REVIEW: Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems, by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo A recent YouGov survey confirmed that economists are the least trusted professionals in the UK today. Brexit is only the latest contributor to the public’s understandable rejection of a profession that has either failed spectacularly to raise […]
Books
Quantitative Easing: Its rationale, impact and the future of the world economy – Audio of speech delivered at ICA 2019
Hosted by Bahrain Financial Market Association, the two-day conference organized in cooperation with the Central Bank of Bahrain themed “Reshaping Finance in a Changing Economy”. The ICA hosted the Greek former Minister of Finance Professor Yanis Varoufakis at a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Jarmo T. Kotilaine the Chief Planning and Monitoring Officer of Tamkeen. Other […]
“El ‘establishment’ y la ultraderecha se necesitan” – El Mundo
Costa Gavras adapta al cine su libro autobiográfico en la película ‘Comportarse como adultos’ que se estrena el viernes. Yanis Varoufakis es el autor del libro en el que se basa la última película de Costa-Gavras. SANTI COGOLLUDO Yanis Varoufakis (Falero, 1961) es de los pocos ex ministros de finanzas (con o sin moto) que puede […]
Must we replace the dollar with a shared international currency unit? On the BBC World Service’s REAL STORY
Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, recently said that we need a new international currency unit to replace the US dollar. In this BBC World Service program, I was asked what I thought of the idea. For more of a background to my answer click here. (For the whole BBC program, click here.)
The IMF functions like the US-European bankers’ bailiffs – Varoufakis and Rogoff on BBC World Service’s World Business Report
The International Monetary Fund’s latest $56 billion loan to Argentina is at risk of failing again. The Argentinian peso has slumped and opposition leader Alberto Fernandez wants to ditch the austerity conditions attached to IMF bailouts that have so far failed to reduce inflation, stabilise the currency or halt recession. The Washington-based multilateral organisation monitors […]
Stagnant Capitalism – Financial News & Project Syndicate
When the Great Depression followed the 1929 stock-market crash, almost everyone acknowledged that capitalism was unstable, unreliable, and prone to stagnation. In the decades that followed, however, that perception changed. Capitalism’s post-war revival, and especially the post-Cold War rush to financialised globalisation, resurrected faith in markets’ self-regulating abilities. Today, a long decade after the 2008 […]
German political economy’s two naughty sisters in action, once again – George Krimpas guest post
The lean years are here again, to the apparent satisfaction of Germany’s Finance Minister, a Social Democrat. The rate of growth of the budgetary surplus was declining, therefore restraining expenditure was the prudent attitude, the public must rest assured that over the next few years 25 billion euros will be saved, the chance of a […]
Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford University
The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to do with… really-existing capitalism. Behind this elegant utopian […]
David Adler explaining our radical vision for a New Bretton Woods on CNN
The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, just stepped down in search of greener pastures. His readiness to resign prompted David Adler (DiEM25’s Policy Coordinator) to I to write this op-ed in The Guardian arguing for a New Bretton Woods. In this CNN interview David explains what we mean.
At the Edinburgh Festival, in conversation with Jeremy Corbyn on reviving socialism, with Maria Alyokhina (Pussy Riot) on despotism, and with Shami Chakrabarti on liberty
In 2018, the good people behind the Edinburgh Festival kindly invited me to host a series of discussions under the title KILLING DEMOCRACY? My remit was: Further to explore the question of whether the current form of financialised capitalism is devouring democracy, reflecting on my work with the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). In a series […]
Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – Oxford University, Taylor Lecture, 12/2/2019
The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. In my book was addressed to my daughter regarding the economy I tried to offer her a simple, though not simplistic, account on how capitalism works and how it fails. Critics, correctly, pointed out that the book’s […]
Behind the closed doors of negotiations with the EU? – The Guardian podcast, November 2018
As the Brexit negotiations near crunch point, Theresa May is still battling to keep her party on side as she edges closer to a deal with Brussels. But is it possible to take on the EU in negotiations and win? One man who staked his political career on trying just that was the former Greek finance minister Yanis […]
DiEM25’s radical Europeanist political agenda – Interviewed by Jacobin’s David Broder
Last Friday, Yanis Varoufakis was in Italy to promote European Spring, a list of candidates standing across the continent in next May’s European election. The former Greek finance minister visited Rome just days after the European Commission had struck down the Italian government’s budget, sparking further rows over Brussels’ authority to curb member states’ spending. […]
On Europe’s austerity drive and DiEM25 – an OECD podcast
One country that symbolised the crisis of the last 10 years was Greece. Its insolvency embarked the country on a long regime of bail-outs and austerity. This August, Greece officially emerged from the crisis, with the OECD forecasting GDP growth again. So, did the austerity work? The former Greek finance minister and co-founder of the […]