Yanis Varoufakis and His Enemies

     People love to hate the former Greek finance minister. We're told by the Eurocrats that he was so unreasonable and annoying that he had to be removed for any chance of a deal.

    However, I really like him. Throughout this entire sorry crisis, he has been the one with the best lines.  See his blog here.

   http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/

   Now he's gone and written a book that was reviewed today in the Financial Times-not necessarily a friendly place for him to be reviewed.

   I actually came across his book yesterday and immediately purchased it on Amazon.

  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=varoufakis

  Yes he previously wrote a book on Game Theory which his enemies love to point out now so they can gloat that his game theory didn't work. However, the reason it didn't work was not his fault but his Prime Minister Tsipras who refused to consider a Plan B if Plan A-the Eurocrats being nice guys and giving the Greeks some concessions-didn't pan out, which of course it hasn't.

  http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/00765226-2c94-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7.html#axzz3gLypB9uO

  In the FT's review of him which I read in curiosity as I haven't started the book yet-right now I'm  reading The Rotten Heart of Europe-I'm trying to figure this whole EU thing out.

  http://www.amazon.com/Rotten-Europe-author-Connolly-Bernard/dp/B00BXU68CK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437391383&sr=1-1&keywords=the+rotten+heart+of+europe&pebp=1437391384081&perid=08E4S88R1AFTYQ48ERE9

  The author clearly is disposed not to like Varoufakis-the subtitle of the peace is Insights from the most annoying man in the room. 

 "This is some week to be reviewing Yanis Varoufakis. Greece teeters on the edge of the eurozone, its fate a matter of ferocious dispute between European finance ministers. Until recently Varoufakis was one of them, by most accounts the most irritating and self-assured man in the room. Now he lurks venomously on the fringes,spitting disdain upon a rotten bargain that he believes will doom his nation to further misery, all of which he foretold."

 "Did he? That is what will preoccupy anyone perusing The Global Minotaur, the polemic he has updated for the latest leg of the crisis. Regrettably it is too uneven for any clear verdict, providing material enough only to confirm the prejudices of those on either side of the argument."

 So I read that as meaning that Varoufakis' enemies will not be able to conclusively debunk him.


. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/edb4cfe8-2b0b-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca.html#ixzz3gQinb5yz

  "Until last week, my reaction had mostly been to scatter “nonsense” in the margins, and list the bad history and cherry-picked examples that dot the pages of The Global Minotaur. Often it reads less as a work of economics, more a drawn-out conspiracy fable that just happens to use economic terms; the author, at times appearing confounded by supply and demand, is determined to see Machiavellian impulse behind every flow of capital. One of the mysteries the book clears up is how Varoufakis could so annoy Greece’s creditors that his departure proved essential for a deal."

   "Despite this, his basic diagnosis may be correct: without a rising tide of external demand, the eurozone has failed to disperse spending sufficiently within its borders, with crisis the inevitable result. Until the last phase of the Greek standoff, I thought this would be understood in Europe’s capitals, and that Athens’ final capitulation would be met with some recognition of the need for relief. Instead, there was only a further twist of the ratchet. Yes, reform is needed — and Varoufakis’ dismissal of structural solutions does Greece no favours. But the savagery of the German approach, akin to dragging a collapsed marathon runner back to the race, looks like an economic surplus used as a weapon of coercion. More such behaviour, and this will not be the last edition of Varoufakis’ conspiracy-minded book."

   The one thing I notice is that the 'Global Minotaur' in his book is the US of A-Wall Street prior to 2009 and not Germany. 

   While you can say the crisis was America's fault the reason this has gone on so long is clearly the fault of the euro system. That is the Minotaur that has consumed all of Greece's GDP. 

   http://marketmonetarist.com/2015/07/14/the-euro-a-monetary-strangulation-mechanism/

   It needs to be said that today America is the country that offers reason for optimism for liberals not Europe where EU rules have more or less outlawed Keynesianism. 

  http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/time-for-european-left-to-lexit.html