As part of an impressive campaign to discredit the Athens Spring, and those of us who continue to honour and propagate its spirit, a cabal of journalists and ‘analysts’ have joined forces to depict me as the “destroyer of the Greek economy.” The purpose? To demonise the Greek people’s audacity to elect us with a mandate to oppose the Troika in the Spring and early summer of 2015, when they backed our stance with that magnificent 62% NO vote.
Their hideous campaign was summed up recently in the so called ‘Varoufakis Effect’ argument, by Berenberg’s Chief Economist, a Mr Schmieding. Using a chart that ‘shows’ business confidence to have collapsed during the days of my tenure in the ministry of finance (first half of 2015), he pinned on me Greece’s woes. Naturally, the troika’s Greek cheerleaders, with newspaper TO VIMA at the forefront, grabbed the opportunity to jeer and snarl. Except that they were caught with the smoking gun in their hands…Count on the Right to blame the disasters it creates on the Left.
Yanis Varoufakis
How the ‘Troika Effect’ was dubbed the ‘Varoufakis Effect’ – Project Syndicate Op-Ed and beyond
1 comment:
Morbid self-pity. The harsh reality is that during the first decade of the Euro, the Greeks awarded themselves a pay increase of around 50%, whereas the Germans awarded themselves around 10% and kept to the ECB inflation target: just under 2%. Greeks are now paying the price.
The lesson for the future is perhaps that if the Euro is going to work, some sort of central EZ authority has to be able to forbid pay increases for the Greeks of this world. But of course heroic lefties like Varoufakis will portray that as an attempt by the wicked neo-liberal EZ capitalist bla bla bla authorities to hold down the standard of living of the heroic deserving Greek people.
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