7 Comments

• thx for this refreshing interview! fully agree to your view on reality!

• A somewhat ad-hoc translation in a hurry, the paper asks Yanis about what he would think be a counter-proposal.

  “How about – for a start – with a bit of logic and openness as we talk about the real problems of the Euro-zone? I give you an example: during the next months the greek government will have to borrow 6,5 billions Euro of the “Troika” (eu-commission, european central bank (ECB), IMF) – to be able to repay credits of the european central bank. Money, which the ECB, idiotically enough, had spend for greek government bonds – to save Greece from collapsing. Without any success.

  Something like this did not exist before in the history of mankind – that a sovereign state borrows money from a central bank for the purpose of giving this central bank money back – while at the same time this country gets into more debts. And the whole thing is then sold to the people as a wise economy measure. This is one of the illustrative examples for the sheer irrationality with which Europe acts here”

  Well, I just can tell the none-german speakers – this interview is so good that you should learn german^^ (and you might even write some words to all those politicians, papers and economists who act irrational like this in Germany, since years now…) Sadly enough I have not much time right now, otherwise I had ad-hoc-translated the whole interview (excuse me if something does not sound too good). But the snippet gives you an impression about the tone of the interview, – and I couldn’t agree more to what Yanis says.

• Did the Austrian journalist understand you correctly? Is it true that you no longer exclude the possibility of entering a government led by Syriza?

• Thank you for the inspiring interview. That’s something the Austrian media really does need! The following sentence in the newest book of Naomi Klein came to my mind: “But we need not to be spectatores in all this: politicians aren’t the only ones with the power to declare a crisis.”

• I guess noone here knows that Austrians are (with good reason) even unhappier to be part of the Euro-Zone than the Germans…

• Welcome to the new reality: It’s called weaponisation of Finance. The Greek elections of 2015 are a perfect example of it.

  Definition of the weaponisation of finance: To achieve foreign policy goals without military might, world power centers (in this case Berlin) are weaponising finance on a new scale. They are using carrots (access to capital markets) and sticks (varied types of sanctions such as turnoff of ECB liquidity) as tools of coercive diplomacy.

  First juicy target of this undeclared war within the EU: Greece.
  When: January 25, 2015
  Where: at you rnearest voting Greek booth.

• excellent interview – this should be read by every Greek before election day. Too bad it’s only in German. @Yiannis, maybe you should consider a Greek translation of it?