Well I happen to live in Greece so I witnessed first hand the results of his reign. You probably have no idea how it is to live in a country that has capital controls so let me enlighten you. The first months, until the system was somewhat stabilized, in order to pay for servers and such we had to ask for favors from Greeks who lived abroad. Imagine having half a dozen servers to pay and not knowing if you will manage to find someone/someway to send money abroad.
So yes, the guy was a fucking disaster. But you have the luxury to judge him without living the consequences of his actions and for that I can't blame you.
Are you blaming Varoufakis for the capital controls?
"Capital controls were introduced in Greece in June 2015, when Greece's government came to the end of its bailout extension period without having come to an agreement on a further extension with its creditors and the European Central Bank decided not to further increase the level of its Emergency Liquidity Assistance for Greek banks."
The FED is the lender of last resort in the USA bank system (if I don't remember wrong that was the main reason of its creation).
The Bank of Greece was the lender of last resort in the Greece bank system.
The ECB should be the lender of last resort for the europeans in the Euroarea. Last time I checked Greeks were european. It's not its job to be an enforcer for foreign interests.
Why we allow the ECB to be used as a political weapon or how that is legal is beyond me. That means that we have given all that power to people who don't care about, for now, the Greeks.
Being directly affected by a situation should absolutely not be a point for being more knowledgeable on it. Emotional appeal is the refuge of the ignorant.
Capital controls are real dude, they're not a figment of my imagination. Try operating an online business while you can't transfer funds abroad and then we can talk about sentimentalism.
I thought he advised the opposite approach to the one the Greek government wound up choosing?
In any case, there is no free lunch, and the lunch had already been eaten when he was brought on board. In the absence of a miracle I would expect every alternative to be painful. From your experience we can conclude that he did not work a miracle. That's hardly an indictment.
anecdata != data.
You haven't presented any alternative views on what a presumably more competent economist could have executed on. Just because life was bad doesn't mean that it could have been better.
What his predecessor tried to do. Fix the economy. Greece's problem isn't the debt per se, it's the fact that our economy isn't competitive. There's a lot of red tape, many professions are regulated (pharmacies are a prime example), we import way more things than we export, entrepreneurism is very low, public sector is corrupted, the insurance system is bankrupt, and a lot of things don't work as they should in a modern western country. Even if we defaulted in all our debt, which is highly unlikely even if we exit the Eurozone, we'd be in the same position give it a few decades. There are a lot of structural problems in the economy and Varoufakis did nothing to address any of these. All he did was acting like a rock star who is clueless of how things work in the upper levels of EU policy making. In the six or so months of his reign he didn't introduced a single policy to fix structural problems. Not one, nothing, zero, ziltch. He was so fixated in the debt issue and acting like a fucking primadona that he forgot there were other equally pressing matters to attend to. Like running the damn country for one.
Just because I am not clear, are you suggesting that the pharmaceutical industry be unregulated? You don't want your pharmacy subjected to regulation? How about professional engineers and physicians?
The pharmaceutical industry has nothing to do with how many pharmacies will be allowed to operate. In Greece, up until recently, the government controlled how many pharmacies will open and where. Pharmacies ought to be owned by pharmacists. If say, a company wanted to open a chain of pharmacies all over the country they couldn't, unless all shareholders were pharmacists. And that's not all of the story, super markets for example weren't allowed to sell under the counter drugs like food supplements because there were exclusively handled by pharmacies.
This changed, partly, just in 2016 and it changed due to the agreements enforced by the memorandums we signed with lending parties.
The same applies to numerous professions, like notaries, taxi owners, customs agents, law firms, tour guides etc. That's what I mean by saying that the economy isn't competitive.
Competitive with whom? Many countries in Europe at least have the same strong regulations on the same professions (pharmacies, notaries, taxis, etc.). Get out of your liberal dreamed land and check the reality.
As of four years ago, Germany at least had the same restriction on operating pharmacies (I was not aware of any legal restriction on their number, but it wouldn't surprise me either).
Why, do you think that if we exit the EU things will become instantly better? It will be much, much worse for the foreseeable future. Greece isn't self-sustained. We import pretty much everything, from oil to fertilizers.
Why, do you think that if we exit the EU things will become instantly better?
Actually most economists that I've read from very different camps agree that the main problem in EU is monetary union without political union. Specifically, European nations used to solve that kind of crisis devaluating currencies, now an impossible measure. So taking Greece completely out of the Union was a sensible proposition... among others. It wasn't the decision that was finally taken, but it doesn't seem so weird at all.
If you take some time to think about it, the problems that you mention in other comments like high pensions demand extremely hard measures to be solved. People won't give up what they consider their well-deserved rights so even if you plan to remove red tapes and throttle the public money tap, it would take a long time with strikes and social unrest everywhere. That kind of problems are never solved with fair measures unfortunately. So whatever you think Varoufakis was wrong about, I'm very sure nobody had a right answer for it, including the current path.
I'm not suggesting Grexit as the alternative, I'm just wondering if you think prior examples of IMF-driven shock therapy are the best model to emulate. There's a cost to every option. That said, I think you're suggesting something a little milder than what other countries have attempted.
I grew up in Peru and knew lots of kids who didn't know anything about their own country outside of their little get-rich-quick schemes, and hated anyone who rocked the boat, even as fierce critics sounded warning bells of challenges ahead.
The fact that some aspiring-rich techpreneur reduces his complex gambit like you do here is not at all surprising to me.
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hn is stopping me from replying downstream so:
And yet you use ad hominem to advance your own perpective, weird!
Ad hominem attacks don't work in here dude. This is HN. We either speak with arguments or not at all.
Update: I never forbid you for questioning me because I'm Greek. All I said was that as a Greek I know first hand the results of his actions. If you want to argue on that, feel free to do so.
As for my background, you don't know it and that's the thing. You're assuming that I'm rich(-ish) and thus drawing a conclusion as to where my interests stand. That's irrelevant though, and highly inappropriate. Don't judge me for what (you think) I am, but for what I say.
Hey man, "chapeau" for trying to explain how many of us feel. It is interesting to see that many people think they know more than you about greek crisis just because they have read some articles on the news. Also impressed that Gianis' PR worked so well outside Greece. He proved a clever dude for his own sake
Yea but now you're stuck with a lost generation of no growth for the next 20-30 years, and no national pride. Seems like it was worth fighting to avoid having your kids and your kids' kids groveling the Germans forever. The Brits are leaving voluntarily because they have some fucking pride.
Greece didn't have great options at that point. If they had left EU, they could have unilaterally restructured the German loans, but they would have been hung out to dry with respect to the refugees. They don't have an easily closed border. Suddenly the ridiculous Western decision to destabilize Libya and Syria makes a kind of hideous sense...
So yes, the guy was a fucking disaster. But you have the luxury to judge him without living the consequences of his actions and for that I can't blame you.