And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future

305 Pages·2016·2.1 MB·English

by  Yanis Varoufakis

Copyright © 2016 by Yanis Varoufakis
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Varoufakis, Yanis, author.
Title: And the weak suffer what they must? : Europe’s crisis and America’s economic future / Yanis
Varoufakis.
Description: New York : Nation Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016001937 (print) | LCCN 2016003358 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Europe--Economic
conditions--21st century. | Europe--Economic integration. | Financial crises--Europe. | Europe--Politics
and government--21st century. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Government & Business. |
HISTORY Europe General.
Classification: LCC HC240 .V37 2016 (print) | LCC HC240 (ebook) | DDC 330.94--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016001937
isbn 978-1-56858-505-5 (eb)
Editorial production by Marrathon Production Services. www.marrathon.net
book design by jane raese
Set in 11-point Berthold Baskerville Book 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FOR MY MOTHER ELENI,
who would have savaged with the greatest elegance and compassion anyone
contemplating the notion that the weak suffer what they must
CONTENTS
PREFACE The Red Blanket
CHAPTER 1 And the Weak Suffer What They Must
CHAPTER 2 An Indecent Proposal
CHAPTER 3 Troubled Pilgrims
CHAPTER 4 Trojan Horse
CHAPTER 5 The One That Got Away
CHAPTER 6 The Reverse Alchemists
CHAPTER 7 Back to the Future
CHAPTER 8 Europe’s Crisis, America’s Future
AFTERWORD From Dissonance to Harmony
Acknowledgments
Appendix to Chapter 7: A Modest Proposal
Notes
References
Index
About the Author
PREFACE
THE RED BLANKET
O
ne of my enduring childhood memories is the crackling sound of a
wireless hidden under a red blanket in the middle of our living room.
Every night, at around nine I think, Mom and Dad would huddle together under
it, their ears straining, bursting with anticipation.
Upon hearing the muffled jingle, followed by a German announcer’s voice,
my six-year-old boy’s imagination would travel from our home in Athens to
Central Europe, a mythical place I had not visited yet except for the tantalizing
glimpses offered by an illustrated Brothers Grimm book I had in my bedroom.
My family’s strange red blanket ritual began in 1967, the inaugural year of
Greece’s military dictatorship. Deutsche Welle, the German international radio
station that my parents were listening to, became our most precious ally against
the crushing power of state propaganda at home: a window looking out to
faraway democratic Europe. At the end of each of its hourlong special
broadcasts on Greece, my parents and I would sit around the dining table while
they mulled over the latest news.
Not understanding fully what they were talking about neither bored nor upset
me. For I was gripped by a sense of excitement at the strangeness of our
predicament: to find out what was happening in our very own Athens, we had to
travel, through the airwaves, and veiled by a red blanket, to a place called
Germany.
The reason for the red blanket was a grumpy old neighbor called Gregoris.
Gregoris was known for his connections with the secret police and his penchant
for spying on my parents; in particular my dad, whose left-wing past made him
an excellent target for an ambitious, lowly snitch. After the coup d’état of April
21, 1967, brought neofascist colonels to power, tuning in to Deutsche Welle
broadcasts became one of a long list of activities punishable by anything from
harassment to torture. Having noticed Gregoris snooping around inside our
backyard, my parents took no risks. And so it was that the red blanket became
our defense from Gregoris’s prying ears.
During the summers, my parents would use up their annual leave to escape
the colonels’ Greece for a whole month. We would load up our black Morris and
head north to Austria and southern Germany where, as my father kept saying
during the interminable drive, “Democrats can breathe.” Willy Brandt, the
German chancellor, and, a little later, Bruno Kreisky, his Austrian counterpart,
were discussed as if they were family friends who also happened to be great
protagonists in isolating “our” colonels and supporting Greek democrats.
The reception of the locals we encountered while holidaying in these
German-speaking lands, away from the kitsch neofascist aesthetic of the
colonels’ propaganda, was consistent with our conviction that we, as Greeks
abroad, were bathed in genuine solidarity. And when our Morris would sadly
putter back into Greece, past border crossings replete with photographs of our
mad dictator and symbols of his crazy reign, the red blanket beckoned as our
only refuge.
A HAND SHUNNED
Almost fifty years later, in February 2015, I made my first official visit to Berlin
as Greece’s finance minister. The Greek economy had collapsed beneath a
mountain of debt, and Germany was its main creditor. I was there to discuss
what to do about it. My first port of call was, of course, the Federal Ministry of
Finance, to meet its incumbent leader, the legendary Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble.
To him, and his minions, I was a nuisance. Our left-wing government had
just been elected, defeating Dr. Schäuble’s and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
allies in Greece, the New Democracy Party. Our electoral platform was, to say
the least, an inconvenience for their Christian Democratic administration and
their plans for keeping the eurozone in “order.” The elevator door opened up
onto a long, cold corridor at the end of which awaited the great man in his
famous wheelchair. As I approached, my extended hand was refused. Instead of
a handshake, he rushed me purposefully into his office.
While my relations with Dr. Schäuble warmed up in the months that
followed, the shunned hand symbolized a great deal that was wrong with