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Yanis Varoufakis Quotes

Ioannis Georgiou "Yanis" Varoufakis is a Greek economist, academic and politician, who served as the Greek Minister of Finance from January to July 2015, when he resigned. Varoufakis was a Syriza member of the Hellenic Parliament for Athens B from January to September 2015.

Varoufakis was born in Athens in 1961 and attended Moraitis School before moving to the United Kingdom, where he studied mathematics at the University of Essex before attaining a postgraduate degree in mathematical statistics at University of Birmingham and a PhD in economics at Essex. He began a career in academic economics, teaching at the universities of Essex, East Anglia and Cambridge between 1982 and 1988. Following Margaret Thatcher's third election victory in 1987, Varoufakis left the UK and moved to Australia, where he taught at the University of Sydney until 2000. He returned to Greece that year to teach at the University of Athens, where he led a doctoral program and was promoted to full professor in 2005. Following this, Varoufakis had periods of advising George Papandreou and working as the economist-in-residence for Valve Corporation before moving to the United States to teach at the University of Texas at Austin. Varoufakis has published a number of texts on economics and game theory, such as The Global Minotaur.

In January 2015, Varoufakis was appointed Greek Minister of Finance, and led negotiations with Greece's creditors during the Greek government-debt crisis. However, he failed to reach an agreement with the European troika, leading to the 2015 Greek bailout referendum. While the referendum rejected the troika bailout terms, the day following the referendum Varoufakis resigned as Minister of Finance and was replaced by Euclid Tsakalotos. On 24 August, Varoufakis voted against the third bailout package, and in the ensuing September snap election, did not stand for re-election. Varoufakis has since appeared in numerous debates, lectures, and interviews. In February 2016, he launched the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 , and subsequently backed a Remain vote in the UK's European Union membership referendum 2016.

In late October 2018, Varoufakis announced the upcoming launch of Progressives International with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

✵ 24. March 1961
Yanis Varoufakis photo
Yanis Varoufakis: 12   quotes 0   likes

Famous Yanis Varoufakis Quotes

“…negotiations will be an exercise in futility and frustration. Barnier’s two-phase negotiation announcement amounts to a rejection of the principle of … negotiation. He is, effectively, saying to you: First you give me everything I am asking for unconditionally (Phase 1) and only then will I hear what you want”

Yanis Varoufakis

Phase 2
Source: My message to Theresa May: listen and learn from our Greek tragedy http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/my-message-to-theresa-may-listen-and-learn-from-our-greek-tragedy-a3536551.html, The Evening Standard 12 May 2017

“Why did they force us to close the banks? To instil fear in people.
And spreading fear is called terrorism.”

Yanis Varoufakis

Source: Chris Johnston and agencies. " Yanis Varoufakis accuses creditors of terrorism ahead of Greek referendum http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/04/greece-crisis-varoufakis-accuses-creditors-terrorism-referendum," in: theguardian.com, 4 July 2015; Quoted in Yanis Varoufakis: some of his best quotes http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/yanis-varoufakis-some-of-his-best-quotes, on theguardian.com, 6 July 2015, 15.32 BST.

“…faced with a choice between an agreement that is to the advantage of the peoples of Europe and one that bolsters their own power within the EU institutions at the expense of Europe’s social economies, the Brussels establishment, and the powerful politicians behind them, will choose the latter every time.”

Yanis Varoufakis

“…Julian [Assange]… created the technology that allowed the outsiders to get a glimpse within…and this is why he's being persecuted this way and one of the worst aspects of this persecution from a feminist perspective is that he's been accused of a crime for which he's never been charged, that turns progressives against feminists and feminists against progressives. This attempt by the establishment to turn progressives against themselves in order to prosecute someone who has… revealed their crimes is a heinous crime in itself…”

Yanis Varoufakis

First they came for Assange: Yanis Varoufakis & Srećko Horvat, Bozar, Brussels, 19 June 2016 | DiEM25 Youtube (quote begins @ 1:02:40) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BROVnNhFWc

“On the other hand, you can chose to be an insider, to play the game… if you chose to be an insider you'll be given information that outsiders don't have, you'll be given… an opportunity… to make some… small tiny changes within the inside, but the one rule that you must respect, is that insiders do not tell outsiders the truth, and they do not turn against other insiders…”

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…
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….”

Yanis Varoufakis

Minister-no-more http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/06/minister-no-more/ at yanisvaroufakis.eu, 2015/07/06; cited in: I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride http://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2015/jul/06/yanis-varoufakis-resignation-statement-creditors-loathing-with-pride, in: theguardian.com, 6 July 2015.

Yanis Varoufakis Quotes

“Politics, I now understand, is at its best when it enlightens us via an opponent's insight.”

Yanis Varoufakis

And the Weak Suffer What They Must? : Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future (2016), Ch. 4, Trojan Horse

Understanding

“(The Eurozone) resembles a fine riverboat that was launched on a still ocean in 2000. And then the first storm that hit it, in 2008, started creating serious structural problems for it. We started leaking water. And of course, the people in the third class, as in the Titanic, start feeling the drowning effects first.”

Yanis Varoufakis

Source: Channel 4 News, " Yanis Varoufakis interview: 'Greece can start breathing again, growing' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPfv3zv1OnE." 26 Jan. 2015: On comparing the eurozone to the Titanic; Quoted in: Jonathan Chew. " These 7 Yanis Varoufakis Quotes Show Why We’ll Miss Him http://time.com/3946586/greece-varoufakis-quotes/," Fortune, 6 July 2015.

People , Feeling , Problem , Water

“Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders … What we’ve been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony.”

Yanis Varoufakis

Source: Russell Hotten. " Yanis Varoufakis: In his own words http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31111905" at bbc.co.uk, 3 February 2015; On the austerity terms of Greece's €240bn bailout

Wisdom , History

“I mean, the enclosures in Britain would never have happened without the king’s army and without state brutality for pushing peasants off their ancestors’ land and creating the commodification of labor, the commodification of land which then gave rise to capitalism.”

Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky discussion the New York Public Library (26 April 2016)

“If you take an iPhone apart, every single technology in it was developed by some government grant, every single one.”

Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky discussion the New York Public Library (26 April 2016) https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/06/28/full-transcript-of-the-yanis-varoufakis-noam-chomsky-nypl-discussion/

“I would like to note that I have long considered myself a libertarian Marxist. This causes laughter and outrage from both Marxists and libertarians because they accuse me of being a hypocrite. If you are libertarian you cannot be a Marxist and if you are a Marxist you cannot be libertarian, they say. I see it differently.”

Yanis Varoufakis

Source: In conversation on the postcapitalist vision in my ANOTHER NOW – JACOBIN interview & DISSENS podcast https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/12/17/in-conversation-on-the-postcapitalist-vision-in-my-another-now-jacobin-interview-dissens-podcast/

Laughter

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