Op-ed

Created
Sat, 12/07/2025 - 14:49

ATHENS – Margaret Thatcher famously quipped that the problem with socialists is that, eventually, they run out of other people’s money. But what happens when bankers run out of other people’s money, as seems likely to happen soon? Either we end up with another calamitous financial meltdown or we innovate to serve the public interest […]

The post A Trust Fund for Everyone to Defuse the Stablecoin Time Bomb – Project Syndicate appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Sat, 12/07/2025 - 14:58

To free ourselves from our technofeudal overlords, we must think like Karl Marx. The corporations would asset-strip our brains, but we can take back control A young woman I met recently remarked that it was not so much pure evil that drove her berserk, but rather people, or institutions, with the capacity to do good […]

The post Who needs Marx in 2025? The Guardian, July 2025 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 26/06/2025 - 01:15

Francisco Goya’s etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters was an artist’s stern warning of the hideous forces unleashed in the mind when reason lowers its guard. Today, stablecoins are the gruesome forces being released into the global economy as President Trump’s crypto dreams, unchecked by reason, morphed into the GENIUS Act. Stablecoins are the […]

The post The stablecoin time bomb hidden in Trump’s GENIUS act: Prepare for the next financial meltdown – UNHERD, 19 JUNE 2025 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Sun, 08/06/2025 - 17:47

Donald Trump has made it impossible for any sensible person to persevere in the delusion that global business can continue as usual. We should all welcome this, even if we are livid with Trump’s shocking behaviour, decisions and narratives. The global economy will either be rebalanced or it will crash in ways that may make […]

The post A Chinese New Bretton Woods? – Quancha op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 05/06/2025 - 21:49

Failure, corruption and warmongering: Ursula von der Leyen is awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen for her contribution to the EU – because in Europe utter failure is not only tolerated, but celebrated! It is one of life’s guilty pleasures when one’s cynical prejudices are confirmed. One such moment, when I allowed myself a […]

The post In the EU nothing succeeds like gross failure: The astonishing case of Ursula von der Leyen – Der Freitag 29 MAY 2025 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 05/06/2025 - 22:04

The IMF-World Bank Spring meetings are usually placid affairs that participating central bankers wish to forget soon after they are over. Not this Spring. This April the feeling several central bankers brought back home with them was not the usual relief but something far more visceral: dread, terror even. The reason? The spectre of the […]

The post Trump Wants Big Tech to Own the Dollar – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Wed, 09/04/2025 - 17:05

This is a crucial conversation to have in general, not particularly about Marine Le Pen. It is about the principled position that the democratic Left must take on the question of who has the right to remove the political rights (the right to vote and to seek votes) of whom. We know what can happen […]

The post Should Le Pen be barred? What is the Left’s right answer on this conundrum? appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 03/04/2025 - 19:07

“My philosophy, Mr President, is that all foreigners are out to screw us and it’s our job to screw them first.” With these words, the US Treasury Secretary convinced the President to deliver a colossal shock to the global economy. In the words of one of the President’s men, the objective was to trigger “a […]

The post Will the Trump Shock prove as momentous as the Nixon Shock? UNHERD op-ed & on BBC tv appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Tue, 11/03/2025 - 20:33

Whatever happened to the notion that, faced with the enemies of democracy, we should fight their ideas but, equally, for their right to express them? The answer, unfortunately, is that it died an ignominious death on Sunday, as Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau, with the full support of the European Union’s liberal establishment, banned far-Right candidate Cǎlin Georgescu […]

The post Liberals should be outraged by Cǎlin Georgescu’s election ban – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Tue, 18/03/2025 - 20:18

When the powerful punish the principled, we glimpse the unmasked face of empire. Donald Trump’s vindictive executive order denying aid to South Africa — punishment for its support of Palestine and pursuit of land reform — offers precisely such a moment of clarity.  The contours of our new global struggle are now etched with brutal […]

The post Stand with South Africa against Trump’s wrath – Globe&Mail op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.