[mc32]

He's an interesting guy no doubt, but accounts tell us he was just doing his job. When he went to Germany and tried to force their hands by feigning he might grexit, to his amazement the private response was more or less, how can we help you gtecit? Despite appearances, he did not want grexit and was a ploy to get better terms, but the ecb had already discounted Greece.

At least he tried, for sure.

[atmosx]

> When he went to Germany and tried to force their hands by feigning he might grexit, to his amazement the private response was more or less, how can we help you gtecit?

That's very poor understanding of what he did. What he said was we won't accept any more loans that we can't pay back and requested a sort of new deal for Greece which of course, included a large debt haircut.

He was never pro-Grexit. He was arguing that even throwing Greece out of the common currency was impossible, etc.

I understand that his way of doing things might confuse some people, but if you take the time to read/watch his interview his thinking is crystal clear: He wants to change the EU from within not disintegrate it. In fact he is trying to save the EU from itself (e.g. Brussels) by democratising the processes (e.g. add mics and records to Eurogrops, etc.).

Plus, I the ECB effectively closed the GR banks he had a plan of putting the ECB (Mario Draghi) against the Bundesbank. His own party kept him down stripping on of his only weapon by re-assuring the ECB behind his back that they'll not allowing him to use it. His plan was very clever.

[RobertoG]

"but if you take the time to read/watch his interview his thinking is crystal clear"

And here is, I think, the problem. In general people don't take the time, and that's OK, but then they have not problem in having a strong opinion, that they read in some interested media.

My advice to the people so inclined is: check some of Varoufakis (and others) youtube interviews. Read a little about what is going on.

Check, for instance, how Spain was allowed to spend without consequences above the deficit limits just before the elections.

Check how, in the same way there is a limit to deficits in the treaties, there is a limit in surplus that Germany don't feel it has to respect.

Or just think how it's impossible that everybody is in surplus at the same time.

Or how all integrated monetary areas have deficit and surplus regions and that is OK because they have some way to compensate the unbalances.

[atmosx]

Varoufakis is a kind of special case. I believe his personality combined with his charisma, puts fear in the establishment so they needed to discredit him as much as possible.

For example if you read the picture The Economist paints around him, as opposed to Dijsselbloem (Dutch Minister of Finance) who is technically several orders of magnitude inferior is astonishing.

Varoufakis said that when he went to the US, at the beginning of his tenure, someone (Larry Summers?) told him that he'll be the victim of an organised campaign of character assassination by Brussels. I found this claim a tiny bit far-fetched, but on the other hand, the amount of false claims the established media kept throwing at him is amazing.

I came across ppl who thought Varoufakis as a buffoon like Trump, Boris Johnson, etc. and other political figures who can't put two words together. V is not like that at all, he is a intellectual beast, with a surprising ability to simplify rather complex ideas.

[return0]

You are correct that he is all drama but we need to see more substance. None of his positions were actually original, and his actions are constantly divisive. I m sure he s interesting as a superstar tv person, but, other than his storytelling about the eurogroup meetings, his thought is not that coherent, it changes often and he often attacks strawmen (eg his critique of piketty). It makes him a lively interviewee, but doesnt gain him academic credit.

[RobertoG]

That's not what happened.

He had a plan (allegedly it was a Plan B) for the exit of the Euro if Brussels (actually Berlin) continue with the craziness. The Greek primer minister decided not to continue with the plan and he resigned as finance minister.

The primer minister could be accused of cowardice, but we have to understand that Greece was threaded with the shut down of its financial system in what, in the opinion of a lot of people, was an illegal movement by the ECB (1). It was a really difficult decision.

(1) https://diem25.org/thegreekfiles/

[Analemma_]

> When he went to Germany and tried to force their hands by feigning he might grexit, to his amazement the private response was more or less, how can we help you gtecit? Despite appearances, he did not want grexit and was a ploy to get better terms..

That's sort of my problem with him though. I don't think of him as either a hero, or a jerk, or a guy doing his job, but simply an idiot. He was trying to bluff with a hand that everyone knew was empty, and of course it didn't work.

[captainmuon]

He's a lot of things, but not an idiot. Varoufakis was one of the few finance ministers who is actually an economist (as opposed to e.g. a jurist), so he was very qualified. But he went into the negotiations thinking that everybody was trying to solve the problem amicably, that they were trying to find a compromize everybody could live with. But no, it was pure power play. Germany and co wanted to keep the status quo of a Greece close to bankrupt that they could boss around. And I think they wanted the left-wing "experiment" to fail under all circumstances, to set an example.

[_delirium]

I think that's part of the problem, Varoufakis is intelligent and an economist, yes, but really not a diplomat, and his job here as Greece's main negotiator was more a diplomat's than an economist's job. He was very naive, as his book somewhat admits, about how EU politics work (and to some extent about Greek politics as well, where he assumed Tsipras was on the same page as he was).

Stathis Kouvelakis, a member of Syriza's Left Platform faction that later split from the party, had this criticism [1] about both Varoufakis and his successor Tsakalotos (another economics professor), which I think has some truth to it:

Tsakalotos said he was very disappointed by the low level of the discussion. In the interview to the New Statesman, Varoufakis says very similar things about his own experience, although his style is clearly more confrontational than Tsakalotos's. From this it is quite clear that these people were expecting the confrontation with the EU to happen along the lines of an academic conference when you go with a nice paper and you expect a kind of nice counter-paper to be presented. I think this is telling about what the Left is about today. The Left is filled with lots of people who are well-meaning, but who are totally impotent on the field of real politics.

[1] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/tsipras-varoufakis-kouvel...

[RobertoG]

Yes, they were really naive thinking that the meetings of the ministers of economy were about economics and how to improve the lives of the citizens.

This is telling about what the Euroarea is about today.

I suppose, at least it's a good thing if those naive professors, now that they are not so naive, explain the rest of citizens how the system really works.

[sgift]

His hand was quite full as long as Tsipras agreed to do what Varoufakis thought needed to be done. The moment Tsipras decided against him he lost his hand. So, his error was probably to trust Tsipras would do what needs to be done instead of clinging to power.