varoufakis published a short paper on his website, co-written with Stuart Holland, offering a “modest proposal” for solving the European debt crisis. It involved the European Central Bank (ECB) financing debt relief for the troubled peripheral states, delivering loan guarantees to support the continent’s ailing banks, and marshalling heavy investment in the infrastructure of the crisis countries. A few decades ago, that would have been seen as a respectable Keynesian prescription for a broad-based economic recovery, but in this era of neoliberalism it seemed almost otherworldly.
In this account, Varoufakis chronicles the high-stakes negotiations around debt relief, and largely bypasses the third point, the need for massive investment in the Euro-periphery—a regrettable omission, since the lack of investment is at the heart of how the crisis came to be. In retrospect, the crisis was the inevitable outcome of bringing twelve countries—later expanded to nineteen—at widely varying levels of economic development into a single currency area. Germany is an economic powerhouse, producing some of the world’s most advanced goods; Greece has many charms, but no Daimler-Benz. (Italy and Spain are somewhere between.) According to IMF stats, Greek per capita GDP was 67 percent of the German level when the initial conversion rates from national currencies to the euro were set in 1998. But enthusiasm that joining the eurozone would magically allow Greece and other peripheral countries to converge to German levels of economic development sent capital pouring into the laggard PIIGS economies. That set off an unsustainable boom; Greek per capita income rose impressively to 80 percent of German levels in 2006. But those gains proved fleeting; the crisis has brought the Greek-to-German GDP ratio back down to 56:100.
As everyone knows, lenders can never be irresponsible.
Despite the quasi-boom of the mid-aughts, Greek economic fundamentals weren’t improving: because of a crummier infrastructure and factories that were no match for Germany’s, the productivity of Greek labor lagged badly even as wages and incomes were rising. Because of these enormous, and often widening, gaps in efficiency, Greece ran chronic trade deficits with Germany and other advanced countries—its goods could compete in neither quality nor price. The government also ran large budget deficits. Those deficits were financed by the inflows of capital I mentioned above, with German, French, and other northern European banks supplying the cash. When the crisis came, bankers and their scribes blamed the problem on corrupt, lazy, and profligate Greeks—because as everyone knows, lenders can never be irresponsible.
In the days before the euro, Greek financial leaders could devalue the country’s currency, the drachma. That move would have made imports more expensive and exports cheaper, which helped put the international books back into balance, and kept cyclical troubles from turning into crises. But once Greece entered the eurozone, that remedy was foreclosed. The inflow of capital stopped, and lenders wanted their money back. GDP fell by 4 percent in 2009—a deep recession in itself—and then contracted by another 24 percent through 2013.
Into this unfolding disaster stepped a crew of technocrats nicknamed the Troika—an unholy trinity consisting of the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and the IMF. The Troika’s lead policy hands prescribed deep cuts to public spending in return for loans. And the proceeds of these loans were not used to alleviate the suffering of Greeks, but to pad the accounts of its creditors: the “bailout” money briefly passed through Greek hands on its way to Frankfurt and Paris. It didn’t “work,” if what you mean by working is turning the depression around. But it worked in the sense of keeping the financial markets from completely imploding, which is what really matters to investors in these crises.
Greece would have to be sacrificed in the name of preventing dissoluteness.
Syriza was elected to put an end to this bloodletting. Unlike many in Syriza, Varoufakis (who was never a member of the party) opposed leaving the eurozone—Greece should never have entered, he thought, but once in, an exit (or “Grexit”) would be catastrophic. It would take too long to create a new currency, and during any such changeover, any Greek with a few euros to spare would whisk them out of the country, making a horrible situation even more horrible. So Varoufakis preferred to negotiate within the eurozone, and even default on Greek debt service payments to bondholders and the IMF. The threat of a bond default was particularly powerful: Letting one particular class of Greek government bonds go into default would have caused the European Central Bank enormous trouble, forcing it to write down the value of other crisis countries’ bonds that it had bought to stabilize things. That would not only hammer its balance sheet, but would cause it immense legal troubles in Germany, where the government and its courts looked askance at the Bank’s efforts to stabilize the financial markets by buying up vast quantities of government bonds across the eurozone. The specter of a spreading default on its massive debt obligations was Greece’s most potent weapon—not that it had many others.
Enter the adults in the room, as Varoufakis calls his eurozone overseers. The finance minister’s efforts to negotiate with the Troika, which he skillfully recounts in substantial and revealing detail here, were essentially pointless. Most of his contact was with something called the Eurogroup, a collective of finance ministers along with the head of the ECB and a few other high-level bureaucrats. The president of the Eurogroup, the Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, is nominally a social democrat, but in fact an accomplished sadomonetarist. As a member of the secretariat explained to Varoufakis, “[T]he Eurogroup does not exist in law. . . . [T]here are no written rules about the way it conducts its business, and therefore its president is not legally bound.”
In his severely straitened role as a bargaining partner, Varoufakis was allowed to present what were called “non-papers” to the group—position papers with no legal standing—but they were routinely ignored. His economic arguments about the fundamental unpayability of Greek debt, which had a lot in common with those advanced by the IMF, were met with silence. It was, as Varoufakis said, as if he were singing the Swedish national anthem.
The most influential player on the creditors’ side of the negotiations was the German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, whose worldview can be captured in a saying he attributed to his grandmother: “benevolence comes before dissoluteness.” Although Schäuble agreed with Varoufakis that the eurozone was unsustainable under present arrangements, he had no time for Varoufakis’s Keynesian proposals. Instead, he wanted “greater discipline. . . . And it will be a much stronger eurozone if it is disciplined by Grexit.” Greece was a bother that had to be expelled.
Why? On paper, one could make the case that Grexit would increase the profits of German business. But such an outcome was far from certain, given the general difficulties of recovering debt in a defaulting national economy; you could more easily argue that by stimulating growth, looser policies could raise profits. But Schäuble was taking a long view. He thought the “overgenerous” European social model had become too expensive and had to be ditched. Even though Greece didn’t have that well-developed a welfare state—its poverty rate was higher than Germany’s and its income distribution was more unequal—Greece would have to be sacrificed in the name of preventing dissoluteness. It would serve as an example, most importantly, to France, whose generous welfare regime he thought needed a severe rethink.
One set of actors clearly deserve more criticism than they’ve gotten: the social democratic parties of the European core.
After five months of pointless negotiations, Greece finally pulled out of the negotiations for substantive debt relief in June 2015. Fearing a run on the banks, the government shut them down. The government put the Eurogroup’s latest offer up for a referendum: accept or reject? The vote, held just a week after it was announced, was sixty-one to thirty-nine to reject. Varoufakis wanted the government to invoke the default option and, should the authorities eject Greece from the eurozone, improvise a new currency through the tax system. But his colleagues had lost their nerve. Ignoring the referendum, they rolled over, agreed to yet another austerity deal, and Varoufakis resigned. Today, Greece still suffers from a massive debt burden. The economy has stopped shrinking, but even all the conventional measures show that it’s a long way from recovery.
It’s a tragic tale, in the ancient Greek sense of tragedy—flaws in personalities and worldviews that lead to what seems like avoidable disaster. Varoufakis has been criticized for weakness and betrayal, which seems deeply unfair after reading this account. His Syriza colleagues—the ones who rolled over and signed up for more austerity—could fairly come under that charge, even though the country held few cards other than the default threat. But one set of actors clearly deserve more criticism than they’ve gotten: the social democratic parties of the European core. The social democrats were part of Angela Merkel’s coalition government in Germany, and were the government in France. Several of the Eurogroup principals, like Dijsselbloem, were nominally social democrats. Yet they did nothing to stop the immiseration of Greece and the other PIIGS. More broadly, they’ve presided over or assented to the ascendance of neoliberalism across Europe, resulting in the steepening economic polarization and poverty that has contributed to the rise of the far right.
Varoufakis, for his part, has moved on to a new project: the “democratization” of the European Union. A central element of his plan would be the election of governments willing to challenge financial orthodoxy through a process he calls “constructive disobedience.” He finds this deliberative approach preferable to busting up the EU and retreating to competitive nationalisms. It’s an admirable goal, but is seems like a long shot. Still, as with the threat of default, it’s hard to see any other option creating meaningful reform in the eurozone, particularly as the forces of the nationalist right continue to gain ground. Aside from supplying a masterful narrative of the Greek debt crisis, Adults in the Room delivers a badly needed case for the revival of a humane internationalism.
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