Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhSg9X3q2gc

by gjvc • 8 years ago

46 38 8 years ago

MrTonyD• 8 years ago

This fellow makes Economics seem understandable. Truly gifted. I wish we there were some way to clone him.

l4u532• 8 years 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)?

JumpCrisscross2• 8 years 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.)

coldtea2• 8 years 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.

richardknop4• 8 years 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.

cinquemb• 8 years 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).

mc322• 8 years 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• 8 years 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?

richardknop4• 8 years ago

Nobody forced Greece to take loans they could not repay. That's a revisionist history. Greece had a choice to turn down the bailout and instead default on their debts. They knew they would not be able to continue using Euro if they did default so they instead deciding they'd prefer to stay in the Eurozone and took the money.

geezerjay2• 8 years 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.

That statement is patently wrong in many ways.

Greece asked the EU and the IMF for help as their long accounting con finally blew in the greek state's face.

Greece benefitted from a huge debt pardon which vanished about half of the nation's sovereign debt.

The emergency loans that Greece asked for were well below market rate and, more importantly, were actually accomplishable, as back then no one in the world wanted to loan billions th a bankrupt state.

And finally defaulting on debt would be disastrous to Greece. Greek governments were piling >10% deficits that were financed through loan after loan. If Greece defaulted then their access to credit would be cut immediately as no one in the world would be willing to lend them the billions they needed and risk not getting their money back. That meant Greece would be forced to cut their >10% deficit overnight, including also the effect of a major recession that would eclipse the one they actually had to endure. If the soft multi-year transition to self sustainable spending provided by the IMF/ECB/EU emergency loans and bailout program was harsh, what would a radical spending cut made overnight be?

neffy• 8 years 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• 8 years 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...

MsMowz2• 8 years 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.

JumpCrisscross2• 8 years 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.

geezerjay2• 8 years 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• 8 years 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-....

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.

mcny2• 8 years 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.

InfinityLoop• 8 years ago

Krugman has an intolerable ability of making simple concepts quite incomprehensible to the layman (i.e. anyone without a post graduate degree in economics).

I lost interest in what he was saying in his long winded article after the first few paragraphs.

polotics• 8 years 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• 8 years 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...

pergadad3• 8 years 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-ban...

magic-chicken• 8 years 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 ?

beerlord• 8 years ago

Why didn't he print some New Drachma when he was Finance Minister of Greece then?

cmrdporcupine• 8 years ago

That's where things were headed until he resigned after Tsipiras made it clear they would ignore the results of the 2015 referendum.

hal_9000• 8 years ago

It's amazing how this so-called "economist" has a say in the Euro problem after his disastrous time as minister of finance in Greece.

Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

Related Stories