Articles by Yanis Varoufakis
We found 34 results.
The Speech That I Could Not Deliver Because German Police Burst to Disband Our Palestine Congress
Yanis Varoufakis | Pressenza – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2024
12 Apr 2024 – Judge for yourselves the kind of society Germany is becoming when its police bans the following words (1930s style):
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Yanis Varoufakis Blasts Europe’s Complicity in Genocide
Yanis Varoufakis | Double Down News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Mar 2024
“In Germany today you can only talk about Genocide if you support it.”
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Is This the End of ‘Socialism for the Rich’?
Yanis Varoufakis | The Atlantic – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Oct 2022
5 Oct 2022 – Last Thursday [29 Sep], the International Monetary Fund spooked the markets and surprised the commentariat by chiding the U.K. conservative government for fiscal irresponsibility. The shock was palpable. The rebuke for tax cuts that will “increase inequality” is probably not the come-to-Jesus moment it might seem.
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Who Is to Blame for Inflation? The Power Brokers of Capitalism
Yanis Varoufakis | ScheerPost – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2022
22 Jun 2022 – Inflation as a Political Power Play Gone Wrong – A half-century long strategy, led by corporations, Wall Street, governments, and central banks, is coming undone. As a result, the West’s authorities now face an impossible choice: push conglomerates and states into cascading bankruptcies or allow inflation to go unchecked.
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Varoufakis: From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism
Yanis Varoufakis | DiEM25 – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 May 2021
Prof. Varoufakis expounds on the thesis that we have made an historic transition from “capitalism’ to a finance-base “post-capitalism” with profound consequences. A fork on the road is approaching: It will take us either into deeper stagnation and environmental degradation or to a society with markets but no capitalism.
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Another Now – An Intimate Introduction
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Oct 2020
Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present by Yanis Varoufakis, Bodley Head, Sep 2020, 240 pp. ~~ “Imagine a world with no banks. No stock market. No tech giants. No billionaires. Imagine if Occupy and Extinction Rebellion actually won. In Another Now world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis shows us what such a world would look like. Far from being a fantasy, he describes how it could have come about – and might yet… — Slavoj Zizek
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Something Remarkable Just Happened This August: How the Pandemic Has Sped Up the Passage to Postcapitalism
Yanis Varoufakis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Aug 2020
21 Aug 2020 – @yanisvaroufakis: Financial capitalism has decoupled from the capitalist economy, skyrocketing out of Earth’s orbit, leaving behind it broken lives & dreams. As the UK sinks into the worst recession ever, & US edges toward failed state status, FTSE100 goes up 2% & S&P500 breaks all time record!
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Why Bitcoin Is Not a Socialist’s Ally – Reply to Ben Arc
Yanis Varoufakis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2020
27 Jul 2020 – On 15th July, Ben Arc published in Bitcoin Magazine an open letter addressed to me in a bid to convince me that I should re-assess my rejection of Bitcoin as a force for good, as a bulwark for democratising capitalism and paving the ground for socialism. Here is my reply.
→ read full articleWhile EU Leaders Squabble, the Elephant in the Room Remains Unnoticed
Yanis Varoufakis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jul 2020
18 Jul 2020 -While the media are reporting the news of the deadlocked EU Summit negotiations over the so-called ‘Recovery Fund’, an eerie silence prevails regarding the Elephant in the Room: The huge wave of austerity the Eurozone is sleepwalking towards. Let’s look at the facts.
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Last Night Julian Assange Called Me. Here Is What We Talked About
Yanis Varoufakis - TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Mar 2020
24 Mar 2020 – Last night, immediately after our first DiEM25 TV event, my phone rang. It was Julian. From prison. It was not that first time that he honoured me deeply by using the few phone calls prison allows him to make to call me. Like every other such occasion, when I unexpectedly recognise his voice a torrent of emotions comes flooding in. Julian wanted to talk about the effects of Covid-19 on the world we live in and, of course, on his case.
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Yanis Varoufakis: Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)
Yanis Varoufakis | DiEM25 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Mar 2020
Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder and MeRA25 MP, on the economic and political impact of the coronavirus.
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Imagining a World without Capitalism
Yanis Varoufakis | Project Syndicate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
27 Dec 2019 – Anti-capitalists had a miserable year. But so did capitalism. The point is to suggest, just before the New Year, the wondrous possibilities of a truly liberal, post-capitalist, technologically advanced society. Those who refuse to imagine it are bound to fall prey to the absurdity pointed out by my friend Slavoj Žižek: a greater readiness to fathom the end of the world than to imagine life after capitalism.
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We Shouldn’t Rush to Save the Liberal Order – We Should Remake It
Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler – The Guardian,
3 Dec 2018
1 Dec 2018 – From Viktor Orbán in the north to Jair Bolsonaro in the south, Rodrigo Duterte in the east to Donald Trump in the west, a coalition of nationalist strongmen are cracking down on civil rights, scapegoating minorities and facilitating widespread corruption for their family and friends. The UN Security Council, the IMF, the World Bank and the ILO were conceived as agencies of change – they can be again.
→ read full articleWith His Choice of Prime Minister, Italy’s President Has Gifted the Far Right
Yanis Varoufakis – The Guardian,
4 Jun 2018
28 May 2018 – Sergio Mattarella’s defence of the status quo has ensured the success of racist and populist policies.
→ read full articleLiberal Totalitarianism
Yanis Varoufakis – Project Syndicate,
14 May 2018
It used to be an axiom of liberalism that freedom meant inalienable self-ownership. But liberal individualism seems to have been defeated by a totalitarianism that grew out of its own success at legitimizing the encroachment of branding and commodification into our personal space.
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The High Cost of Denying Class War
Yanis Varoufakis – Other News,
18 Dec 2017
13 Dec 2017 – The rise of populism on both sides of the Atlantic is being investigated psychoanalytically, culturally, anthropologically, aesthetically, and of course in terms of identity politics. The only angle left unexplored is the one that holds the key to understanding what is going on: the unceasing class war waged against the poor since the late 1970s.
→ read full articleYanis Varoufakis: A New Deal for the 21st Century
Yanis Varoufakis – The New York Times,
10 Jul 2017
Today’s false feud between globalization and nationalism is undermining the future of humanity, and spreading dread and loathing. It must end. A new internationalist spirit that would build institutions to serve the interests of the many is as pertinent today across the world as Roosevelt’s New Deal was for America in the 1930s.
→ read full articleThe Universal Right to Capital Income
Yanis Varoufakis | Project Syndicate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Nov 2016
31 Oct 2016 – The right to laziness has traditionally been only for the propertied rich, whereas the poor have had to struggle for decent wages and working conditions, unemployment and disability insurance, universal health care, and other accoutrements of a dignified life. If a universal basic income is to be legitimate, it cannot be financed by taxing Jill to pay Jack. That is why it should be funded not from taxation, but from returns on capital.
→ read full articleApple, Brussels, and Ireland’s Bruised Sovereignty
Yanis Varoufakis | Project Syndicate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Oct 2016
Is the Commission’s latest intervention another example of EU bullying, in violation of Ireland’s sovereignty? Comparing Trichet’s 2009 intervention and the current standoff over Apple holds important lessons beyond Ireland and, indeed, Europe. With the EU still refusing meaningful reduction of a debt burden unfairly borne by the younger generation, the Irish remain convinced, correctly, that the EU violated their sovereignty on behalf of foreign bankers.
→ read full articleA New Approach to Eurozone Sovereign Debt
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Aug 2015
17 Aug 2015 – Here, then, is an idea (part of A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Euro Crisis, co-authored by Stuart Holland and James K. Galbraith) aimed at re-calibrating the rules, enhancing their spirit, and addressing the underlying economic problem.
→ read full article(Português) Há Algo de Podre no Reino do Euro
Yanis Varoufakis, Financial Times - Pravda,
3 Aug 2015
Há odiosa restrição à soberania nacional, imposta pela “troika” de credores, se os ministros gregos não têm acesso a departamentos dos próprios ministérios. Quando dívidas oficiais insustentáveis geram perda de soberania, que abre espaço para que se imponham políticas subótimas em nações já estressadas, logo se vê que há algo de podre no reino do euro.
→ read full articleEurope’s Vindictive Privatization Plan for Greece
Yanis Varoufakis, Project Syndicate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jul 2015
20 Jul 2015 – On July 12, the summit of eurozone leaders dictated its terms of surrender to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who, terrified by the alternatives, accepted all of them. One of those terms concerned the disposition of Greece’s remaining public assets.
→ read full articleThe Terms of Greece’s Surrender
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jul 2015
The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece’s Surrender – as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with my notes confined to square brackets. Read and weep…
→ read full articleDr Schäuble’s Plan for Europe: Do Europeans Approve? – English Version of My Article in Die Zeit
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jul 2015
On 15 July 2015 Die Zeit published this piece. Here is the original English language version.
→ read full article(Português) Varoufakis: Por Que a Alemanha Recusa-se a Aliviar a Dívida Grega
Yanis Varoufakis – Pravda,
13 Jul 2015
A Europa não sabe como responder à crise financeira. Deve preparar-se para expulsar um país (“Grexit”), ou para federalizar-se?
→ read full articleYanis Varoufakis: Germany Won’t Spare Greek Pain – It Has an Interest in Breaking Us
Yanis Varoufakis – The Guardian,
13 Jul 2015
Debt restructuring has always been our aim in negotiations – but for some eurozone leaders Grexit is the goal. The answer cannot be found in economics because it resides deep in Europe’s labyrinthine politics.
→ read full articleAngela Merkel Has a Red and a Yellow Button. One Ends the Crisis. Which Does She Push?
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jul 2015
The Global Minotaur of neoliberal capitalism centred on Wall Street held the world to ransom from 1971 to 2008. Now Europe’s surplus countries are trying to prop up its corpse. Bankruptocracy is as much a European predicament as it is an American “invention”.
→ read full articleA Blueprint for Greece’s Recovery
Yanis Varoufakis, Project Syndicate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 May 2015
Months of negotiations have produced little progress. One reason is that all sides are focusing too much on the strings to be attached to the next liquidity injection and not enough on a vision of how Greece can recover and develop sustainably. If we are to break the current impasse, we must envisage a healthy Greek economy.
→ read full articleA New Deal for Greece
Yanis Varoufakis, Project Syndicate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Apr 2015
None of this means that common ground cannot be achieved immediately. The Greek government wants a fiscal-consolidation path that makes sense, and we want reforms that all sides believe are important. Our task is to convince our partners that our undertakings are strategic, rather than tactical, and that our logic is sound. Their task is to let go of an approach that has failed.
→ read full articleDeescalating Europe’s Politics of Resentment
Yanis Varoufakis – Project Syndicate,
30 Mar 2015
In 2010, Greece had no right to borrow from German – or any other European – taxpayers, because its public debt was unsustainable. Five years later, the consequences – open animosity toward and from Germany, a humanitarian crisis, and a mountain of unserviceable debt – could not be clearer.
→ read full articleYanis Varoufakis: No Time for Games in Europe
Yanis Varoufakis – The New York Times,
23 Feb 2015
Game theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players. Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece’s new finance minister I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand. Nothing could be further from the truth.
→ read full articleYanis Varoufakis: How I Became an Erratic Marxist
Yanis Varoufakis – The Guardian,
23 Feb 2015
Before he entered politics, Yanis Varoufakis, the iconoclastic Greek finance minister at the centre of the latest eurozone standoff, wrote this searing account of European capitalism and how the left can learn from Marx’s mistakes.
→ read full articleOn the Ukraine: Three Awkward Questions for Western Liberals
Yanis Varoufakis – International Policy Digest,
17 Mar 2014
Awkward question no. 2: On what principle does a western liberal deny the right of Chechens to independence from Russia, but is prepared to defend to the hilt the Georgians’ or the Ukrainians’ right to self-determination?
→ read full articleBitcoin is a Flawed Currency but a Potentially Useful Application for the Eurozone
Yanis Varoufakis – International Policy Digest,
17 Feb 2014
While Bitcoin is too deflationary by nature to act as a widespread currency alternative to the dollar or the euro, its design can be used profitably in order to help the Eurozone’s member-states create euro-denominated electronic payment systems that help them, at least in the medium term, overcome the asphyxiating deflationary pressures imposed upon them by the Eurozone’s Gold Standard-like (and, indeed, Bitcoin-like) austerian design.
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