Yanis Varoufakis
Project Syndicate
Greece
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Past articles by Yanis:
Lesbos’s Ghosts, Europe’s Disgrace by 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. → Read More
Yanis Varoufakis: Theresa May and the EU are incompetent authoritarians – and both are hurting Europe
We must dare to dream of a Corbyn government, a second UK referendum, and a transformed Britain entering a European Democratic Union. → Read More
Spain’s Crisis Is Europe’s Opportunity
The Catalonia crisis is a strong hint from history that Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty. → Read More
Spain’s Crisis is Europe’s Opportunity by Yanis Varoufakis
The Catalonia crisis is a strong hint from history that Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty, one that strengthens cities and regions, dissolves national particularism, and upholds democratic norms. Imagining a pan-European democracy is the prerequisite for imagining a Europe worth saving. → Read More
The Promise Of Fiscal Money
Western capitalism has few sacred cows left. It is time to question one of them: the independence of central banks from elected governments. → Read More
The Promise of Fiscal Money
One of the few remaining sacred cows of Western capitalism is the independence of central banks from elected governments. But in an age when fiscal policy has become an essential factor in determining the quantity of money lubricating the system, an independent monetary authority no longer makes sense. → Read More
Adults In The Room: Taking On Europe's Deep State
What happened in Greece during the crisis? And what happens when you take on the establishment? In this extensive interview with EFN, former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis, talks about his new book Adults In The Room – My battle with Europe’s deep establishment. → Read More
Europe’s gradualist fallacy
Europe is at the mercy of a common currency that not only was unnecessary for European integration, but that is actually undermining the EU itself. So what should be done about a currency without a state to back it — or about the 19 European states without a currency that they control? The logical answer is either to dismantle the euro or to provide it with the federal state it needs. The… → Read More
Europe’s Gradualist Fallacy
Europe is at the mercy of a common currency that not only was unnecessary for European integration, but that is actually undermining the EU itself. So what should be done about a currency without a state to back it – or about the 19 European states without a currency that they control? → Read More
Congratulations, President Macron — now we oppose you
By Yanis Varoufakis (Project syndicate) - French gov’t will worsen regressive cycle that is Le Pen’s greatest ally ATHENS — Prior to the second round of the French Presidential election, DiEM25 (the pan-European movement of democrats, mostly of the left, that I helped to found) promised Emmanuel Macron that we would &ldqu → Read More
Congratulations, President Macron – Now We Oppose You
Reasonable people understood that Emmanuel Macron ought to be supported against Marine Le Pen in the second round of France's presidential election. Now they understand that Macron’s policies will worsen the deflationary, regressive cycle that is Le Pen’s greatest ally. → Read More
The left must vote for Macron
In 2002, Jacques Chirac, the French right’s leader, faced Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the racist National Front, in the second round of France’s presidential election. The French left rallied behind the Gaullist, conservative Chirac to oppose the xenophobic heir of Vichy collaborationism. Fifteen years later, however, large sections of the French left are refusing to back Emmanuel Macron… → Read More
The Left Must Vote for Macron
Progressives have good reason to be suspicious of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, a former banker who, during his one brief stint in government, stripped full-time workers of hard-won labor rights. But, faced with the prospect of Marine Le Pen, the imperative to oppose racism trumps hostility to neoliberal policies. → Read More
Europe's Illiberal Establishment
Even dyed-in-the-wool Europhiles admitted that the Rome gathering felt more like a wake than a party. → Read More
Donald Trump’s Victory Is a Silver Lining for Global Progressives
Donald Trump's presidency represents a defeat for liberal democrats everywhere, but it holds important lessons for progressives. → Read More
The Universal Right to Capital Income by Yanis Varoufakis
The idea that some work hard and pay their income taxes, while others live off this enforced kindness, doing nothing by choice, is untenable. If a universal basic income – liberty's main prerequisite in an age of obsolete labor – is to be legitimate, it cannot be financed by taxing Jill to pay Jack. → Read More
The Politics of Negative Interest Rates
Simone Weil once said, “If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.” Likewise, if we want to know what our societies are really like, we must take notice of how they react to negative interest rates. → Read More
And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
A titanic battle is being waged for Europe’s integrity and soul, with the forces of reason and humanism losing out to growing irrationality,... → Read More
Lies, Damn Lies, and European Growth Statistics
Europe’s leaders have invested too much political capital in their failed policies toward the EU's periphery members to believe that they can reverse course. So now they are focusing on real national income data, which, during a period of deflation, is merely an effort to repackage an economic depression as a great success story. → Read More
Democracy or Bust in Europe
“Europe will be democratized or it will disintegrate!” That maxim is more than a catchphrase from the manifesto of the Democracy in Europe Movement-DiEM25, which was recently launched in Berlin; it is a simple, if under-acknowledged fact. → Read More