Friday, May 1, 2015

Anastasios Papapostolou — Varoufakis Tells ‘Attack Witness’ He Might Be Expelled from Greek Government Soon

Then Varoufakis asked the crowd: “Why are you attacking me? Do you know the reason? Have you realized that I am not part of the current status quo? Have you realized that in about a week they will expel me from the government?”

“If you know that the system is rotten, why don’t you do something to change it?,” an anarchist asked Varoufakis to get a stunning reply.

“It’s not possible, simply. This is the current system, I tried, but I failed. It’s impossible,” admitted the Greek Finance minister according to the witness.
Greek Reporter
Varoufakis Tells ‘Attack Witness’ He Might Be Expelled from Greek Government Soon
Anastasios Papapostolou
ht Clonal

5 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

We don't know the whole story but my intuition has been that Tsipras kept Varoufakis on a short leash.

Removing Varoufakis from negotiations was a clear signal that he was on his way out.

While I haven't always agreed with Varoufakis he comes across as sincere. Tsipras, on the other hand, comes across as just another politician.

John said...

I tend to agree. Varoufakis had a cushy life. There are worse ways to make a living than be a full professor at Athens and Austin and in demand media personality.

He made a personal sacrifice when he ditched such a comfortable gig to help his country and become the troika's punching bag.

Calgacus said...

John- Varoufakis is from a very wealthy family, he need not have worked a day in his life. That's often a positive, as such people naturally lack the automatic servility to wealth so common these days. Mike might well be right, but I still haven't given up on any of these guys. People can be impatient, these things take time. Argentina went through 5 presidents in swift succession before it got Kirchner.

Tom Hickey said...

I agree, Calgacus. These are smart people that know the territory and they have been given a difficult hand to play. This was never a match that was going to be decided by a knockout in the first round. Often it's the fighter with the greatest endurance that prevails.

In the end, the eurocrats are likely the one who will probably have make the decision and at some point they may fold their hand. This seems to be Syriza's strategy. It's probably the only alternative if the Greek people won't support a voluntary Grexit based on knowledge that the EZ is doomed internally by its own institutional arrangements. So why hang out waiting for the thing to implode when you are the point man with greatest exposure to failure. May as well get out while the getting' is good. Things could get much worse.

Calgacus said...

I'm glad that Varoufakis is tweeting FDR. But the quip he needs to tweet is from something - now little known - that FDR did before that "welcome their hatred" speech, but said of after, in 1937, that "I'm prouder of that than anything I ever did."

His Wireless to the London Conference. In particular:

"The sound internal economic system of a Nation is a greater factor in its well-being than the price of its currency in changing terms of the currencies of other Nations."

Contrarily, the Euro dick taters want to sacrifice the soundness of each nation's economic system to their currency peg fetish.

The rest of the message shows a deceptively concise and simple, but deep grasp of economics and avoidance of "basic economic errors."