Tag Archives: Yanis Varoufakis

Tonight at 11pm.

On TV3’s Tonight With Vincent Browne.

There will be interview with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, recorded at the recent International Literature Festival Dublin.

Via Daniel Murray

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Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis will attend a Right2Water/Right2Change protest in Dublin on Saturday, February 20 – ahead of the general election on Friday, February 26.

Meanwhile, free Saturday?

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Speakers at Saturday’s event will include John Barry, Maude Barlow, John Hilary, Ann Pettifor  and Yanis Varoufakis, via video link.

Tickets are €10 from here.

Yanis Varoufakis to campaign with anti-water charges group (Irish Times)

Right2Change Conference (Facebook)

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Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis

Economist and the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis spoke to Richard Crowley on RTÉ’s News At One on Friday.

It followed the European Commission’s threat last Wednesday to suspend Greece from Europe’s free-travel Schengen area – claiming the country is not carrying out its obligations in regards to the refugees and migrants arriving on the Greek islands.

It also came after Greece’s Immigration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas claimed on BBC’s Newsnight, last Wednesday evening, that Belgian authorities told the Greek authorities to “push” refugees and migrants “back to sea” as a means to stop those arriving.

Readers may also wish to note weekend reports, following the leaking of confidential documents, that the EU is drawing up plans to criminalise charities, volunteers or tourists who help migrants arriving on Greek islands.

The Times reported:

Previous EU legislation has given exemptions for “humanitarian assistance”, to protect charities and voluntary or non-profit groups from accusations of helping smugglers.”

Draft rules being discussed in secret talks between EU officials remove that exemption and require any volunteer or rescuer to register with the police or face arrest as smugglers.”

The interview with Mr Varoufakis started with Mr Crowley asking if Greece had a case to answer.

Yanis Varoufakis: “Look let’s be clear on this. When, in the middle of the night, somebody knocks on your door and they are flooded, they are wet, they are desperately frightened. What do you do, as a moral person, is you open the door and you let them in. And any other discussion flies in the face of basic humanism.”

Richard Crowley: “But, and they would say, specifically, whatever about giving them a home to look after them initially, that there is a process here that involves fingerprints and that that’s not being done systematically. Travel documents are not being systematically checked for their authenticity or against crucial security databases. And that’s, I presume, the primary concern of many in Europe.”

Varoufakis: “Well it’s the concern of people who really do not care about reality. When you are on an island like Lesbos with a police station of 10 officers and a couple of Customs officers and then suddenly, in the middle of the night, during a storm in winter, you’ve got 60, 70 bodies arriving on your shores and 3,000 to 4,000 very tired, desperate refugees coming off, at that point what you do is you find as many blankets as you can and you take them in. And if you have the capacity to fingerprint them, you do it after, you make sure these people don’t die of exposure in your hands.”

Crowley: “Sure, but Brussels, Brussels says you’re not doing it after you look after them either. That you’re simply allowing them to move on, that you’re not registering them because, if you did, it’s your country that they are entitled to stay in.”

Varoufakis: “Allow me to say that this discussion is particularly depressing to anyone who has a single humanist fibre left in his or her conscience. Remember, these are small islands. They have very few officials. It’s extremely difficult, they don’t even have the capacity to fingerprint. Brussels should, instead of pointing these fingers of demoralising accusations, they should simply do their duty and equip those islands with whatever it is necessary to do, in order to register these hapless human beings. On the question of what we do with them, the very notion that a country like Greece – which is having serious trouble feeding its own population given the devastating spiral in which we’ve been caught up over the last five or six years – should be turned into a concentration camp, a halting station because the Slovaks and the Germans and the Czechs do not want to be molested by refugees. That very notion is reprehensible to anyone who cares about the European Union.”

Crowley: “Is it a problem or to what extent is it a problem of finance or resources, are you getting any help, is Greece getting any help from Europe in terms of providing those facilities that you so badly need to be about to process these people?”

Varoufakis: “A pitiful amount, a pitiful amount.”

Crowley: “Under the system, as it is, and as imperfect as it is, Brussels accuses Athens of serious errors and, from what we hear, they’ve given you three months to get it right. And that that has been accepted by the Government in Greece. Now is that a realistic timetable?”

Varoufakis: “Of course it’s not. Why don’t Brussels get on their bike, metaphorically speaking, and come to Greece, with resources and help the Greek government cope with what is a European problem.”

Crowley: “Do you believe that this threat by Brussels to eject Greece from the passport-free zone, from the travel zone, from Schengen, unless or until you meet their requirements and put a system that is to their satisfaction in place. Do you believe that’s an idle threat or that they would go ahead and do it?”

Varoufakis: “I think it’s simply reflective of the way in which, after the economic crisis caused the transplantation of our monetary union, the Eurozone, the Eurozone is not what a singular currency should be like, that this economic crisis has created the circumstances for overwhelming and comprehensive disintegration of Europe. You can see that Schengen is dying everywhere, you can see that Angela Merkel is under extreme pressure to abandon Schengen. You can see that, between Austria and France, between Austria and Switzerland, between Switzerland and France, there are increasingly borders being reconstituted. The way I interpret it is that Brussels is using Greece, yet again, as a scapegoat for the disintegration of the European Union.”

Listen back in full here

Tourists who help drowning migrants face prosecution (The Times)

Refugee crisis: Council proposals on migrant smuggling would criminalise humanitarian assistance by civil society, local people and volunteers (Statewatch.org)

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Miriam O’Callaghan interviewing former Greek finance Minister Yanis Varafoukis at the Kilkenomics festival on RTÉ One’s Prime Time this evening

Oh.

Ireland no paradigm of successful austerity – Varoufakis (Edel Kennedy, Irish Times)

(RTÉ)

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Yanis Varoufakis (top), former Greek finance minister, headlines the Kilkenomics Festival, in Kilkenny on November 5-8 [tickets at link below].

Support acts include Financial Times Chief Economic Commentator, Martin Wolf; The Black Swan author, Nassim Taleb and festival co-founder Professor McDreamy.

Swoonenomics more like.

FIGHT!

Kilkenomics 2015

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Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis

The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage.

Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.

Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.

I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.

And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.

We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the new Minister of Finance, and our government.

The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just beginning.

Minister No More! Yanis Varoufakis

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis resigns despite referendum no vote (The Guardian)

Previously: ‘We Are A Proud People…Like The Irish’

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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

SchauebleVarouAFP_3188964bGerman Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and Yanis Varoufakis today

Greece’s new finance minister has urged Germany to help end the “gross indignity” of the Greek debt crisis. Yanis Varoufakis said “too much time, hopes, lives” had been wasted by Greece’s forced austerity programme….

Some club, in fairness.

End ‘gross indignity’, Greek FM Varoufakis tells Germany (BBC)

Meanwhile…

FTSE Eurofirst falls 0.4 after impass in Greek debt deal

Shares in Greece’s biggest banks fall 8pc

Denmark slashes rates to -0.75pc on currency fears

Varoufakis calls more for time and emergency bridging loans

Markets rocked by surprise ECB move to cut Greek bank funding (Telegraph)

Earlier: Making A Drachma Out of A Crisis

(AFP)