It was in the news that he (or possibly the prime minister) said that they are planning to employ an "unorthodox" strategy that "have never been tried before" to pull the country from the mess it is in. One one hand it's interesting to see what comes out of it, but on the other it sounds quite a bit like gambling. Except this time it's with the real economy.
He is an author of multiple books on game theory.
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-A-Critical-Introduction/dp... http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/books/game-theory-a-critical-text/
Greece is in trouble. There is no way they could repay the debt if they tried, unless they confiscate everyone's savings. The only sensible thing is to default on the debt, as had happened many times before when investors made the imprudent choice bought government bonds that were never going to be paid back. It is only then the toxic assets can be cleansed out of the economy so it can continue to grow, rather than being stuck in some sort of bad zombie bank equilibrium like Japan had been for the past 20 years.
It's a game of Germany getting fed up with paying for the rest of the EU. I think it's a safe bet that if Greece is going to show a middle finger to the EU, the EU will have no choice but to reciprocate. Spain and Portugal were in a similar situation as Greece, but if you are to believe Frau Merkel, the austerity policy is working for them and they are recovering well.
Spain has an unemployment rate[1] of 24%.
Is it optimism or cynicism to call that "recovering well"?
Woah. That's just ... insane.
Oh and for under 25yr olds the rate is... 50%.
[1] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5908da36-db09-11e3-8273-00144feabd...
Nobody thinks here that we are "recovering well". This is not only about the rate of unemployed, you need also to think about the quality of the new jobs.
An then you need to think also about different types of new poors. About 4 millions of spaniards could not afford an accurate household heating in 2012. ACA estimates that beetween 2400 and 9600 people have died prematurely in Spain each year those last years because, after the banks shamelessly steal all his life savings, they can't pay for home heating. More people that the victims of car accidents. Don't worry, Angela, just old useless people.
http://unaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/estudio-de-pobrez...
I'd like to hear exactly what you mean by this. On face value I'm assuming it's just hyperbole - complaints about inflation, or investments in property/equity which crashed etc.
Actors: Rodrigo Rato, managing director of international monetary fund between 2004 and 2007. President of Bankia 2010. Goes public to stock exchange hiding a huge deficit to the investors whereas telling everybody that the bank is doing lots of money. The bank must be rescued later with 10 Billion Euro from the spanish workers I think. Bankia selled also preference shares to blind people, illiterates and old retired people. Most of them lost all his money and a lot of them lost also his houses.
Miguel Blesa: A personal old friend of Jose María Aznar. Politic and President of the supervisory board of Caja Madrid, that crashes and became Bankia.
and many others of course...
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/12/14/spanish-judge-exposes-too-b...
Bloomberg Businessweek listed Rato as the worst CEO in 2012
http://www.publico.es/actualidad/siete-casos-mas-sangrantes-...
Meanwhile in Bankia, Blesa, Rato and other top officials where spending and charging to Bankia millions of public money to black credit cards given by himselves. The money from the spaniards was spent in gas, clubs, skying, wine, jewels, expensive clocks, restaurants...
And retired people were informed that his life-savings just dissapear "im-so-sorry-sob-sob".
http://www.eldiario.es/gastos_tarjetas_black/grafico-gastos-...
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/09/former-caja-...
Probably a bit of both. Depending on when you look at the data from, it's a definite improvement from their peak unemployment rate of 26.94%.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/spain-unemployed-pers...
Long and short of it though, the economy is growing, though very slowly. Economic growth, even small amounts, quarter over quarter, is much more cause for optimism than economic decline, which was the course it had been on up til 2013 Q1.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fvsTRmORSVI/T5qPyXygwNI/AAAAAAAAEU...
It's not hard to find the facts and the context here, so your comment makes no sense whatsoever.
For instance, at the very least people probably have heard that U.S. unemployment has been anywhere from 9% to 5% in recent years. And we know that things were pretty bad when unemployment was 9%, and surely 24% is a lot worse than 9%.
If you were good at U.S. history, you might recall that our great depression had similar unemployment rates. There's just about no context where that's a good number.
If Greece defaults on it's obligations, there will budget surpluses immediately to spend on services. In the short term they would suffer some financial difficulty from not being able to access world credit markets but in the long term the economy will recover much more quickly.
If Greece defaults, they can lose, or they can win.
The only danger would be an invading EU/NATO army coming to confiscate their assets.
The austerity plan works for the EU, of course.
I'm willing to bet on 50 to 1 odds that there will be no invasion. (Up to, say, 1000 USD exposure on my side.)
No invasion necessary.
I have huge respect for Varoufakis, but I hope he realises he is dealing with very dangerous thugs in very expensive suits, and not reasonable people.
fed up with giving out loans that end up back in Germany due to how much Germany exports to them as well...
Germany's obligations on austerity politics is what put Spain and Portugal in this mess to begin with. There's absolutely no economic argument for austerity in a 2008-style situation. People stopped spending, so the solution is for the government to stop spending as well?
The eurozone economy has been largely run in a way that benefits germany. When germany needs low interest rates the euro zone gets them and to hell with whether that suits Spain or Greece or Italy.
And the bailouts that were given are not handouts, they are loans.
If a bank lends you money they are not 'paying for you'.
I would just argue that it's not imprudent. They get higher than "risk free" yields, and many times get bailed out. On average they still outperform the risk-free rates.
Here is a list of historical government bond defaults:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_default#List_of_sover...
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Europe-after-Minotaur-Greece-Economy-e...
The interest rate on their current debt is extremely low (2.6% of GDP, with a debt/gdp ratio of 175%), and if they ever decide to make some serious structural reforms and start growing again, the debt/gdp ratio can be brought down to very manageable levels. If they reach their pre-cris GDP high their debt/gdp would be ~120%, which is high but reasonable and easily repayable given continued growth.
The last default wasn't sufficient in cleansing the situation, most of the debt was rolled over only with new terms. The previous GDP high was only because of excessive capital inflows causing malinvestment and overconsumption - it would be akin to your bank lending every member of your family including your children $1,000,000 at 0% interest rate. Some of you may spend it irresponsibly and they would be the ones who spend the most. This increases your household spend making you look richer than you are. In the end the bank isn't getting their money back because you just don't have enough $1,000,000's left because it was spent on new clothes and expensive cars. Your family isn't going to ever get back to pre-crisis spending high, even given continued growth in your family's income, and especially not if you have to continue to pay interest on that debt.
One hedge fund at least did not sign up to the haircut and got full face value back by playing chicken on whether they'd defaulted.