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All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility, which is unfortunate when making such audacious claims. Is ther

by l4u532 8y ago

All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility, which is unfortunate when making such audacious claims. Is there anyone here on HN who has further reading advice on these claims (E.g that the € is malice by design)?

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
He’s a pop icon more than an economist these days. He understands his market/base and pitches to them. Framed as an entertainer, he does well. The Euro’s design balances Germany’s paranoia surrounding inflation with the South’s preference for rebalancing its economies though devaluation. With the benefit of hindsight, a terrific compromise wasn’t found. Obvious fixes, which include a Eurozone FDIC analogue and a European fiscal authority for basic social services like unemployment insurance and housing subsidies, are opposed by pretty much every country’s politicians. (The rich because they don’t want to subsidise the poor, but do want to keep selling to them on credit. The poor because they don’t want to lose their jobs to a unified entity in Brussels.)
coldtea 8y ago
Well, Germany used the Euro and their influence on the ECB as a strategic weapon to boost their own economy and exports (as opposed to treating the Eurozone as a union). They also blatantly disregarded EU's and their own rules (e.g. regarding deficits) when it was for their own benefit. There are people who, while adults, still believe in unicorns, and tooth fairies, and big nation states with huge national industries and interests looking for the good of the union and the common market, and so on. There also are pragmatists who understand politics. If anything, the problem with Varoofakis, was that he was more of the latter.
- richardknop 8y ago
  All big countries disregard EU rules. France has been disregarding rules a lot more and never gets punished according to EU law. Small countries in Eastern Europe get picked on for violating the same stuff France / Italy / Germany violate. So that system has no credibility if not all countries are treated equally. Your point about deficits (Maastricht Treaty and other EU regulations after the crises that passed), everybody ignores that but only small countries every get in trouble for it. And when it comes to deficits, Germany is actually one of lesser offenders compared to others. Also, it has been known for a long time that an agreement when EU was being formed was made and areas of influence setup. Germany was promised to get leading influence in ECB in exchange for basically turning Deutsche Mark into Euro and allowing the whole continent to use the German currency. French got full control of the IMF, for example, and also EU parliament being located partly in Strasbourg plus more influence in some other core EU bodies outside of ECB.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Greece wouldn't have been punished, either, except that they were also asking for help at the same time. At least, I don't think they would have...
    - addicted 8y ago
      The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes. Apparently there was a popular video about an area in Athens where the people paid almost no taxes, but an overhead view showed houses with swimming pools.
      - richardknop 8y ago
        Well, yes. But also they had to be very stringent to justify the bailout to their constituencies. Just try to imagine being Angela Merkel and having to sell the idea of German taxpayer money being sent to bail out Greece which got into problems because of their irresponsible and exorbitant spending (instead of spending that money in Germany on healthcare, infrastructure, education etc). Really difficult to sell that to regular German voters. The only way to politically survive that was to be super tough and in exchange for German taxpayer money demand very strict rules of how they will behave after receiving the money.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes Of course when the corruption was done by and was in favor of German companies getting some job, all it was well (Fraport, Siemens, subway bribing, etc). Germany even refused to cooperate to clean things up, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal
    - richardknop 8y ago
      With Greece the problem was German/French banks would go under if Greece defaulted on its debts. That's why the pressure on Greece was so high. Basically EU taxpayers sending money to Greece which just sends money right back to the banks so they don't have to write off their loans and bonds.
- cinquemb 8y ago
  The thing is, he might be pragmatic in his assessment of the situation, but when people press him for solutions (not of the pro Euro, not of the pro "Fascist inc intl" variety) he starts listing things out like people aren't already trying to invest in them as if they will be sure bets, while at the same time saying he doesn't know what the future will hold politically. Idk, long otm calls on BundGreenInc Intl (esp since the Euro and EU has been sold as being "long europe" the past two decades, its a crowded trade), doesn't seem as much as a sure bet as selling those otm calls and using the proceeds to long deep otm puts on grasshopper trash… but everyone in the mean time will write you off as someone who wants to bring death, destruction and chaos to europe if you don't join in on their crowded trade that people aren't even buying now (because they're buying more of "Fascist inc intl" as he admits).
mc32 8y ago
From a Greek perspective, he's not wrong. Germany forced Greece's hand and made them take out a loans they could not pay rather then let them default on their loans as many bankrupt countries are wont to do. Now, sure, Germany had the upper hand knowing that While Syriza had passed a referendum to default that they did not have the heart for it and the Germans called their bluff. In retrospect, Greece would have probably been better off than they are now. While different, it's not all that different from the tactics China is taking in South Asia and Africa when they provide loans they know can't be repaid by the counties they lend them to (often secured by natural resources or infrastructure).
- turtlecloud 8y ago
  That’s the same as from the American playbook. Just read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”. Why is it ok for America to use these tactics on Latin America yet reprehensible when China does the same? Isn’t this just the pot calling the kettle black?
  - mc32 8y ago
    Are you talking IMF stuff or things the US did back way back when? Is it okay now because the US did it? Just because Stalin in the past starved millions, does that make it okay for the Ukraine, if it desired to do so, or anyone else? Your point is tangential. Regardless, I was only pointing out that what Germany did to Greece was similar to what China does now to many countries. I'm simply comparing one policy to another. You're the one implying condemnation for China.
  - fro0116 8y ago
    I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion at hand. I don't recall seeing any mention of the US in the above comments. Nor any connotations suggesting that it was OK for America to do the same. Even if this wasn't completely off-topic, I'd still recommend reading up on whataboutism to understand why this post was not making a substantive argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- richardknop 8y ago
neffy 8y ago
It´s complicated. To believe that the Euro is malice by design you would need to believe that current Macro Economics - which most economists are happy to agree is deeply flawed - is not only deeply flawed but is deliberately flawed and promulagated by a bunch of people who know it´s flawed and actually do understand the system well enough to do so maliciously. To which the only response is seriously, have you met these people?! However, knowing that it is deeply flawed, and knowing why, does reveal a bunch of economists pointing out it wasn´t a great idea before it happened, but not as it happens for quite the right reasons. It can be observed, there are so many competing economics tribes at the moment, one of them is always bound to be right on something. The reason it was a bad idea, is that economics doesn´t think very hard if at all about what the implications are of the banking system happily expanding the monetary system for each country at different rates, and it really didn´t think about what the impact of loan securitisation would be on things like inter-bank liquidity flows. And here we are.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Aren’t those “people “ the heads of multinational financial institutions like Goldman Sachs? Almost every EU country has someone from GS in their leadership structure over the years. They simply engineered an arbitrage situation...
MsMowz 8y ago
>All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility I think it’s the exact opposite. He’s speaking from the experience of being in the Eurogroup and negotiating directly with Germany. Anything he has to say on the matter is far more credible than any of the pro-Euro claims made by people who have no skin in the game. >Is there anyone here on HN who has further reading advice on these claims (E.g that the € is malice by design)? It’s a bit dated now, but pretty much anything Keynes wrote about trade balances under the Bretton Woods system corroborate what Varoufakis says. He really presents a pretty standard Keynesian perspective on monetary unions, so you won’t have to look far.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > He’s speaking from the experience of being in the Eurogroup and negotiating directly with Germany. Anything he has to say on the matter is far more credible than any of the pro-Euro claims made by people who have no skin in the game. By that metric, the German finance minister's claims are also the gospel truth on the situation. "Skin in the game" helps when one can affect future outcomes. It aligns incentives. It does nothing for the accuracy of a primary source defending past decisions.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > I think it’s the exact opposite. He’s speaking from the experience of being in the Eurogroup and negotiating directly with Germany. The man is a fraud who believed that throwing veiled and not so veiled accusations of naziism at Germany in specific and the EU in general was a reasonable course of action. He is a delusional attention-seeker who had a self-destructive legacy in his stint as head of greece's finances who decided to quit immediately before the result of his actions blew up in Greece's face just to personally avoid being held accountable for his actions.
skywhopper 8y ago
Not direct malice, but naive over-optimism gone a little too far, perhaps. Krugman has written and spoken a lot about this in a way that's accessible to the interested layman. Search for "krugman optimal currency area", or see https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-optimum-currency-area/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-.... The point is that there are definitely economic benefits to the simplicity and low-overhead of currency union among equal and near-equal partners, but when economic conditions vary greatly between regions (or more correctly, when economic conditions change differently over time in various regions), there can be a greater benefit to having different currencies that can trade at different levels against each other to assist in the proper valuation of resources in either region. There's no 100% right answer, and national boundaries are not necessarily the "optimal" borders for currency areas, but obviously there are practical issues to weigh as well. So I think it's obviously wrong to say "the Euro is bad". It's a great thing for France and Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands and several other countries in the Eurozone. But expanding the Euro to Greece maybe was a bit too far. That said, the EU could do a lot via policy to make up for the problems caused by the imbalance of economic conditions between Greece and Germany, but ... they aren't doing nearly enough.
- mcny 8y ago
  >> The point is that there are definitely economic benefits to the simplicity and low-overhead of currency union among equal and near-equal partners, but when economic conditions vary greatly between regions (or more correctly, when economic conditions change differently over time in various regions), there can be a greater benefit to having different currencies that can trade at different levels against each other to assist in the proper valuation of resources in either region. How do we make things work here in the US? >> So I think it's obviously wrong to say "the Euro is bad". It's a great thing for France and Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands and several other countries in the Eurozone. But expanding the Euro to Greece maybe was a bit too far. I don't know how Greece would have been better off with Drachma. I mean Drachma is still convertible currency, no? Greece isn't Zimbabwe. They can't just print money, can they? Maybe this is naive but I don't understand how currency matters unless you have some weird third world level conversion control.
polotics 8y ago
Can you specify where you hear him be condescending? Also no bashing of Germany in there, unless you see describing specific mechanisms by which german banks profited from the Greeks, as bashing Germany.
neilwilson 8y ago
The Euro and the design of the European Union economic system is turning into a prime example of groupthink and denial. There is a very good book on the subject that goes through it all from the start: Eurozone Dystopia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial-Grand/dp/1784716650 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial...
pergadad 8y ago
Varoufakis has found his attention niche in bashing the euro and became popular in certain circles for this. That the euro is malicious by design is obviously ridiculous. Now here's one fact that nationalists don't like: the euro has a number of aims, including its symbolism of a united Europe, to stabilise the many small currencies and prevent speculation harming it [1], etc. But one of its key ideas is of course also to drive the EU countries closer. All of the EU as we know it today stems from two premises: (1) we are stronger/better off together and (2) we have to bring a.of Europe together and connect it to avoid that it may ever again become a battlefield. This second lesson, stemming from hundreds of European wars and the nightmares of WW 1 & 2 ist of course fundamentally contrary to the idea of national autonomy. Germany is not going to attack France because both sides would essentially be destroyed and unable to function independently. The same is true for all other EU countries (including the UK, which is why Brexit is such a nightmare for all sides). Why was the euro so harmful for Greece (Varoufakis' home country)? Two reasons, (1) because it wasn't finished, politicians lost the political will to dare to finalise the project (banking union, eurozone budget, ...) as it meant to give up more power and control to the EU. (2) Greece LIED and produced false national statistics for decades. They didn't actually fulfil the minimum criteria to join the euro. Successive governments falsified the numbers - and when it all came tumbling down (when one government was finally honest!) the Greek citizens paid the price. Greek politicians, over decades, had found it was easier to lie and produced false numbers than actually address the multitude of structural problems Greece faced. The rest of the EU then bailed it out but as a condition for this demanded rather painful reforms. Those were probably too harsh/sudden in many ways, but the real blame should still be attributed to the ones who caused the issue to begin with: the Greek governments that lived off unsustainable debt and got elected for promising more unsustainable spending - and then hid it all with invented numbers. [1] e.g. see https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/george-soros-bank-of-england.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/george-soros-ban...
magic-chicken 8y ago
I did not detect any bashing in the video, except toward the whole Euro. On the contrary, I found he was trying very hard not to point fingers at anybody. Also, he asked many times the audience to challenge future panelists (ex. Steve Bannon) on their ideas, and he did so in a very respectful manner. English is not my first language, so I may have missed some things. Could you expand on what part you think he was bashing on Germany or being condescending ?

by l4u532 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

He’s a pop icon more than an economist these days. He understands his market/base and pitches to them. Framed as an entertainer, he does well. The Euro’s design balances Germany’s paranoia surrounding inflation with the South’s preference for rebalancing its economies though devaluation. With the benefit of hindsight, a terrific compromise wasn’t found. Obvious fixes, which include a Eurozone FDIC analogue and a European fiscal authority for basic social services like unemployment insurance and housing subsidies, are opposed by pretty much every country’s politicians. (The rich because they don’t want to subsidise the poor, but do want to keep selling to them on credit. The poor because they don’t want to lose their jobs to a unified entity in Brussels.)

coldtea 8y ago

Well, Germany used the Euro and their influence on the ECB as a strategic weapon to boost their own economy and exports (as opposed to treating the Eurozone as a union). They also blatantly disregarded EU's and their own rules (e.g. regarding deficits) when it was for their own benefit. There are people who, while adults, still believe in unicorns, and tooth fairies, and big nation states with huge national industries and interests looking for the good of the union and the common market, and so on. There also are pragmatists who understand politics. If anything, the problem with Varoofakis, was that he was more of the latter.

richardknop 8y ago
All big countries disregard EU rules. France has been disregarding rules a lot more and never gets punished according to EU law. Small countries in Eastern Europe get picked on for violating the same stuff France / Italy / Germany violate. So that system has no credibility if not all countries are treated equally. Your point about deficits (Maastricht Treaty and other EU regulations after the crises that passed), everybody ignores that but only small countries every get in trouble for it. And when it comes to deficits, Germany is actually one of lesser offenders compared to others. Also, it has been known for a long time that an agreement when EU was being formed was made and areas of influence setup. Germany was promised to get leading influence in ECB in exchange for basically turning Deutsche Mark into Euro and allowing the whole continent to use the German currency. French got full control of the IMF, for example, and also EU parliament being located partly in Strasbourg plus more influence in some other core EU bodies outside of ECB.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Greece wouldn't have been punished, either, except that they were also asking for help at the same time. At least, I don't think they would have...
  - addicted 8y ago
    The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes. Apparently there was a popular video about an area in Athens where the people paid almost no taxes, but an overhead view showed houses with swimming pools.
    - richardknop 8y ago
      Well, yes. But also they had to be very stringent to justify the bailout to their constituencies. Just try to imagine being Angela Merkel and having to sell the idea of German taxpayer money being sent to bail out Greece which got into problems because of their irresponsible and exorbitant spending (instead of spending that money in Germany on healthcare, infrastructure, education etc). Really difficult to sell that to regular German voters. The only way to politically survive that was to be super tough and in exchange for German taxpayer money demand very strict rules of how they will behave after receiving the money.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes Of course when the corruption was done by and was in favor of German companies getting some job, all it was well (Fraport, Siemens, subway bribing, etc). Germany even refused to cooperate to clean things up, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal
  - richardknop 8y ago
    With Greece the problem was German/French banks would go under if Greece defaulted on its debts. That's why the pressure on Greece was so high. Basically EU taxpayers sending money to Greece which just sends money right back to the banks so they don't have to write off their loans and bonds.
cinquemb 8y ago
The thing is, he might be pragmatic in his assessment of the situation, but when people press him for solutions (not of the pro Euro, not of the pro "Fascist inc intl" variety) he starts listing things out like people aren't already trying to invest in them as if they will be sure bets, while at the same time saying he doesn't know what the future will hold politically. Idk, long otm calls on BundGreenInc Intl (esp since the Euro and EU has been sold as being "long europe" the past two decades, its a crowded trade), doesn't seem as much as a sure bet as selling those otm calls and using the proceeds to long deep otm puts on grasshopper trash… but everyone in the mean time will write you off as someone who wants to bring death, destruction and chaos to europe if you don't join in on their crowded trade that people aren't even buying now (because they're buying more of "Fascist inc intl" as he admits).

mc32 8y ago

From a Greek perspective, he's not wrong. Germany forced Greece's hand and made them take out a loans they could not pay rather then let them default on their loans as many bankrupt countries are wont to do. Now, sure, Germany had the upper hand knowing that While Syriza had passed a referendum to default that they did not have the heart for it and the Germans called their bluff. In retrospect, Greece would have probably been better off than they are now. While different, it's not all that different from the tactics China is taking in South Asia and Africa when they provide loans they know can't be repaid by the counties they lend them to (often secured by natural resources or infrastructure).

turtlecloud 8y ago
That’s the same as from the American playbook. Just read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”. Why is it ok for America to use these tactics on Latin America yet reprehensible when China does the same? Isn’t this just the pot calling the kettle black?
- mc32 8y ago
  Are you talking IMF stuff or things the US did back way back when? Is it okay now because the US did it? Just because Stalin in the past starved millions, does that make it okay for the Ukraine, if it desired to do so, or anyone else? Your point is tangential. Regardless, I was only pointing out that what Germany did to Greece was similar to what China does now to many countries. I'm simply comparing one policy to another. You're the one implying condemnation for China.
- fro0116 8y ago
  I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion at hand. I don't recall seeing any mention of the US in the above comments. Nor any connotations suggesting that it was OK for America to do the same. Even if this wasn't completely off-topic, I'd still recommend reading up on whataboutism to understand why this post was not making a substantive argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
richardknop 8y ago

neffy 8y ago

It´s complicated. To believe that the Euro is malice by design you would need to believe that current Macro Economics - which most economists are happy to agree is deeply flawed - is not only deeply flawed but is deliberately flawed and promulagated by a bunch of people who know it´s flawed and actually do understand the system well enough to do so maliciously. To which the only response is seriously, have you met these people?! However, knowing that it is deeply flawed, and knowing why, does reveal a bunch of economists pointing out it wasn´t a great idea before it happened, but not as it happens for quite the right reasons. It can be observed, there are so many competing economics tribes at the moment, one of them is always bound to be right on something. The reason it was a bad idea, is that economics doesn´t think very hard if at all about what the implications are of the banking system happily expanding the monetary system for each country at different rates, and it really didn´t think about what the impact of loan securitisation would be on things like inter-bank liquidity flows. And here we are.

r00fus 8y ago
Aren’t those “people “ the heads of multinational financial institutions like Goldman Sachs? Almost every EU country has someone from GS in their leadership structure over the years. They simply engineered an arbitrage situation...

MsMowz 8y ago

>All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility I think it’s the exact opposite. He’s speaking from the experience of being in the Eurogroup and negotiating directly with Germany. Anything he has to say on the matter is far more credible than any of the pro-Euro claims made by people who have no skin in the game. >Is there anyone here on HN who has further reading advice on these claims (E.g that the € is malice by design)? It’s a bit dated now, but pretty much anything Keynes wrote about trade balances under the Bretton Woods system corroborate what Varoufakis says. He really presents a pretty standard Keynesian perspective on monetary unions, so you won’t have to look far.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> He’s speaking from the experience of being in the Eurogroup and negotiating directly with Germany. Anything he has to say on the matter is far more credible than any of the pro-Euro claims made by people who have no skin in the game. By that metric, the German finance minister's claims are also the gospel truth on the situation. "Skin in the game" helps when one can affect future outcomes. It aligns incentives. It does nothing for the accuracy of a primary source defending past decisions.
geezerjay 8y ago
> I think it’s the exact opposite. He’s speaking from the experience of being in the Eurogroup and negotiating directly with Germany. The man is a fraud who believed that throwing veiled and not so veiled accusations of naziism at Germany in specific and the EU in general was a reasonable course of action. He is a delusional attention-seeker who had a self-destructive legacy in his stint as head of greece's finances who decided to quit immediately before the result of his actions blew up in Greece's face just to personally avoid being held accountable for his actions.

skywhopper 8y ago

Not direct malice, but naive over-optimism gone a little too far, perhaps. Krugman has written and spoken a lot about this in a way that's accessible to the interested layman. Search for "krugman optimal currency area", or see https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-optimum-currency-area/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-.... The point is that there are definitely economic benefits to the simplicity and low-overhead of currency union among equal and near-equal partners, but when economic conditions vary greatly between regions (or more correctly, when economic conditions change differently over time in various regions), there can be a greater benefit to having different currencies that can trade at different levels against each other to assist in the proper valuation of resources in either region. There's no 100% right answer, and national boundaries are not necessarily the "optimal" borders for currency areas, but obviously there are practical issues to weigh as well. So I think it's obviously wrong to say "the Euro is bad". It's a great thing for France and Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands and several other countries in the Eurozone. But expanding the Euro to Greece maybe was a bit too far. That said, the EU could do a lot via policy to make up for the problems caused by the imbalance of economic conditions between Greece and Germany, but ... they aren't doing nearly enough.

mcny 8y ago
>> The point is that there are definitely economic benefits to the simplicity and low-overhead of currency union among equal and near-equal partners, but when economic conditions vary greatly between regions (or more correctly, when economic conditions change differently over time in various regions), there can be a greater benefit to having different currencies that can trade at different levels against each other to assist in the proper valuation of resources in either region. How do we make things work here in the US? >> So I think it's obviously wrong to say "the Euro is bad". It's a great thing for France and Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands and several other countries in the Eurozone. But expanding the Euro to Greece maybe was a bit too far. I don't know how Greece would have been better off with Drachma. I mean Drachma is still convertible currency, no? Greece isn't Zimbabwe. They can't just print money, can they? Maybe this is naive but I don't understand how currency matters unless you have some weird third world level conversion control.

polotics 8y ago

Can you specify where you hear him be condescending? Also no bashing of Germany in there, unless you see describing specific mechanisms by which german banks profited from the Greeks, as bashing Germany.

neilwilson 8y ago

The Euro and the design of the European Union economic system is turning into a prime example of groupthink and denial. There is a very good book on the subject that goes through it all from the start: Eurozone Dystopia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial-Grand/dp/1784716650 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial...

pergadad 8y ago

Varoufakis has found his attention niche in bashing the euro and became popular in certain circles for this. That the euro is malicious by design is obviously ridiculous. Now here's one fact that nationalists don't like: the euro has a number of aims, including its symbolism of a united Europe, to stabilise the many small currencies and prevent speculation harming it [1], etc. But one of its key ideas is of course also to drive the EU countries closer. All of the EU as we know it today stems from two premises: (1) we are stronger/better off together and (2) we have to bring a.of Europe together and connect it to avoid that it may ever again become a battlefield. This second lesson, stemming from hundreds of European wars and the nightmares of WW 1 & 2 ist of course fundamentally contrary to the idea of national autonomy. Germany is not going to attack France because both sides would essentially be destroyed and unable to function independently. The same is true for all other EU countries (including the UK, which is why Brexit is such a nightmare for all sides). Why was the euro so harmful for Greece (Varoufakis' home country)? Two reasons, (1) because it wasn't finished, politicians lost the political will to dare to finalise the project (banking union, eurozone budget, ...) as it meant to give up more power and control to the EU. (2) Greece LIED and produced false national statistics for decades. They didn't actually fulfil the minimum criteria to join the euro. Successive governments falsified the numbers - and when it all came tumbling down (when one government was finally honest!) the Greek citizens paid the price. Greek politicians, over decades, had found it was easier to lie and produced false numbers than actually address the multitude of structural problems Greece faced. The rest of the EU then bailed it out but as a condition for this demanded rather painful reforms. Those were probably too harsh/sudden in many ways, but the real blame should still be attributed to the ones who caused the issue to begin with: the Greek governments that lived off unsustainable debt and got elected for promising more unsustainable spending - and then hid it all with invented numbers. [1] e.g. see https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/george-soros-bank-of-england.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/george-soros-ban...

magic-chicken 8y ago

I did not detect any bashing in the video, except toward the whole Euro. On the contrary, I found he was trying very hard not to point fingers at anybody. Also, he asked many times the audience to challenge future panelists (ex. Steve Bannon) on their ideas, and he did so in a very respectful manner. English is not my first language, so I may have missed some things. Could you expand on what part you think he was bashing on Germany or being condescending ?