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Comment by typon | Hacker News Reader

Any talk by Varoufakis is worth listening to.

He is a very controversial figure in both Greece and Europe as a whole.

Controversial in the very least. I also got the impression that he was quite anti-EU with his whole Greece rhetoric during the discussions about another Greek buyout. Maybe I got him wrong..?

How could he not be? The people he was negotiating with to try and save Greece were telling him - look, we know you’re right, but we’re going to completely ignore that fact and institute policy that completely fucks the worst off Greeks.

Here is an interview that explains his position a bit better than my paraphrasing: https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/07/yanis-varoufak...

The guy is a jerk. He fucked up in an unprecedented way, his whole negotiation strategy was just a blackmail toward EU-Germany that eventually backfired. In the meantime all his proposals for reforming the public sector were laughable, like the idea of giving cameras to tourists to record tax evading shops.

He may be good at writing books or giving lectures but he was a complete disaster as minister of finance.

Maybe downvoted because of the language, but the comment is accurate. The guy is a megalomaniac, who negotiated for Greece without ANY skin in the game.

Not sure about that. He was trying to get the best deal for Greece, Germany called his bluff and he was left holding the bag, but he had the right intentions. In retrospect he probably should have gone with the Grexit. The Germans would have capitulated, and, had they not, you’d still be better off.

Would not surprise me. It is my understanding that not a lot of people that actually understand how the EU works are pro EU at this point...

Source please? What are you basing this on?

I guess just people that I'm around and some third party news sources that have a pretty big following. Sorry to disappoint :)

From the talk he appears everything but anti-EU. If you carefully listen to him, what he aims at is a federal-EU. He also justify the collapse of high-balance-deficit countries with the fact everyone is in the Eurozone. Therefore fuelling the borrow of capital that won’t be repaid, until bankruptcy.

For those who had the misfortune to suffer the consquences of his folly, he is not controversial at all. He is a conceited man-child with very bad manners. There's readily accessible, amble evidence for that by looking at photos of him in various settings, both formal and relaxed. The way he dresses and, more importantly, his body language make it quite plain. His writings and interviews attest to the same. BTW, and to do him full justice, his mathy book on game theory is not bad (though hardly a classic) so he may be somewhat competent as an academic economist.

The man is articulated but nothing of what he says brings anything to my mind. Maybe he's just too smart.. but I can't discern from overenginered pub talk.

Seems like English is not your first language ..?

He’s very articulate, and not only does he make a lot of sense, I’ve never seen him caught in a lie.

And I have no idea what makes you think it’s pub talk, I’m from the land of pubs (Ireland) and I’ve never heard anyone talk like he does in one.

what good does it do pointing that out, if it's even true? it's clear they meant articulate and public.

“Pub talk” is a thing, and “can’t discern from overengineered pub talk” makes sense.

“Can’t discern from overengineered public talk” is plausible, but it would be very unusual to phrase it that way.

It’s not really clear that he meant "public."

I meant a never ending stream of sophisticated ideas and precise data that leads nowhere. I used to watch every interview of the guy[1] and .. I always left the video empty minded.

[1] he seemed to have human values and of course knowledge about the topic

Ok, we're going down a rabbit hole here, but just to clarify, you meant "pub talk" as in the kind of conversation people have at a pub after a few beers? Or "public talk" as in a public speech, as nikofeyn suggested?

pub/bar sorry

No problem! You said exactly what you meant. And it got me interested so I'm watching the video for myself now.

i can see "overengineered pub talk" as a specific critique instead of them meaning public. i am probably wrong there. but the point still stands as it's rude and not important to make a mention of their english, especially when it seems what they meant is one of two things, both of which make sense.

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