Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 51

Î‘Ï Ï„Î±ÏÏ‡Î¹ÏƒÎ¼ÏŒÏ‚, Πανδημία, Εμβολιασμοί & η καμπάνια μας εναντίον της Amazon – ΠΑΡΑΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΑ 90.1fm

Ο Γραμματέας του ΜέΡΑ25, Γιάνης Βαρουφάκης, μιλάει στα “Παραπολιτικά” για τον αυταρχισμό της κυβέρνησης, τη συνειδητή υπονόμευση των επιστημόνων από τον κ. Μητσοτάκη, το δίκτυο μαζικών τεστ και εμβολιασμών, το 5ο μνημόνιο, καθώς και για τη σπουδαιότητα της παγκόσμιας καμπάνιας της Προοδευτικής Διεθνούς & του DiEM25, όπου συμμετέχει και το ΜέΡΑ25, για το μποϊκοτάζ στην Amazon, σήμερα Black Friday.

Αυταρχισμός, Πανδημία, Εμβολιασμοί & η καμπάνια μας εναντίον της Amazon – ΠΑΡΑΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΑ 90.1fm

Ο Γραμματέας του ΜέΡΑ25, Γιάνης Βαρουφάκης, μιλάει στα “Παραπολιτικά” για τον αυταρχισμό της κυβέρνησης, τη συνειδητή υπονόμευση των επιστημόνων από τον κ. Μητσοτάκη, το δίκτυο μαζικών τεστ και εμβολιασμών, το 5ο μνημόνιο, καθώς και για τη σπουδαιότητα της παγκόσμιας καμπάνιας της Προοδευτικής Διεθνούς & του DiEM25, όπου συμμετέχει και το ΜέΡΑ25, για το μποϊκοτάζ στην Amazon, σήμερα Black Friday.

A free Central Bank account for all would be a good start for a revamped monetary system – WIRED

Imagine that the Bank of England were to create a free bank account for everyone. Overnight, it would be far better placed to regulate the money supply in the public interest. Moreover, to stay in business, commercial banks would have to seriously raise their game. In times of trouble, such as the current pandemic, the Bank of England could lift all boats at once by crediting your account directly – instead of printing sterling to lend to commercial banks, as it does now, in the hope that they would then lend to your employer, in the hope that your employer would then invest the money, rather than buy back more of their own shares. And, if the Bank of England felt that it had to rein in the total supply of money, to avert inflation, it would be able to do so easily: just offer to pay you, say, £5 for every £100 in your account that you do not spend within the next 12 months.
Imagine further that the Bank of England, in a bid to promote trust via transparency, were to base its digital sterling ledger on a distributed ledger digital architecture that allowed everyone, in real time, a glimpse at how much money was sloshing around in its system.
Now imagine that the Bank of England were to lend its expertise to local authorities around the country to revive their regional economies by creating local digital currencies for the purpose of keeping within their communities as much of the surpluses produced locally as possible. These currencies would be backed by their capacity to pay local taxes and their free-floating exchange rate with sterling would be determined automatically by a transparent formula taking into account the balance of payments between the regions.
Imagine, also, that the Bank of England were to come to an agreement with the central banks of other major economies, reflecting a New Bretton Woods-type of international agreement that allows for global trade imbalances and climate change to cancel each other out. This unlikely feat could be accomplished in three steps:
First, central banks agree to create a digital accounting unit, let’s call it the Kosmos or Ks, in which all international trade and cross-border money transfers are denominated (with a free-floating exchange rate between national currencies and Ks).
Secondly, they also agree to charge symmetric levies upon net exporters of goods and money (a trade-imbalance levy and a surge levy – see below) that help stabilise world trade and global money flows.
Thirdly, the proceeds from these levies fund climate change mitigation projects, especially in the global South.
For example, if the US-German trade is grossly imbalanced, both Germany and the United States are charged the trade-imbalance levy: a certain number of Ks are withheld from the German central bank in proportion to Germany’s trade surplus with the United States, and another number of Ks is withheld from the United States in proportion to America’s trade deficit with Germany. By taxing symmetrically trade deficits and surpluses, powerful market incentives help diminish global trade imbalances.
The second levy proposed here is charged to speculative capital flows into and then out of developing economies; capital movements that cause large bubbles to inflate, distorting economic activity, before bursting with hideous effects on the local economy. This surge levy is proportionate to the acceleration of capital flows into, or out, of every country.
Thus, the world will have agreed to strong incentives to limit trade and money transfer imbalances by levying penalties which, on the one hand, balance the current and the capital accounts of major economies while, on the other, help fund green investments, renewable energy grids, transport systems and organic agriculture in the parts of the planet most needed.
If these gains are so easy to attain, what stops us? Simple. These innovations would wreck the capacity of financiers to usurp the gigantic rents they currently extract from our societies. As always, our problem is political, not technical.
Yanis Varoufakis is a member of Greek parliament and leader of the MeRA25 party

For the website Wired, click here

Discussing ANOTHER NOW with Joe Walker – The Jolly Swagman Podcast

The Triumph & Tragedy Of Capitalism – a conversation occasioned by my new book ANOTHER NOW: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
Also listen on:
iTunes: tinyurl.com/y5quz6nt
Website: tinyurl.com/y4ekbpfv
Spotify: tinyurl.com/yxmwnmh4
Show notes

Selected links

Follow Yanis: Website | Twitter
Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present , by Yanis Varoufakis
The Sovereignty of Good , by Iris Murdoch
‘Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox’, paper by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers
‘The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits’, The New York Times article by Milton Friedman

Topics discussed

Utopia. 4:46
The Sovereignty of Good. 9:14
Has capitalism enabled people to pursue higher goods? 12:38
What is capitalism? 16:08
Monopolies. 23:19
The problem with capitalism. 28:54
Are workers robots or autonomous souls? 34:40
Is capitalism making us happier? 54:30
Milton Friedman’s 1970 article on profit maximisation. 1:02:41
What is Yanis’s alternative to capitalism? 1:09:12
Should change be brought about through revolution or incrementalism? 1:26:08

Today, Black Friday, we are boycotting Amazon, globally – Damien Gayle in The Guardian

The economist Yanis Varoufakis has called for a one-day boycott of Amazon on Black Friday as trade unionists, environmental activists, privacy campaigners and tax justice advocates plan coordinated actions against the company’s sites and supply chain. Amazon’s success during the coronavirus pandemic – at one point the company was reported to be making sales of $11,000 (£8,200) a second – has vastly inflated its share price, increasing the personal wealth of its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, already the world’s richest man, by $70bn. Bloomberg estimates his current wealth to be $187bn.
In an online video, Varoufakis asks viewers “not even to visit” Amazon’s website on Black Friday – the retail industry’s most profitable day of the year – which falls on 27 November this year.
“By boycotting Amazon you will be adding your strength to an international coalition of workers and activists,” he said. “Amazon is not a mere company. It is not merely a monopolistic mega-firm. It is far more, and far worse, than that. It is the pillar of a new techno-feudalism.”
Under a banner of “make Amazon pay”, Friday’s actions are intended as the start of a campaign against the retailer’s record on workers’ rights, environmental impact, tax avoidance, work with police and immigration authorities, and what activists say are invasions of privacy via its growing range of internet-connected devices.
The campaign is co-convened by Progressive International, a global initiative bringing together progressive leftwing groups, politicians and intellectuals, including Varoufakis, Prof Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders, and UNI Global, a trade union federation representing 20 million workers including the UK’s GMB union.



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Casper Gelderblom, Progressive International’s campaign lead said: “Trillion-dollar corporations like Amazon have too much power and are too large for a single government, trade union or organisation to rein in. That’s why workers, citizens and activists are coming together across borders and issues to take the power back.”
A set of demands submitted to Amazon by Progressive International and signed by Oxfam, 350.org, Greenpeace and the Tax Justice Network, said: “Amazon warehouse workers risked their lives as essential workers, and only briefly received an increase in pay.”
The first actions are due to take place in Sydney, Australia, with protests at Amazon facilities by the SDA and TWU trade unions. Protests are also planned for Bangladesh, Brazil, France, India, Italy, Luxembourg, the Philippines, Poland, Sweden and the US.
In Germany, the trade union Verdi has organised three-day strikes at Amazon warehouses, demanding better pay and working conditions. In the UK, where protest is effectively banned under coronavirus regulations, GMB members will stage an online rally. Supporters are being asked to endorse the demands and donate to strike funds for Amazon workers.
An Amazon spokesperson said of the campaign: “This is a series of misleading assertions by misinformed or self-interested groups who are using Amazon’s profile to further their individual causes. Amazon has a strong track record of supporting our employees, our customers, and our communities, including providing safe working conditions, competitive wages and great benefits, leading on climate change with the Climate Pledge commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040, and paying billions of pounds in taxes globally.”
For The Guardian’s site click here.

Πόσο εύκολο είναι να μπερδευτεί ένας λαός με πιθανοτικές πληροφορίες εν μέσω πανδημίας – ένα παράδειγμα

Σε περιόδους πανδημίας δεχόμαστε καθημερινά καταιγισμό πληροφοριών εκφρασμένες σε όρους πιθανοτήτων (π.χ. το εμβόλιο προσφέρει προστασία Χ%, το τεστ είναι Ψ% ακριβές κλπ). Αυτό εγκυμονεί κινδύνους, κι όχι μόνο για τη δημόσια υγεία αλλά, γενικότερα, για την ίδια την Δημοκρατία – την ιδέα ότι ο Δήμος, οι πολίτες, ελέγχουν την εξουσία. Γιατί αυτό; Επειδή η ικανότητα του ανθρώπινου νου να χειρίζεται πιθανοτικές πληροφορίες είναι ιδιαίτερα περιορισμένη με αποτέλεσμα πολύ εύκολα να μπορούν οι κατέχοντες (κυβέρνηση, ολιγαρχία, επιχειρηματικά συμφέροντα, λαϊκιστές κλπ) να μας παρασύρουν σε λογικά σφάλματα. 
Όπως κατανοήσαμε καλά από την αρχή της πανδημίας, η κακή και ιδιοτελής διαχείρηση των επιστημονικών δεδομένων ενισχύει τις δυνάμεις της αντίδρασης, της καταστολής και της αντιεπιστημονικής χρήσης της επιστήμης. Τα ισχυρά συμφέροντα (πολιτικά, επιχειρηματικά κλπ) μπορούν να μας μπερδέψουν πιο εύκολα χωρίς καν να πουν ψέμματα. Αρκεί το να εστιάζουν την προσοχή μας σε μέρος μόνο των σωστών πληροφοριών. Για αυτό τον λόγο είναι απαραίτητη η πραγματική ανεξαρτησία των επιστημονικών επιτροπών και απολύτως καταδικαστέα η εργαλειοποίησή τους από την κυβέρνηση.
Ακολουθεί παράδειγμα που αποδεικνύει του λόγου το αληθές:
Φανταστείτε ότι ετοιμάζεστε να κάνετε τεστ για τον ιό Χ. Πριν το τεστ ο γιατρός σας σας πληροφορεί για δύο πράγματα: Πρώτον, ότι έως τώρα έχουν διενεργηθεί 1 εκατομμύριο τεστ. Και, δεύτερον, ότι η ιατρική κοινότητα θεωρεί πως περίπου το 1% του πληθυσμού έχει μολυνθεί από το ιό Χ. Τέλος, σας πληροφορεί ότι το τεστ που ετοιμάζεστε να κάνετε έχει αποδειχθεί 99% ακριβές (δηλαδή, βγαίνει θετικό στο 99% των περιπτώσεων για κάποιον που έχει μολυνθεί από τον ιό Χ και αρνητικό στο 99% των περιπτώσεων για κάποιον που δεν έχει μολυνθεί). Έτσι, δέχεστε να κάνετε το τεστ. Αργότερα, ο γιατρός σας παίρνει στο τηλέφωνο να σας πει ότι το τεστ βγήκε θετικό.
Ποιές είναι οι πιθανότητες να έχετε μολυνθεί από τον ιό Χ;
Η απάντηση που έρχεται κατά νου είναι 99%, δεδομένου ότι το τεστ βγήκε θετικό και είναι 99% ακριβώς. Λάθος!
Η σωστή απάντηση είναι… 50%, πενήντα-πενήντα!
Πως είναι δυνατόν; Το λάθος μας οφείλεται στο ότι τείνουμε, λανθασμένα, να αποκλείουμε σημαντικές πιθανοτικές πληροφορίες και να εστιάζουμε αποκλειστικά σε εκείνες που μας εντυπωσιάζουν περισσότερο. Στο παράδειγμά μας ο νους μας τείνει να επικεντρώνεται στην 99% ακρίβεια του τεστ και να αγνοεί τις εξ ίσου σημαντικές πληροφορίες που έδωσε ο γιατρός: Ότι το 1% μόλις του πληθυσμού έχει μολυνθεί και πως έχουν γίνει 1 εκατομμύριο τεστ. Να πως θα έπρεπε να χρησιμοποιηθεί συνδυαστικά αυτή η πληροφόρηση:


Μάθαμε ότι  έχουν υποβληθεί στο τεστ 1 εκατομμύριο άνθρωποι σ’ έναν πληθυσμό όπου έχει μολυνθεί το 1%. Δηλαδή, πριν καν δούμε τα αποτελέσματα των τεστ, ξέρουμε ότι κατά μέσο όρο 10 χιλιάδες από το 1 εκατομμύριο που έκαναν το τεστ έχουν μολυνθεί από τον ιό Χ (ενώ 990 χιλιάδες δεν έχουν)


Από αυτούς τους 10 χιλιάδες τους ήδη φορείς/μολυσμένους που έκαναν το τεστ, το τέστ (που είναι κατά 99% ακριβές) θα βγάλει τους 9.900 θετικούς (σωστά) και, κατά μέσο όρο, (εσφαλμένα) τους λοιπούς 100 αρνητικούς.


Από τους 990 χιλιάδες υγιείς που υπεβλήθησαν στο τεστ (που είναι κατά 99% ακριβές) το 1%, ή 9.900 άτομα, θα βγουν (εσφαλμένα) θετικά  ενώ τα υπόλοιπα 980.100 άτομα θα βγουν (ορθώς) αρνητικά.


Περιληπτικά, έχουμε συνολικά 19.800 θετικά τεστ εκ των οποίων οι 9.900 έχουν πράγματι μολυνθεί από τον ιό αλλά οι υπόλοιπες/οι 9900 δεν έχουν τον ιό Χ κι ας έχουν βγει θετικές/οί από τεστ με 99% ακρίβεια. Μόνο οι μισοί όσων βγήκαν θετικοί τελικά είχαν τον ιό παρά το γεγονός ότι το τεστ είναι 99% ακριβές.
Ηθικόν Δίδαγμα
Η ικανότητα του ανθρώπινου νου να χειρίζεται πιθανοτικές πληροφορίες είναι ιδιαίτερη περιορισμένη με αποτέλεσμα πολύ εύκολα να παρασυρόμαστε σε λογικά σφάλματα. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι, ιδίως όταν ισχυρά συμφέροντα (πολιτικά, επιχειρηματικά κλπ) θέλουν να μας μπερδέψουν να μπορούν εύκολα να το κάνουν χωρίς καν να πουν ψέμματα. Αρκεί το να εστιάζουν την προσοχή μας σε μέρος μόνο των σωστών πληροφοριών. Για αυτό τον λόγο είναι απαραίτητη η πραγματική ανεξαρτησία των επιστημονικών επιτροπών και απολύτως κατάπτυστη η εργαλειοποίησή τους από την κυβέρνηση.

ΣΗΜΕΙΩΣΕΙΣ

Η πιο πάνω ανάλυση εμπίπτει στον κανόνα του Bayes για τη προσαρμογή αρχικών πιθανοτικών προσδοκιών υπό το φως μιας νέας πληροφορίας. Οι αρχικές πεποιθήσεις ήταν (α) ότι η πιθανότητα να έχετε τον ιό Χ είναι 1%, και (β) πως η πιθανότητα να βγει το τεστ θετικό εάν έχετε τη νόσο Χ, Pr(το τεστ να είναι θετικό|X) = 99% – σημειώστε ότι ‘|’ σημαίνει «δεδομένου ότι». Η νέα πληροφορία είναι ότι το τεστ βγήκε θετικό. Πώς θα προσαρμόσετε την πιθανότητα να φέρετε τον ιό Χ υπό το φως της πληροφορίας του ότι το τεστ σας βγήκε θετικό;

Ο Thomas Bayes υπέδειξε τον ακόλουθο κανόνα ο οποίος κωδικοποιεί τους προηγούμενους υπολογισμούς μας: Η πιθανότητα να έχει συμβεί το γεγονός Α, δεδομένου ότι έχει μόλις παρατηρηθεί το γεγονός Β, εκφράζεται ως Pr(A|B) (γνωστή ως δεσμευμένη πιθανότητα) και είναι ίση με

                                           Pr(B|A) Χ Pr(Α)

Pr(A|B) =  ___________________________                                                                                        

                Pr(B|A) Χ Pr(Α) Pr(B|όχι A) Χ Pr(όχι Α)  

 

όπου ‘όχι A’ σημαίνει ότι το γεγονός Α δεν συνέβη (π.χ. αν Α το γεγονός “φέρω τον ιό Χ” τότε όχι Α = “δεν φέρω τον ιό Χ”). 

Ας εφαρμόσουμε τον τύπο αυτόν θεωρώντας το Α ως το γεγονός: «Φέρεις τον ιό Χ», και το γεγονός Β ως νέα πληροφορία., δηλαδή Β: «Το τεστ του ιού  Χ βγήκε θετικό». Το ερώτημα, λοιπόν, είναι: Ποια είναι η Pr(A|B); Δηλαδή, ποια είναι η πιθανότητα να φέρεις τον ιό Χ δεδομένου ότι το τεστ βγήκε θετικό; Ας συναρμολογήσουμε, λοιπόν, το δεξιό σκέλος του κανόνα Bayes: Η Pr(B|A) είναι η πιθανότητα να βγει το τεστ σου θετικό δεδομένου ότι φέρεις τον ιό Χ. Η πιθανότητα αυτή είναι ίση με 99 %. Η Pr(Α) είναι η πιθανότητα να πάσχεις από τη νόσο Χ, όπως υπολογιζόταν προ του τεστ (δηλ. πριν από τη νέα πληροφορία): η πιθανότητα αυτή είναι 1%. Επομένως, ο αριθμητής του κλάσματος είναι ίσος με 99% επί 1%, δηλ. 99%. Ο παρονομαστής ισούται με 99% συν Pr(B|όχι A) Χ Pr(όχι A). Η πιθανότητα «όχι Α», δηλ. να μην έχεις τη νόσο Χ (όπως δίδεται προ του τεστ), είναι 99%, ενώ η πιθανότητα να έχει βγει το τεστ θετικό ενώ δεν φέρεις τον ιό Χ [δηλ. Pr(B|όχι A)] είναι ίση με 1%. Ο παρονομαστής, λοιπόν, ισούται με 2Χ99%. Αποδεικνύεται, έτσι. ότι η πιθανότητα να φέρεις τον ιο Χ, όταν το τεστ είναι θετικό, ισούται με 99% δια δύο φορές το 99%, δηλαδή 50%. ΟΕΔ

Our current techno-feudalism & a potential socialist future, or even ANOTHER NOW – In conversation with Owen Jones

A discussion I enjoyed hugely with Matthew Taylor of the Royal Society of the Arts on my ANOTHER NOW

 

How can a Marxist-feminist, a libertarian ex-banker and a maverick technologist help us navigate our new future? Economist Yanis Varoufakis explains all.



Global crises cause big changes and reveal deep structural weaknesses.
In this special interview series from the RSA its chief executive, Matthew Taylor, puts a range of practitioners on the spot – from scholars to business leaders, politicians to journalists – by asking for one big idea to help build effective bridges to our new future.
Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and the author of Another Now.

A Tempo & Talker production for the RSA.

In this time of global change, strong communities and initiatives that bring people together are more invaluable than ever before. The RSA Fellowship is a global network of problem solvers. We invite you to join our community today to stay connected, inspired and motivated in the months ahead.

You can learn more about the Fellowship or start an application by clicking here.

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS

Matthew Taylor

Yanis Varoufakis

 

Review of ADULTS IN THE ROOM, both the film and the book by Anjan Basu in The Wire

Travelling around Greece in December 2012, we often reached a museum in the early afternoon only to find it closed. The museum was working only in the mornings, we were told. In breathtakingly beautiful Delphi, an irate security guard screamed at my daughter who wanted to buy the tickets to the museum. He was pointing to a notice displayed near the ticket office which presumably said – it was all Greek to us, literally – that visitors needed to come before a certain hour. The kindly landlady at the B&B we were staying in explained to me that the government was obliged to cut back on much expenditure because it was seriously short of cash. I was surprised. Didn’t tourism contribute one of Greece’s main income streams? Wasn’t this belt-tightening likely counterproductive, because scaling back revenue-earning expenditure was never a good idea?
In January 2015, a Syriza-led left-leaning coalition came to power in Athens, promising to dump belt-tightening, or austerity, and halt the country’s slide into chaos and disaster. By then, Greece was a chronically indebted, poorly-administered economy, a less-than-wholly-welcome member of the European Union which lived – as legend had it – from one bailout to the next offered by its creditors, Europe’s most powerful governments and institutions.
The new government believed that the bailout packages themselves were, in a real sense, part of Greece’s problem for they were designed not so much to help the economy grow and stabilise as to bolster, in the short term, Greece’s ability to service its humongous debt liability. In other words, the bailouts were a debt trap: they served to salvage the position of German and French banks – which had, over the years, lent aggressively to a profligate and venal Greek oligarchy – by lending Greece just about enough that she could meet her repayment obligations on maturing loans.
At the same time, the bailouts came packaged with onerous preconditions regarding budget deficits, public expenditure and social welfare costs that made steadily escalating austerity an inescapable reality. And this austerity was not just self-defeating, it plunged the economy in a vicious vortex of steadily lower consumption and consumer spending, shrinking GDP, lower tax revenues, wider budget gaps – and, consequently, stiffer austerity measures.

Yanis Varoufakis

Adults in the Room

Random House UK (May 2017)

Soon after assuming office, Alexis Tsipras’s coalition government set about trying to break this austerity-indebtedness logjam. It sought to present to the ‘troika’ – the three powerful institutions that happened to be the arbiters of Greece’s destiny, namely the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – an alternative vision of a more sustainable economic model, one that built modest growth aspirations into the debt-servicing architecture.

By deemphasising austerity, this model provided for some monetary expansion coupled with lower tax rates, and for a more nuanced approach to financial and social sector reforms than the troika was willing to countenance. As Syriza’s finance minister, it fell to Yanis Varoufakis, economics professor and first-time parliamentarian, to take up the cudgels for lowly Greece in the power-packed, forbidding courts of the troika. His mission was to persuade the troika that a mindless adherence to austerity was likely to prove suicidal for Greece; and that, unless her massive debt was allowed to be restructured, Greece would likely sink deeper into a morass of bankruptcy from where no amount of future financial stimuli could perhaps rescue her. His was an uphill battle, equally exhausting and exasperating, and in the end, Varoufakis had to give up when his own government decided that discretion was by far the better part of valour.











In a dramatic turnaround, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to sign on the dotted line on the troika’s MOU even as a popular referendum – one that he himself had mooted and organised – mandated him to throw out that same MOU. A frustrated Varoufakis resigned in July 2015. His 2017 best-seller, Adults In The Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment, is a riveting, fast-paced account of his tumultuous six months in office, closing with Greece’s humiliating capitulation to the troika. The book reads in part like a thriller. It is easy to see why a filmmaker couldn’t help being drawn to this narrative of hope and disillusion, heroics and surrender playing out against the backdrop of continental fault-lines.


Indeed, Costa-Gavras, one of the greats of Greek cinema, had gone on record with his intention to make a film around Adults in the Room almost as soon as the book made its appearance. Come to think of it, it was only natural for the master of the political thriller genre to be enthusiastic about this story. In the event, his eponymous film premiered in Venice in 2019, though not in the competition section .  Incredibly, Adults in the Room marked the first time ever, in a career spanning six decades, that Costa-Gavras shot a film on Greek soil, although it was the 1969 classic Z which happened to be his first movie made on a Greek story.

For the most part, the film’s characters speak in Greek, but, as the film’s action unfolds as much in Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt, Brussels and London as in Athens, German, English and French are also spoken in equal measure. Adults in the Room features English subtitles as well, though, sadly, these subtitles are often annoyingly clumsy, at times even a little misleading. Surely an internationally acclaimed director could do with somewhat better subtitles.
The film opens with video footage of euphoric crowds at Athens’s iconic Syntagma Square celebrating Syriza’s victory in the January 2015 elections. After Tsipras’s rousing acceptance speech – in which he pointedly refers to how the troika was trying to strangulate Greece’s economy – the film gets down to the business of introducing viewers to the main protagonists on the Greek side. Soon Varoufakis is shown outlining to his team the tasks ahead of them, including preparing a contingency plan to be triggered in case of a showdown with an unrelenting troika. And just a few short episodes later, the camera cuts to a shot in which a clearly tired and dejected Varoufakis returns home to his wife one evening in July, to tell her he has resigned his post – a piece of news that she receives with evident relief. Having thus set the boundaries of his narrative, Costa-Gavras then proceeds to trace the chain of events leading up from jubilant January to despondent July, and in this, he tries to stay as faithful to Varoufakis’s text as he could possibly try to be.
Also Read: A Life Beyond Capitalism: Reimagining a Socialist Future With Yanis Varoufakis
And there the film steps on to somewhat unpromising territory. Of course, Varoufakis’s book is all about his struggles with ‘Europe’s deep establishment’, as his book’s subtitle reminds us. But in his text, the writer frequently travels back in time to uncover many secrets: his own childhood and early youth; his parents; his many interactions with men of power and influence before he himself joined the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics; his many brushes with the Greek establishment, including the media which were intent on pursuing an ultra-conservative path; and, above all, his exposure to, and feel for, the human tragedy that had been creeping up on the ordinary Greek citizen over the years preceding 2015.
Even in asides, his story touches upon different facets of ordinary people’s lives, laying bare the dynamics of a society unsure of where it was going – or perhaps, where it was being led. When Varoufakis dons his ministerial hat, or sits across the table from Europe’s famous and mighty to argue Greece’s case, his every thought, his every action seems to be informed by his accumulated experience of Greece’s recent history. His personal profile thus invests his interactions and confrontations with the troika with a sense of drama that no ordinary dry-as-bone negotiation between a debtor country and her creditors could conjure up.
Costa-Gavras’s treatment chooses to stick to a linear development of the plot, however, eschewing the subplots that mirror the troubled zeitgeist of Greek society. Varoufakis’s seemingly endless negotiations with the troika fully occupy the centre of the film’s stage, but the broader issues surrounding the negotiations are barely etched here. The camera is focussed on the individuals involved in these somewhat tedious, and predictable, discussions, on their rigidities and inanities, the banality of much of their talk and their total inability to put themselves in hapless Greece’s shoes at any point. Indeed, Wolfgang Schauble (the powerful German minister of finance), Mario Draghi (president of the European Central Bank) and Jeroen Dijsselbloem (president of the Eurogroup) come across here as arrogant dimwits, and not much else. (Schauble looks faintly sinister, too.) Now, while the arrogance of power that these men exuded can never be gainsaid, to depict them as little better than a bunch of unscrupulous power brokers is perhaps to miss the point: which is that they represented a world view which was incapable of the imaginative redrawing of monetary and fiscal policies that Greece was clamouring for.
Despite his exasperation with the troika, Varoufakis himself recognises this. Indeed, he speaks of how these men at times came close to an appreciation of the futility of what they were proposing. But, overpowered by a sense of insecurity, and unable to break free from what they had always taught themselves to believe in, they clung to their patently unhelpful positions tenaciously. At one place, he even hints that Wolfgang Schauble’s hand may have been forced on one occasion by his boss, the formidable Angela Merkel. Overall, it is this sense of how tantalisingly close Greece seemed to come to wresting from the troika what she wanted that makes Varoufakis’s narrative particularly poignant.
It is possible that he was not reading the troika correctly at every stage, but his book does not make the point that Greece never seemed to stand a chance in renegotiating at least some parts of the MOU. In the film, however, the protracted negotiations look little other than a charade, all the more so as they go round in circles. That, together with the loss of perspective on the substantive social and political dynamics of Greek society, limits the appeal of the film narrative to an extent.
The book’s – and the film’s—title derives from something that an exasperated Christine Lagarde, then the IMF boss, is believed to have said at some stage of the interminable negotiations. She seemed to suggest that they needed to have ‘adults in the room’ to take the talks forward, and that obduracy was unlikely to achieve that. Incidentally, Lagarde is one person that the film portrays in somewhat kindlier light than perhaps the writer had intended. On at least two occasions, she appears to be endorsing the Greek position quite unreservedly, much to the chagrin of the German finance minister. The book was rather more ambivalent about Lagarde.

Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras. Photo: Piotr Drabik/Flickr CC BY 2.0

By decoupling Varoufakis’s text from a broad overview of recent Greek history and focussing almost exclusively on the meeting rooms of Europe, the film’s script falls short of linking up with the angst and gloom permeating Greece then. Ordinary Greek lives hardly enter the film’s canvas, and that is certainly a regret. But there is an inspired reinterpretation of one episode from the book that restores some of the emotional balance lost elsewhere in the story. One evening in May or June 2015, when the battle with the troika had begun to hot up in earnest, Varoufakis and his wife take a friend out to dinner in an Athens restaurant. In the book, Varoufakis recalls how, midway through the meal, some hooligans – the hoods of their coats pulled menacingly over their faces – arrive with the clear intention of harming the minister physically. They advance on Varoufakis threateningly. A heart-stopping face-off follows. Presumably, those thugs were unloosed on Varoufakis by ultra-conservatives irked by his unwillingness to toe the troika’s line. In his treatment, Costa-Gavras retains the restaurant and the meal, but introduces not hooded ruffians but a large group of sullen-looking young people who crowd around the diners’ table and look on silently, disconcertingly. To Varoufakis’s questions as to what had brought them there, the strange crowd merely stare back at them, without uttering a single word. After a while, they all walk slowly away, leaving the party shocked and dispirited. No explanations are offered – unless the subtitles omitted them – and there is just a hint that the unusual congregation intended to convey a message: that Varoufakis and his colleagues must not lose sight of the sufferings of their countrymen; that they must not forget their pledge to do what was just and right for Greece. The episode clearly strengthens Varoufakis’s resolve not to relent on his stand on the MOU. He would not dream of letting down ordinary Greek citizens for the sake of political expediency. By this one deft touch, the master filmmaker finally posits Greece’s humanitarian crisis as one of his film’s key concerns. The virtuoso remains a virtuoso, no matter that he had turned 86 by the time Adults in the Room was in the can.
Anjan Basu writes on a range of issues. He can be reached at basuanjan52@gmail.com.
For the site of The Wire, click here.

Live discussion of ANOTHER NOW with Zoe Williams – A GUARDIAN LIVE event this Monday at 19.00GMT

In Another Now, Varoufakis imagines a post-capitalist democracy. Set in 2025, through three contrasting characters – a banker, a feminist and a technologist – he paints a radical and thought-provoking blueprint of how democratic socialism could work today, in a world without billionaires, stock markets or tech giants.


Can we truly critique capitalism without genuinely considering the alternative? Can freedom be balanced with fairness? How do we generate wealth while protecting the planet?
Join Varoufakis in conversation with Guardian columnist Zoe Williams. You will also have the chance to ask your own questions during this livestreamed event.
As the co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement, the former finance minister of Greece, and the current Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, Varoufakis has long been critical of Brexit, austerity and the failings of capitalism. He has written several bestselling books, including Adults in the Room and The Global Minotaur, and in 2018 he launched the Progressive International movement with Bernie Sanders.
Running time: 60 minutes
For tickets, click here (If you live in the UK, you can purchase a ticket with a copy of Another Now)