Yanis Varoufakis: Power, Markets & Power Markets - Ep104

Yanis Varoufakis is an academic economist and politician. He’s a member of Greek Parliament, Founder and Secretary-General of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, and famously served as Minister for Finance in Greece in 2015. He subsequently wrote a book about the experience called Adults in the Room (2017), about how the EU stymied his attempts to renegotiate Greece’s debts in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Varoufakis was elected to Greek parliament and appointed Finance Minister in January 2015 by Alexis Tsipras, in the midst of the Greek government-debt crisis. Varoufakis led negotiations over Greece’s bailout conditions with the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, but failed to agree terms. Varoufakis resigned from government and parliament in August 2015, despite a referendum indicating popular support for his stance. Varoufakis founded MeRA25 in 2018, under whose banner he returned to parliament in 2018. Varoufakis has authored numerous books on the Financial Crisis, austerity and debt, including The Global Minotaur (2011), And the Weak Suffer What They Must? (2016), Talking to my Daughter about the Economy (2017) and Adults in the Room (2017), as well as primers on modern economics and Game Theory. Varoufakis holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Essex, has held posts at the University of Cambridge and the University of Sydney among others, and was Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens. Varoufakis is a self-described ‘erratic Marxist’.