‘We Are A Proud People…Like The Irish’

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0223varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis

This morning.

Yanis Varoufakis, who has said he will resign as Greek Finance Minister if Greece votes Yes in Sunday’s EU bailout referendum, spoke with Audrey Carville on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland.

Audrey Carville: “Greece will vote on Sunday, on a bailout plan which is no longer on the table from its creditors. The banks have been closed for a week and we heard earlier that the country is quickly running out of money. Last night the IMF said that Greece needed debt relief, that it should have a 20-year grace period before making any debt repayment and no final payment until 2055. It also said that it would not put a request for a third bailout package to its board, unless it included debt relief. Yanis Varoufakis is the Greek finance minister. I asked him was that the language he had been waiting to hear.”

Yanis Varoufakis: “Yes indeed, it is music to our ears because what we have been saying right from the beginning is that the great, big reason why we have a huge crisis here in Greece is that our debt is unsustainable, has been since 2010, investors know that. They’ll not invest in a country whose debt cannot be sustained because they fear that the tax burden… that they wouldn’t profit from their investment. Interestingly, last week the IMF was part of a Troika delegation in Brussels that put to us a very comprehensive proposal for an agreement which, actually, did not involve debt relief. And it’s the reason why the negotiations stalled.”

Carville: “So it wasn’t mentioned? It wasn’t mentioned in their original proposal? Has it come too late almost? If it had had been there, a few weeks ago, might there have been a deal?”

Varoufakis: “There’s no such thing as too late. We have a duty to the people of Europe to grab whatever opportunities there are, for sensible agreements, that are beneficial for the whole of Europe, including the IMF. So I don’t believe it’s too late. We could do a deal tomorrow morning.”

Carville: “What do you understand their comments to mean though? Do you understand them to mean a debt write-off or would Greece have to pay eventually?”

Varoufakis: “Well Greece wants to pay. We are very keen, as a proud people, just like the Irish, to meet our obligations with our creditors. The problem is that the combination of [inaudible]and the austerity policies which are being imposed, so as supposedly to be repaid conspire to ensure that out national income shrinks, which makes it impossible to repay. So, a sensible fiscal policy, coupled with debt relief, you don’t even need to talk about haircuts. So we can have a sensible public financial engineering exercise that renders our debts payable and sustainable, this could be [inaudible]. Together we could reform this country by needs, it would end the crisis and help us repay our debts.”

Carville: “But of course the IMF is just one of your creditors. The ECB and the European Union are two more and they may be much harder to convince. They’ve certainly not mentioned debt relief. Enda Kenny said last week he would not support debt relief for Greece.”

Varoufakis: “But isn’t this a conundrum. Here we are negotiating, as a Greek government, with three institutions that disagree with one another – each one of them as a different set of red lines. So wherever we tread, we tread on red lines. And this is where you have it, you have it. This is the reason we have not reached agreement. This is a very inefficient and ineffective way of going about the business of European economic policy.
As for the Irish position in this, I don’t believe that the Irish Government has any reason to oppose our proposal because, let’s face it, Greece and Ireland took a major hit right after the Greek financial collapse in 2008 on behalf of the rest of the Eurozone. The Irish people have been saddled with a preposterous debt, for reasons that you know better than I, that happened immediately after our debt exploded and we had the inaudible of the bailout in 2010. It’s about time the Irish and the Greeks, possibly the Portugeuse and other peoples of Europe request a very sensible debt relief exercise for the whole of Europe, without haircuts, we can do it. Technically, the way forward, all we need is the political will to get together as opposed to staying apart.”

Carville: “So Enda Kenny should be, should ally himself with you in looking for debt relief?”

Varoufakis:Not just with us, with the whole of Europe. I think the whole of Europe should be sensible about that. We have a major public debt problem in Europe and it’s about time we sat down around the tables, rationally, and we discussed it. Instead of that we have taboos, we’re prohibited from discussion about debt, that debt supposedly is a moral duty and it should not be discussed as a matter that requires any kind of rationalisation, re-profiling or restructuring. This kind of denial, of very simple economic facts, is contributing mightily to the deflation of the forces that are making it very hard for Europe as a whole to escape a crisis of other investment and the crisis of inflation..”

Listen back in full here

Earlier: Free Tomorrow?

Pic: Matt Dunham/Bloomberg

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74 thoughts on “‘We Are A Proud People…Like The Irish’

  1. Kingdomer

    Anyone else wondering how this guy (Minister for Finance btw) has time to be talking to an Irish radio station for half an hour 2 days before supposedly the most important vote in Greece’s history?

    Shouldn’t he be like in a bunker somewhere using all his energy and brainpower working out how to get the best deal for his country? Maybe he has been sidelined and so is out of the loop but even though it’s a bizarre moment in what has been a bizarre saga

    1. Rowsdower

      The deals already been mapped out, not much he can do about it until the vote I suppose.

    2. Mr. T.

      Aww. Did you get the Young Fine Gael short straw today? Have to stay in work posting anti-Syriza comments while your young conservative friends have all headed off to Perp for a long weekend.

      1. TheMightyOne

        you’re a gas man, I’d love to be in your head, conspiracies everywhere!
        you must be worn out

          1. Rob_G

            Have you dropped the bombshell about the YFG plant in the protest outside the Dáil yet, or did I miss it?

    3. Elvis

      Duh! That wasn’t actually him. Varoufakis has at least 40 spokesmen who give interviews and make (over the phone) radio interviews as if they’re him. Keeps everyone happy and makes him look very hard-working.

        1. Elvis

          Be honest, Anne, would you know the difference between one Greek’s voice and another?

          1. Dubh Linn

            So you have no way of verifying this then? grand so, sure that can be taken as gospel so.

  2. Muffy

    I imagine he has also been on Italian , Spanish and Portuguese radio. Keeping us in the loop

    1. Nessy

      + 1
      As Europeans and members of the EU, we have a right to be kept up to date with matters which concern the EU

      1. mauriac

        worth a listen.interesting that he speaks better English than most of our politic

        1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

          Yes, he spent 11 years in Sydney. He was a regular commentator about the Greek crisis, on this Aussie radio show, prior to the election that saw him elected as an MP.

  3. Casey

    Genuinely shocked when I heard this interview.
    Could hardly believe what I was hearing.
    Actually pinched myself…

    An articulate, considerate, diplomatic, honest politician standing up for the interests of the people that he represents against institutions out to bleed them dry.

    It would never shagging happen here.

    1. Jonotti

      institutions out to bleed them dry

      Hold on a second. Greece went to these groups. They asked for money. They were then given money (based on fudged accounts and promises). They broke their promises and we’re given billions of debt write offs. Now they are still looking for more money and are playing the victim when the markets, ecb and imf are rightly saying no.

      1. Casey

        I am holding and so far you have said nothing to change my mind.

        If you went down the road to your local house of wa(b)ankers and asked the spotty yoof with the manager bag and bad Oxfam suit for a loan, he would quite rightly put on his risk adverse head and quite rightly interregate you to establish you suitability to be entrusted with the banks money.

        When Greece went to the IMF and were given the quite staggering figure of $28 billion, do you think a proper assessment (you know the old risk based things where the likelyhood of being able to pay back is considered from the point of view of the good and the bad times) was done? Was it my hole.

        You are trundling out the old “Greece cooked the books” line – if that is true, how come the I-M-bleeding-F did not spot it? It is not like they are Spector and accustomed to hiding millions in deficate or profit. FFS.

        Varoufakis is not asking for the IMF to forget about the money. He just wants the terms of the repayment not to involve massive bouts of insufferable austerity for his country. A country with an aging population can hardly afford massive pension cuts, all investment to stop, the youth to move away and the industries to close down. This is a sharp man playing the long ball. He said Greece will pay but not at a rate and a timetable that will effectively shut the country down and impose unsustainable living conditions on its populace.

        More power to the man!

        1. Mark Dennehy

          Except that that’s not what the IMF said either.
          What they actually said was that Greece’s debt was unsustainable and needed to be restructured, with a 20 year suspension of the debt to let their economy recover and then to collect the debt by 2055.
          It’s the lack of that restructuring in the ECB’s conditions that the Greeks were complaining about.

        2. jonotti

          Ah the old “its your fault for lending me the money because I’m a hopeless chancer” defence. Used by hundreds of shysters in Ireland in the past 5 years.

          1. Nice Anne (Dammit)

            Where has he said that. All he is saying is that the terms for the re-payment of the loans were predicated on a certain financial state. That state has not been maintained, so he is asking the banks to re-negociate. Funny enough, he wants the best for the Greek people rather than the banks. Insane, I know.

          2. Domestos

            Here’s where he implied it:
            “If you went down the road to your local house of wa(b)ankers and asked the spotty yoof with the manager bag and bad Oxfam suit for a loan, he would quite rightly put on his risk adverse head and quite rightly interregate you to establish you suitability to be entrusted with the banks money.”
            i.e. the bank [or troika] didn’t do it’s job.

          3. Nice Anne (Dammit)

            The bank [IMF] did not do its job. That should not mean that Greece gets out of paying but it sure as hell means that the terms of repayment have to be negociated as soon as they become untenable.

    2. Owen

      Honest? Really?! I had to pinch myself reading that! They are the most corrupt nation in Europe and then some. They have known this day was coming for a long time and are now shouting about being unfairly treated while borrowing 230% of your GDP per year, without any sign of changing national operations (yes, austerity etc, but I mean actually making a plan to change how they run the country… paying tax, changing the civil service, sweeping reforms etc).

      1. Casey

        Actually Greece is 69 out of a world ranking of 174 in the corruption stakes but you could have looked that up if you were not in such a hurry to make a ranty indignant inaccurate point.
        Source: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results

        Here are the European countries that appear way ahead in the list in front of Greece.

        1 Denmark
        2 New Zealand
        3 Finland
        4 Sweden
        5 Norway
        5 Switzerland
        7 Singapore
        8 Netherlands
        9 Luxembourg
        10 Canada
        11 Australia
        12 Germany
        12 Iceland
        14 United Kingdom
        15 Belgium
        15 Japan
        17 Barbados
        17 Hong Kong
        17 Ireland
        17 United States
        21 Chile
        21 Uruguay

        1. neil

          Didn’t realise New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Japan, Barbados, Hong Kong, USA, Chile and Uruguay were European countries.

        2. Seriously

          you have it the wrong way round, they’re 69th in the ‘least’ corrupt chart for which we are 17th.
          Meaning the score lower than us on the ‘Clean Scale’

        3. edalicious

          Hilariously, you’ve got the graph upside down there. Greece is joint bottom of Europe with Italy and Romania. You might not have made that mistake if you weren’t in such a hurry to make a ranty indignant inaccurate point.

        4. classter

          Casey, you have read that table the wrong way round. The countries you have listed are all perceived to be less corrupt than Greece.

          1. Rob_G

            I can’t believe anyone thought that Denmark was more corrupt than Somalia, Eritrea, Russia, et al. :°

        5. Casey

          The point was made that Greece was the most corrupt European country. I referenced some actual, you know, research and a source other than ranting on the internet to show that, it is as a matter of fact, not.

          The list showed that there were countries ahead of it (i.e less corrupt). I thought it was interesting that Ireland is considered less corrupt that Greece … Nowhere did I say that this was the list of the top 20 most corrupt countries. Logically, how could anyone be under the impression that DENMARK, Denmark was the most corrupt (European or other) country?

          From an EU point of view, Greece is not the most corrupt country. (There 3 other countries after it in the list)
          From a European continental point of view, Greece is not the most corrupt country. (There 7 other countries after it in the list)

          So my point stands. Research 1, Internet Ranting 0

          1. Rob_G

            (Greece is still ranked most corrupt; it just shares that dubious honour with three other countries)

          2. Owen

            Who made an internet rant? I made a factual point which you verified in a poorly researched rant.

            Thanks

          3. Nice Anne (Dammit)

            One thing I have to ask though, this is only a perception index rather than a facts and figures one – Is this the best indicator of how corrupt a county is or is there a better one? The last research that tested the numbers was done in 2002 according to Wikipedia.

          4. Owen C

            Casey, being honest, either (1) your post made no real informational value (Greece = to a couple of other countries) or (2) your post was 99% wrong (you read it upside down, which seems likely). Your call. We can either call you an idiot or a bullsh1tter.

        6. Joe the Lion

          broadsheet commentary helped the Irish leading position on the world barely literate numpty list

        7. Dubh Linn

          Put away the Michael Winner impression and have a lie down in a dark room. It will do you the world of good. There’s a good lad / girl.

        8. Clampers Outside!

          You know that guy, who owns a lot of media, likes to sue journalists and tried to silence our Parliament… yeah, the corrupt guy that was found guilty of corruption in The Moriarty Tribunal.

          The guy who claims to sue people for damaging his *cough* ‘good name’ when he has no good name to speak of.

          He and his corrupt practices, that is, The Moriarty Tribunal in which he was found guilty of corrupt practices, was a massive cause of Ireland getting it’s worst decline in ranking ever !
          http://transparency.ie/news_events/ireland-suffers-sharpest-drop-corruption-perceptions-index-its-history

          It’s old news, we were down to 25th back when this happened. What escapes me though, is how can that same fool sue for damage to a ‘good name’ when clearly no ‘good name’ exists.

          Fupp Dennis O’Brien, he can sue me if he wants. I have this to back up that he has no ‘good name’ to speak of… anyway, that’s my Friday rant at the machine is done.

  4. ollie

    Carville was a disgrace this morning. Rude, shouting, interrupting and actually misleading about what was happening in Greece. She could hardly hide her contempt for Greece and it’s people.

    If Mr Varoufakis was a FG/Lab MInister she would have been kissing his bottom.

  5. Fluter bad

    Oh the Irish are proud people alright, as they huddled round watching Coronation St, read English tabloids and cheer on English football teams. Irish how are yeh!

    1. Rob_G

      You’re right, we should ignore all outside cultural influences and sit at home around the turf fire, polishing our fáinnes

      1. scottser

        have a look in any room in your house. take a note of any ten items in the room. chances are none of their cultural origins are irish – from the knives and forks in your kitchen drawer to the pillow you sleep on.

      2. Spaghetti Hoop

        Or watch Ros na Rún, read Broadsheet and cheer on de hurlin’.
        Seems a fairer comparison ;)

          1. Spaghetti Hoop

            Everyone’s free to polish their fannie if that’s what they’re in to.

    2. Dubh Linn

      Oooh Ohhh do me next.

      I am doing a French language course, watch the occasional US programme on the netflix and am knees deep in re-reading War and Peace. Please deride me now for not sticking to the shamrock and the shilleagh begorragh….

      1. Joe the Lion

        I eat baguettes, pasta and pulled pork and I wouldn’t leave old Erin for all the tay in China

        1. Domestos

          I have red arms and calves, wear boardies and a westmeath top, follow cricket and surf.

          1. Nice Anne (Dammit)

            Shower of weirdos! :) :)

            I watch Corrie, read the Irish broadsheets and spend my weekends alternating between fencing (with a bleeding sword smartarses!) and gardening. I am also learning Italian and I had to look up what a shilleagh and a fáinne are. Will I be deported or should I leave of my own accord?

  6. Fergus the magic postman

    Ireland isn’t corrupt. We’ve only got honest Denis O’Brien, & a Government lead by a party who will jump through hoops just to kiss his backside.

    It’ll all come out in the wash.

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