And destroyed the Greek economy. Which speaks volumes about his competence as an economist.
And by the way, those obligations you speak about were not created by corrupted governments. They were created for sustaining an unviable model that gives pensions to people at their mid fifties and maintains a soviet-era type of economy where the state controls pretty much everything.
In almost every government, its an executive/cabinet level position which means all his power derives from the President or Prime Minister. He doesn't take independent action, as he has no independent power.
Varoufakis didn't have the final say on if Greece left the Euro. It has been quite public that he disagrees with a lot about what unfolded, including the decision to remain given the outcome of negotiations.
The idea that people were clueless about what would happen to Greece if Greece left the Euro is also ridiculous. Plenty of economists, in addition to him, opined on this matter. No one has argued that Greece would be instantly more well-off, but that they would be better off over the long run given their set of problems.
There have been efforts to try to use Varoufakis as a scapegoat for what happened, even though the crisis existed before he came into power, and Greece's situation is too complex for one person to take the blame.
Tsipras received support from the people during the 2015 referendum on the bailout. People overwhelmingly rejected the bailout. Tsipras balked and didn't follow through even though he could argue a public mandate.
The result of such an approach was exiting the EU. To say that Varoufakis didn't called the shots on that is naive. Pretty much everyone understood that if we were to push Germans too much we might end out of the Euro. When Tsipras eventually realized that Junker and the EU had made contingency plans for such an occasion he came to his senses realizing that the bluff has been called. All these are documented in various sources.
The crisis most certainly existed before Varoufakis came into position and no one is blaming him for that. What we blame him for is that he never had a plan and dragged the negotiations for far too long which eventually ended-up with capital controls because we run out of money.
Come on...
So yes, the guy was a fucking disaster. But you have the luxury to judge him without living the consequences of his actions and for that I can't blame you.
The fact that some aspiring-rich techpreneur reduces his complex gambit like you do here is not at all surprising to me.
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hn is stopping me from replying downstream so:
And yet you use ad hominem to advance your own perpective, weird!
"I'm greek don't question me on this!"
"How dare you bring up my background?"
Update: I never forbid you for questioning me because I'm Greek. All I said was that as a Greek I know first hand the results of his actions. If you want to argue on that, feel free to do so.
As for my background, you don't know it and that's the thing. You're assuming that I'm rich(-ish) and thus drawing a conclusion as to where my interests stand. That's irrelevant though, and highly inappropriate. Don't judge me for what (you think) I am, but for what I say.
"Capital controls were introduced in Greece in June 2015, when Greece's government came to the end of its bailout extension period without having come to an agreement on a further extension with its creditors and the European Central Bank decided not to further increase the level of its Emergency Liquidity Assistance for Greek banks."
( From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_controls_in_Greece )
The FED is the lender of last resort in the USA bank system (if I don't remember wrong that was the main reason of its creation).
The Bank of Greece was the lender of last resort in the Greece bank system.
The ECB should be the lender of last resort for the europeans in the Euroarea. Last time I checked Greeks were european. It's not its job to be an enforcer for foreign interests.
Why we allow the ECB to be used as a political weapon or how that is legal is beyond me. That means that we have given all that power to people who don't care about, for now, the Greeks.
In fact, Varoufakis is disputing the legality of that movement: https://diem25.org/thegreekfiles/
In any case, there is no free lunch, and the lunch had already been eaten when he was brought on board. In the absence of a miracle I would expect every alternative to be painful. From your experience we can conclude that he did not work a miracle. That's hardly an indictment.
Actually most economists that I've read from very different camps agree that the main problem in EU is monetary union without political union. Specifically, European nations used to solve that kind of crisis devaluating currencies, now an impossible measure. So taking Greece completely out of the Union was a sensible proposition... among others. It wasn't the decision that was finally taken, but it doesn't seem so weird at all.
If you take some time to think about it, the problems that you mention in other comments like high pensions demand extremely hard measures to be solved. People won't give up what they consider their well-deserved rights so even if you plan to remove red tapes and throttle the public money tap, it would take a long time with strikes and social unrest everywhere. That kind of problems are never solved with fair measures unfortunately. So whatever you think Varoufakis was wrong about, I'm very sure nobody had a right answer for it, including the current path.
Best of luck, anyway.
This changed, partly, just in 2016 and it changed due to the agreements enforced by the memorandums we signed with lending parties.
The same applies to numerous professions, like notaries, taxi owners, customs agents, law firms, tour guides etc. That's what I mean by saying that the economy isn't competitive.
Give me a break, young man, it was a common thing in many places until the 80's.