Essays
The stablecoin time bomb hidden in Trump’s GENIUS act: Prepare for the next financial meltdown – UNHERD, 19 JUNE 2025
, 25/06/2025
Francisco Goya’s etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters was an artist’s stern warning of the hideous forces unleashed in the mind when reason lowers its guard. Today, stablecoins are the gruesome forces being released into the global economy as President Trump’s crypto dreams, unchecked by reason, morphed into the GENIUS Act. Stablecoins are the […]
A Chinese New Bretton Woods? – Quancha op-ed
, 08/06/2025
Donald Trump has made it impossible for any sensible person to persevere in the delusion that global business can continue as usual. We should all welcome this, even if we are livid with Trump’s shocking behaviour, decisions and narratives. The global economy will either be rebalanced or it will crash in ways that may make […]
Trump Wants Big Tech to Own the Dollar – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 05/06/2025
The IMF-World Bank Spring meetings are usually placid affairs that participating central bankers wish to forget soon after they are over. Not this Spring. This April the feeling several central bankers brought back home with them was not the usual relief but something far more visceral: dread, terror even. The reason? The spectre of the […]
In the EU nothing succeeds like gross failure: The astonishing case of Ursula von der Leyen – Der Freitag 29 MAY 2025
, 05/06/2025
Failure, corruption and warmongering: Ursula von der Leyen is awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen for her contribution to the EU – because in Europe utter failure is not only tolerated, but celebrated! It is one of life’s guilty pleasures when one’s cynical prejudices are confirmed. One such moment, when I allowed myself a […]
How Europe’s sheer stupidity combined with its ethical downfall to underwrite Israel’s genocide of Palestinians – Middle East Eye
, 20/05/2025
“A mixture of stupidity and nastiness… The liberal establishment is primarily responsible for the genocide of the Palestinians.” In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Yanis Varoufakis unleashes a fierce critique of Western liberalism, and tells us why he feels that the global system is in crisis. This episode explores the facade of Western moral superiority, the […]
UNHERD’s Freddie Sayers interviews Y. Varoufakis & W. Munchau on Europe’s prospects in the era of Trump
, 11/05/2025
UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers interviews renowned economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and Eurointelligence founder Wolfgang Münchau as they dissect the escalating trade war between Europe and the United States. With the US recently striking a so-called trade deal with the UK, and news of India signing a comprehensive agreement with the UK, tensions […]
Some thoughts on the 80th Anniversary of Victory over Fascism
, 08/05/2025
Eighty years ago today, the monstrous machinery of the Third Reich was finally ground to dust. The swastika was torn from the Reichstag, the death camps liberated, and Europe—bloodied, traumatised, but unbowed—emerged from history’s darkest night. It was not merely a military victory; it was the triumph of solidarity over fascism, of internationalism over racial […]
NEOLIBERALISM IS DEAD. SAY HELLO TO TECHLORDISM – Project Syndicate op-ed & video
, 15/04/2025
Neoliberalism was neither new nor particularly liberal when it prevailed 50 years ago. Its great advantage was its sharp deviation from classical liberalism. Even though it paid tribute to liberal thinkers, neoliberalism shared neither their method nor their concept of the market. Today, we are on the cusp of another, equally profound, ideological innovation. Unlike […]
‘Democracy under fire’: My remarks at the London Press Conference on the Vanishing Right to Protest (11-4-2025) alongside Juliet Stevenson, Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, Jeremy Corbyn, Chris Nineham and Ben Jamal
, 13/04/2025
We are here today because democracy is on death row, because the treasured right to dissent is at gunpoint, because your capacity to do journalism is under fire. I remember when I came to Britain as a student in 1978 how overjoyed I was to be in a country where I felt safe from the […]
Yanis Varoufakis on Tony Benn’s legacy – 11 APRIL 2025, audio
, 13/04/2025
On 11th April 2025, Melissa Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and Yanis Varoufakis addressed an audience at the University of Westminster dedicated to the memory of Tony Benn – almost 100 years from his birth. This is what Yanis had to say about Tony’s legacy at that event. (Click icon above for audio)
On the political economics and the history behind Donald Trump’s tariff war – Politics JOE
, 09/04/2025
In this interview with Oli Dugmore, for Politics JOE, I had a chance to lay out – in around 30 minutes – the political economics and economic history behind Donald Trump’s tariff war. As I said to Oli, those of us who oppose Trump have a duty to understand what his team are up to […]
Should Le Pen be barred? What is the Left’s right answer on this conundrum?
, 09/04/2025
This is a crucial conversation to have in general, not particularly about Marine Le Pen. It is about the principled position that the democratic Left must take on the question of who has the right to remove the political rights (the right to vote and to seek votes) of whom. We know what can happen […]
How will Europe, Britain & China react to the Trump shock: On TIMES Radio & Unherd’s Undercurrents
, 03/04/2025
In this interview, I argue that how Trump’s Shock pans out will largely depend on whether Europe and China will act in concert or turn against one another. As for the UK, Trump has given Brexit a major boost. And here is another interview with Emily Jeshinsky of Unherd’s Undercurrents on the same subject: Trump’s […]
Will the Trump Shock prove as momentous as the Nixon Shock? UNHERD op-ed & on BBC tv
, 03/04/2025
“My philosophy, Mr President, is that all foreigners are out to screw us and it’s our job to screw them first.” With these words, the US Treasury Secretary convinced the President to deliver a colossal shock to the global economy. In the words of one of the President’s men, the objective was to trigger “a […]
The Case Against European Rearmament – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 25/03/2025
If we truly want to strengthen Europe, the first step is not to rearm. It is to forge the democratic union without which stagnation will continue to erode Europe’s capacities, rendering it unable to rebuild what is left of Ukraine once Vladimir Putin is finished with it. ATHENS – Inducting Ukraine into NATO after forcing […]
Crypto’s role in Trump’s economic masterplan (with special emphasis on stablecoins) – UNHERD
, 19/03/2025
After dismissing Bitcoin as a scam during his first White House stint, Trump warmed to cryptocurrencies during his re-election campaign. To complete his conversion, on the 6th of March the 47th President signed an executive order to set up a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a US Digital Asset Stockpile”. The United States government sensibly stockpiles […]
Stand with South Africa against Trump’s wrath – Globe&Mail op-ed
, 18/03/2025
When the powerful punish the principled, we glimpse the unmasked face of empire. Donald Trump’s vindictive executive order denying aid to South Africa — punishment for its support of Palestine and pursuit of land reform — offers precisely such a moment of clarity. The contours of our new global struggle are now etched with brutal […]
Liberals should be outraged by Cǎlin Georgescu’s election ban – UNHERD
, 11/03/2025
Whatever happened to the notion that, faced with the enemies of democracy, we should fight their ideas but, equally, for their right to express them? The answer, unfortunately, is that it died an ignominious death on Sunday, as Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau, with the full support of the European Union’s liberal establishment, banned far-Right candidate Cǎlin Georgescu […]
Trump’s tariff chaos explained – TIMES RADIO
, 09/03/2025
“He wants to reduce the value of the dollar… in order to make American exports more competitive and imports into the United States more expensive. At the same time he wants to maintain the hegemony of the dollar.” Yanis Varoufakis explains the secret behind Trump’s tariff strategy, and his new obsession with cryptocurrency. This interview […]
Ukraine, Europe, China and Technofeudalism – in conversation with Cyrus Janssen
, 01/03/2025
Donald Trump has upended the narrative on the Ukraine War. But what does it mean for the future of Europe? Plus a lot more on NATO, China, the US dollar, technofeudalism and our duty to stop the Palestinian genocide while fighting antisemitism. 0:00 – Intro to Yanis Varoufakis 2:26 – Did Ukraine Lose the War? […]
The sordid paradox that was the 2025 German federal election – Euronews
, 24/02/2025
This German federal election is a paradox: Simultaneously irrelevant – in the sense that it will result into another variant of the same, quasi permanent, coalition of Christian & Social Democrats, perhaps with a splattering of the pseudo-Greens – the same coalition that put Germany on the road to a secular slump, will continue to […]
Europe in the Post-Atlanticist Era – The Guardian
, 21/02/2025
JD Vance, the US Vice President, told Europeans that their values are no longer America’s values. Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, added that Europeans “can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever.” Keith Kellog, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, confirmed that Europe will not have a seat at the table […]
Donald Trump’s economic masterplan – UNHERD
, 21/02/2025
Faced with President Trump’s economic moves, his centrist critics oscillate between desperation and a touching faith that his tariff frenzy will fizzle out. They assume that Trump will huff and puff until reality exposes the emptiness of his economic rationale. They have not been paying attention: Trump’s tariff fixation is part of a global economic […]
How Europe succumbed to the US & the financial sector and now fights their wars
, 21/02/2025
Jakob de Jonge sits down with Yanis Varoufakis to discuss the structural flaws of the European Union, the rise of warmongering, and the complicity of Europe’s political mindset in the genocide in Gaza. What is the path forward? Varoufakis argues that resistance is not only necessary—it is both meaningful and, as he puts it, “fun […]