Yanis Varoufakis Quotes
I’ll be damned if I will accept another package of economic policies perpetuate the same crisis. This is not what I was elected for.
His predecessors had lied about the status of the Greek Economy and then squandered the money with waste, fraud, and corruption. To avoid total national bankruptcy, Greece needed a large bailout which was given subject to a set of required conditions of reform and transparency. This “austerity” package created a great hardship for many of the average Greek citizens while the wealthy who had benefitted from the previous incompetence and corruption took their money out of the country. The Greek voters elected a new government without much experience but who were committed to lifting the burden of the austerity package. The problem was that the major nations of the Eurozone, whose taxpayers would have to pay for the bailout, had been burned before by Greek government lies and incompetence and did not trust the Greeks, insisting on the austerity measures if any bailout money would be forthcoming. The new Greek government was caught in a great dilemma. Agree to the same kind of Austerity package and continue the great hardships on the people or go into Bankruptcy and leave the Eurozone the consequences of which would probably be worse. The finance minister was hoping for a compromise.
Yanis Varoufakis, Greek Finance Minister, Comment on his negotiations for a Greek bailout by the other members of the Eurozone, Interview with Suzy Hansen, New York Times Magazine, May 24, 2015
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Greece's politicians had mismanaged the economy and then lied to the other nations of the Eurozone to obtain loans, and was in the midst of an economic crisis.
In the midst of the Great Depression, Townsend had organized millions of Americans into “Townsend Clubs” to save money for their old age retirement. Townsend had proposed that the Government should run such a program where workers paid in every week and then all who were retired or disabled received $30 a week for like. Most economists of the time thought the Townsend old age pension plan unworkable: There was no national pension plan at the time. When Townsend together with two right wing religious extremists formed the Union Party, the one vulnerability that the Roosevelt Administration felt it had was the lack of an old-age pension plan. Within a few days, Roosevelt proposed a new plan of the New Deal to Congress. It was called Social Security. It passed in record time. See {616648} for Harry S Truman’s view of economists.
Between corruption and mismanagement Greece's politicians had reduced the economy of Greece the one close to a third world nation but it had a population that was used to a living standard of a modern, developed, nation. The politicians had lied in order to meet the requirements of the Euro zone and the other countries had to spend billions to prevent the complete collapse of the Greek economy with its unpredictable consequences for the other nations.
In 2016 millions of refugees were fleeing the chaos, violence, dictatorships, and revolutions of many of the Muslim Nations of the Middle East and the nations in Africa where Islamists were using violence and terrorism to try and take over the governments. Many, despite the danger, tried to reach Europe, and millions did—–far more than the European governments were prepared to handle and most European populations were unwilling to accept. This immigration created another crisis of its own.
Unmindful of the steady economic prosperity during the 1920s in America, Comintern “assured” American Communists that the economic growth was about to make an abrupt U-turn.
There was a financial crisis in the country and the world when highly risky home mortgage loans defaulted leaving investors and speculators in mortgage-backed securities in a poor position. The investors had been reaping very high interest rates for their risky investments, but this was the first time that this form of risky investment had failed. The investors, of course were looking for a bailout from government. When the Bush administration failed to bail out investment bank, Lehman, there was a panic and the banking system of the country and much of the world froze up. Bush and his Secretary reversed their bailout of speculators policy and provided various assistants and bailouts to the very bankers and other investors who had caused the economic meltdown. The policy was continued by the Obama administration although the bailouts were just as distasteful to Obama as they were to Bush, but most economists agree that the two presidents very distasteful and unpopular bailout actions probably saved the nation from a massive depression. After being bailed out by the taxpayers, the Bankers then paid themselves exorbitant bonuses while the results of their management put 10 percent of the country out of work.
The President had a series of radio talks to the people in which he addressed them directly and explained things as he then understood them.
Ioannis "Yanis" Varoufakis is a Greek-Australian economist and politician. A former academic, he has been Secretary-General of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, since he founded it in 2018. A former member of Syriza, he served as Minister of Finance from January to July 2015 under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Varoufakis was a member of the Hellenic Parliament for Athens B from January to September 2015; he regained a parliamentary seat in July 2019.
