There's a big furor now with some opposition parties demanding an investigation of Varoufakis' involvement. Here was an earlier post about Plan B.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/tyler-cowen-and-schadenfreude-of-very.html
Tyler Cowen who has set himself up as kind of the spokesman of the Very Serious People is laughing about this. I for my part am glad that someone in Greece really had contemplated Grexit at some point.
For Varoufakis at this point he has to establish that he wasn't a 'rogue finance minister'-like Schauble.
"Yanis Varoufakis has insisted he did nothing improper as part of a five-month clandestine project he ran as Greek finance minister that prepared for his country’s possible exit from the euro."
"The scheme, which was almost completed but not fully implemented, involved hacking into Greece’s independent tax service to set up a parallel payment system — accessing individuals’ private identification numbers and copying them on to a computer controlled by a “childhood friend” of Mr Varoufakis."
"It would have allowed transactions to continue in case of a prolonged bank holiday and the imposition of capital controls."
"Mr Varoufakis described the project in a 25-minute teleconference with private investors on July 16."
“We decided to hack into my minister’s own software programme in order to be able to bring it all, to just copy, just copy the codes of the tax systems’ website on to a large computer in his office, so he can work out how to design and implement this parallel payment system,” Mr Varoufakis said on the call.
“We were ready to get the green light from the prime minister when the banks closed in order to move into the general secretariat of public revenues, which was not controlled by us but is controlled by Brussels, and to plug this laptop in and to energise the system.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d44a92c0-3454-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html#ixzz3h8gjIKOL
Interestingly, apparently Galbraith was in on Plan B:
"The disclosures about Mr Varoufakis’s “Plan B” come on the heels of revelations by the Financial Times and other media organisations that far-left members of the governing Syriza party were contemplating a far more radical plan to seize government reserves and take over the country’s central bank in a transition to a new currency."
"James K Galbraith, the University of Texas economist and a longtime Varoufakis associate who worked on the finance ministry plan, issued his own statement saying their efforts never overlapped with the more radical efforts other than an “inconclusive” phone call he had with an MP from the Left Platform."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d44a92c0-3454-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html#ixzz3h8h6Y8H0
Tsipras' government denied giving the green light to any plan-which doesn't mean he didn't direct Varoufakis to set up this parallel banking system:
"The revelations were shrugged off by government officials, who said Mr Tsipras never gave Mr Varoufakis the go-ahead to activate his plan."
“I can’t imagine this [happened],” said Dimitris Mardas, the deputy finance minister in charge of revenues. “But what a government minister’s team proposes doesn’t constitute government policy.”
"Mr Tsipras is known to have grown wary of some of Mr Varoufakis’s ideas, a concern that contributed to his decision to replace the outspoken finance minister with Euclid Tsakalotos, a more low-key loyalist, earlier this month."
If Varoufakis considered Plan B it's just as well as this is the Schauble German plan as well-Grexit.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/tyler-cowen-and-schadenfreude-of-very.html
Tyler Cowen who has set himself up as kind of the spokesman of the Very Serious People is laughing about this. I for my part am glad that someone in Greece really had contemplated Grexit at some point.
For Varoufakis at this point he has to establish that he wasn't a 'rogue finance minister'-like Schauble.
"Yanis Varoufakis has insisted he did nothing improper as part of a five-month clandestine project he ran as Greek finance minister that prepared for his country’s possible exit from the euro."
"The scheme, which was almost completed but not fully implemented, involved hacking into Greece’s independent tax service to set up a parallel payment system — accessing individuals’ private identification numbers and copying them on to a computer controlled by a “childhood friend” of Mr Varoufakis."
"It would have allowed transactions to continue in case of a prolonged bank holiday and the imposition of capital controls."
"Mr Varoufakis described the project in a 25-minute teleconference with private investors on July 16."
“We decided to hack into my minister’s own software programme in order to be able to bring it all, to just copy, just copy the codes of the tax systems’ website on to a large computer in his office, so he can work out how to design and implement this parallel payment system,” Mr Varoufakis said on the call.
“We were ready to get the green light from the prime minister when the banks closed in order to move into the general secretariat of public revenues, which was not controlled by us but is controlled by Brussels, and to plug this laptop in and to energise the system.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d44a92c0-3454-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html#ixzz3h8gjIKOL
Interestingly, apparently Galbraith was in on Plan B:
"The disclosures about Mr Varoufakis’s “Plan B” come on the heels of revelations by the Financial Times and other media organisations that far-left members of the governing Syriza party were contemplating a far more radical plan to seize government reserves and take over the country’s central bank in a transition to a new currency."
"James K Galbraith, the University of Texas economist and a longtime Varoufakis associate who worked on the finance ministry plan, issued his own statement saying their efforts never overlapped with the more radical efforts other than an “inconclusive” phone call he had with an MP from the Left Platform."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d44a92c0-3454-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html#ixzz3h8h6Y8H0
Tsipras' government denied giving the green light to any plan-which doesn't mean he didn't direct Varoufakis to set up this parallel banking system:
"The revelations were shrugged off by government officials, who said Mr Tsipras never gave Mr Varoufakis the go-ahead to activate his plan."
“I can’t imagine this [happened],” said Dimitris Mardas, the deputy finance minister in charge of revenues. “But what a government minister’s team proposes doesn’t constitute government policy.”
"Mr Tsipras is known to have grown wary of some of Mr Varoufakis’s ideas, a concern that contributed to his decision to replace the outspoken finance minister with Euclid Tsakalotos, a more low-key loyalist, earlier this month."
If Varoufakis considered Plan B it's just as well as this is the Schauble German plan as well-Grexit.
Nick Rowe analyzes the monetary economics of Plan B.
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2015/07/greeces-plan-b.html#more
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