Less than a year and a half ago, an insurgent political movement in Greece was the toast of the international left. The new Syriza party had won a landslide election, promising to throw off the policies of austerity and privatization that had been demanded by creditors managing the terms of bailouts for the country’s heavily-indebted government. Our next guest went from being an economics professor to a Finance Minister almost overnight, and became the most iconic figure involved in the showdown that ensued – a showdown that ultimately ended with his leaving the government, and Greece accepting another crushing round of austerity measures.
Guest:
- Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of Greece, now a professor of economic theory at the University of Athens and author of And The Weak Suffer What they Must: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future