> they wouldn't agree to the rational course of action because they were intimidated by his superior intelligence. The EU finance ministers wouldn't agree to h

> they wouldn't agree to the rational course of action because they were intimidated by his superior intelligence. The EU finance ministers wouldn't agree to his rational course of action because: 1. They wanted to make a visible example out of Greece, pour encourager les autres. 2. They didn't care about the social consequences of austerity and the economic depression it caused in Greece. 3. It was actually good for domestic political consumption to be tough on the Greeks. In Germany, for example, the powerful right-wing tabloids were pushing for the government to punish the "lazy" Greeks. Varoufakis had a very strong economic argument. Massively contracting government spending while massively increasing taxes would obviously cause a severe depression in Greece. Besides the social consequences of that policy, it would also make Greece less capable of paying off its debts. This is obvious, but for the reasons I've listed above, the argument went nowhere. If you listen to Varoufakis' recordings of the ministers' conferences, they treated Greece like a vassal state, rather than as a member of a close, "value-based" union. The way that the EU dealt with Greece is very different with how such an economic crisis would play out in the US. The common social safety net and the wider Federal budget mean that states that are in trouble automatically get increased support. The EU took the opposite approach, and induced a depression in Greece.