*** YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Conversations entre adultes. Dans les coulisses secrètes de l’Europe. Editions Les liens qui libèrent (2 impasse de Conti, F-75006 Paris. Internet: http://www.editionslesliensquiliberent.fr ). 2017, 528 pp. €26. ISBN 979-10-209-0558-1.
Yanis Varoufakis is as seductive and convincing as he is irritating and unbearable. His most recent book, originally written in English, will, undoubtedly, further radicalise the different points of view. Is it the work of a traitor? There is not a shadow of a doubt that some people will think this and will be furious with the traditional "secrets" that are thrown out as scraps for public consumption. The ephemeral Finance Minister in the first Tsipras government does not care either way, as borne out in the introduction he choses when he refers to those seeking compromise but who would prefer to be crushed rather than end up compromised.
In this book, Varoufakis portrays himself as a direct witness from the first half of 2015 that plunged, “our continent into a quagmire from which it is now in danger of never leaving for a very very long time”. The important role he played as an actor therefore is supplanted by the role of witness who testifies to the many talks and meetings he attended during this period and which he has recorded for posterity by taking notes or ultimately memorising, to to tell his version of the truth. The first meeting of which he dares to reveal the contents took place on 16 April 2015 in Washington. Here he meets Larry Summers, the 71st US Secretary of State to the Treasury and the 27th President of Harvard who told him, "There are two kinds of politician. Those who are the ‘insiders’ and those who are not, the ‘outsiders’. The latter hold the freedom of speech very dear in order to give their version of the truth. The price of this freedom is to be ignored by the ‘insiders’, who take the important decisions. The ‘insiders' have a sacrosanct principle: to never turn against their peers and to never say what they are doing or saying to others”.
This would be the key for this American summit if he were to have access to the confidential information and exert a real influence. Was this a tempting offer? Undoubtedly, but Yanis Varoufakis informs his interlocutor that if the “insiders” with whom he was negotiating refuse to free the Greek people from their “debtors' prison” he would not hesitate become “a whistleblower”. This book is in fact the book of a whistleblower on the centre stage of a modern tragedy. The author claims that “seeing Greece’s creditors at work is seeing “Macbeth” in the country of Oedipus” as he observes the most powerful actors in the drama who have also provoked their own downfall because they feared the prophecy that announced this downfall and who have all being are overtaken by the involuntary ramifications of their action.
The title of the book was inspired by Christine Lagarde, who, exasperated by the way the meeting was going, exclaimed that if they were going to get through this Greek drama they needed to have some “Adults in the Room”. Although they were all obviously adults, not all of them acted like they were, regrets the author in response to meeting attended by Lagarde, Draghi and, obviously, Wolfgang Schaüble. To those (members of the Troika, amongst others) whose vapidity left him stunned he refuses to make any excuses for being made the guilty party for having revealed where the crown lay because this would encroach on the historical precision of this account. With regard to other players, he is keen to explain that he saw their role as he saw his own, through the prism of a real Greek or Shakespearean tragedy in which the characters are neither good nor bad but are overtaken by the involuntary repercussions of the action they have taken.
One anecdote is enough to quantify the abyss that separated certain protagonists from this tragedy. In February, Minister Varoufakis is received in Berlin by his German counterpart who argues that the excessively generous European social model is untenable. Dr Schaüble argues that in the DDR the people were not bad and even had a lot of good intentions but their social welfare system was economically untenable. Our Greek economist stingingly retorts that, “You are trying to compare me to a minister of the well-intentioned DDR who wants to maintain an intenable political and economic system at any price? I can reassure you, Wolfgang, that in spite of what your Greek friends tell you, I am a convinced democrat, a fervent supporter of pluralism and an intransigent pro-European. This also applies to my colleagues in Syriza. We have as many commonalities with the DDR as you do with the Pinochet regime, namely, none!” It is unnecessary to point out that following this acerbic interlude, the Greek Minister's proposals on Greek debt were hastily sent back to the “institutions” and Troika, which, according to the author, threw them back into the dustbin of history...
Never before has a political leader revealed to this extent what happened in the secrecy of the European meetings, particularly those relating to the Eurozone. Is this witness reliable? It has to be pointed out that there is no other, which is a shame because, above all, is it really normal that the management of an economic and budget crisis is put together in hermetically sealed secret alcoves? Although Yanis Varoufakis is perhaps a witness that should be taken with a pinch of salt, the truthfulness of this convinced European should not be ignored while the others, including those on the left, are stringing together a number of tall stories themselves.
Michel Theys
*** DIMITRIS VAGIANOS, NIKOS VETTAS, CHRISTOFOROS PISSARIDIS (editors): Au-delà de l'austérité. Pour une nouvelle dynamique dans l'économie grecque. Editions Universitaires de Crète (100 rue N. Plastira, boîte 1385, GR-71110 Heraklion. Tel: (30-2810) 391097 - fax: 391085 - Email: info@cup.gr - Internet: http://www.cup.gr ). 2017, 816 pp, €50. ISBN 978-960-524-502-3.
The systemic global crisis that broke out in the financial sector in 2008 spread swiftly and hit Greece with an unexpected and dramatic intensity: incomes collapsed, unemployment reached 27% of the people of working age, half of all bank loans were no longer honoured. Why did this happen and what should be done to avoid this tragedy repeating itself? Would it be better to stay in the euro or return to the drachma? What should be done with this enormous public debt? Can the welfare state continue and become sustainable? Should the Greek people be paying for an austerity without end? The 31 authors who contributed to this book include some of the most well-known economists in Greece and abroad and they provide a number of responses to these questions and a lot of others. They highlight the shortcomings that allowed for the crisis to emerge with such viciousness in the many different domains of the national economy. They also analyse what should take place in the short, medium and long-term and analyse what different areas could provide a basis for the reconstruction of the Greek economy and, therefore, the whole world. The entire book is undoubtedly the most methodical attempt to examine what led Greece to economic and social collapse over recent years and even more importantly, it formulates a number of interesting proposals for reform. The different chapters combine systematic empirical studies with undogmatic analytical models that each of the different authors has chosen, simply because they regard these as the most appropriate for the specific issues they are examining. This book is edited by Dimitris Vagianos (Professor in finance at the London School of Economics where he heads the Paul Woolley Centre for the study of dysfunctions in the capitals markets), Nikos Vettas (Professor the Economics Department at the Economic University of Athens and the President of the Institute for Economic and Industrial Research) and Christoforos Pissaridis (Nobel prizewinner for financing in 2010 for his work on funding employment with Diehl Mortensen and Peter Diamond). It would have also been a very useful contribution at the time that Greece needed to negotiate its memoranda with the country’s lenders... (AKa)
*** MICHALIS KACHRIS: La politique budgétaire pour stabiliser l'économie et la question de la croissance. Editions Arnaouti (42 rue Charilaou Trikoupi, GR-10680 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3630271 - fax: 3615209 - Email: arnaoutisbooks@gmail.com - Internet: http://www.ekdoseis-arnaoutis.gr ). 2017, 196 p. €19. ISBN: 978-960-9764-87-2.
In this book, the economist, Michael Kachris, aims to provide a robust and scientifically accurate account of the current stalemate in Greece’s budgetary policy following the so-called and now infamous “evaluations” that have taken place there and which have, above all, helped to pillage the country's wealth. It is in this perspective that he attempts to provide a number of possible solutions to this impasse, which he claims are only possible on the condition that the country recovers its budget and monetary sovereignty by establishing a national currency again. In his view, there is evidence that public debt is more of a political than economic question, at least in the way the issue is currently understood. As part of this study, Michalis Kachris also attempts to demonstrate how German policy is behind everything that has been adopted in this area, such as the Stability and Growth Pact, which also leads him to uncovering a number of Nazi roots to the torments inflicted on his country. As part of his conclusion, this economist and legal expert expresses his huge concerns about the future of the younger generation, which can only be saved by extricating the country from the tragic financial and political repression imposed upon it by its so-called “partners”. (AKa)
*** PAUL JORION: A quoi bon penser à l'heure du grand collapse ? Entretien avec Franck Cormerais et Jacques Athanase Gilbert. Librairie Arthème Fayard (13 rue du Montparnasse, F-75006 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 45498200 – Internet: http://www.fayard.fr ). 2017, 178 pp. €16.85. ISBN 978-2-213-70551-4.
Paul Jorion is a sociologist and an anthropologist and also the bringer of bad omens: after having announced the sub-prime crisis of 2008 before everyone else, he is now predicting nothing less than… the extinction of the human race. Who is, therefore, this imperceptible man who acts as a prophet by announcing the most terrible storms that will beset the world? The first contribution of merit in this book is that it helps to better understand the profile and trajectory of this superlatives intellectual and enthusiast of free thought. As part of the introduction to this book of Paul Jorion, Professor Franck Cormerais (information and communication sciences at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne) and Professor Jacques Athanase Gilbert (comparative literature at the University of Nantes) explain that this, “whistleblower is not just someone who knows what the others don't know”, he is, above all, a scientist, “who has the courage to break the wall of silence because he has the critical toolbox that allows him to do so”. Through their portrait of a man that resembles “a Renaissance philosopher” and "post-war intellectual who does not hesitate to intervene in the public debate” we are provided with a philosophical anthropology that creates a political reflection on our ideas of modernity. Initially a specialist in market related questions, Jorion launches a frontal attack on, “dominant economic thinking”” in what the editors of the Digital Studies journal explain as, “the deprivation of meaning produced by contemporary capitalism, which far exceeds Marxist alienation and which could, in itself, be reversed”. After covering the foundations of Jorion’s philosophical anthropology, the assessment confirms at the end of a number of short chapters that only a radical anthropology that is capable of mobilising all the knowledge that humanity has acquired about its deep identity is able to prevent its extinction. The ideas put forward by this Belgian intellectual target the decision-makers in the world of finance who find themselves working in this environment by way of “their personal tolerance of fraud”. In the same perspective he is not very appreciative of the regulators either because the balance of forces with the banks is significantly loaded against them. As a freethinker he also believes that it would be a “very serious mistake” “to tax all financial operations" and that only “speculative operations" should be banned. (PBo)
*** Politique. Revue belge d’analyse et de débat. ASBL Politique (9 rue du Faucon, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5386996 – email: info@politique.eu.org – Internet: http://www.revuepolitique.org ). June 2018, No. 104, 132 pp. subscription € 12, € 45 (€ 40 for PDF, € 50 for both versions).
This issue of the progressive French-speaking Belgian journal and point of reference contains a very comprehensive feature article on the situation affecting the trade unions in the country. Many different contributions demonstrate that although this country still has 3,400,000 trade unionists, “Half of all people of working age" the world has indeed changed since the Liberation when an unexpected social compromise “civilised” capitalism like never before. The reasons why the trade unions have now become “actors subject to structural tensions”, which, it should be pointed out, is not an exclusive phenomenon to Belgium. The sharp fall in the number of trade unionists, the “fragile link” between the unemployed and trade unionists and the feeling that public transport users are sometimes taken hostage are some of the themes explored in this very comprehensive dossier, despite the fact that it only has a minimum focus on European aspects, with Sébastien Franco interpreting the Alter Summit as a first step towards the birth of the European social movement. In the other articles, the sociologists Marc Jacquemain and Bruno Frère, again examine the historic significance of the protest movement of May 1968, while two other members of the academic corps, the historian Caroline Sägesser and legal expressed and sociologist David Koussens examine the meaning of secularism, again, as part of the political and cultural debate and the ramifications at a societal level in Belgium and Québec. Finally, two authors provide a response from the opposite end of the spectrum to the question of whether a basic income or universal allocation “from the left” is possible. (MT)