Free Republic

Greece today (and Cyprus before it) offers a case study of how capital controls bifurcate a currency and distort business incentives... Once euro deposits are imprisoned within a national banking system, the currency essentially splits in two: Bank euros (BE) and paper, or free, euros (FE). Suddenly, an informal exchange rate between the two currencies emerges. Consider a Greek depositor keen to convert a large sum of BE into FE (say, to pay for medical expenses abroad, or to repay a company debt to a non-Greek entity). Assuming such depositors find FE holders willing to purchase their BE, a substantial...

Uploaded on Oct 18, 2011 Professor Varoufakis proposes a decentralized system for europe in order to transform it before the crisis of the system crashes Europe. He studies all the different possibilities of actions that can be taken and explains why his proposal is the best option. Studied mathematics at Essex University, received an MSc in mathematical statistics from the University of Birmingham and then, curiously, completed a PhD in... economics at Essex University. Between 1982 and 1988 he taught at the Universities of Essex, East Anglia and Cambridge. From 1988 to 2000 he lived in Sydney, where he lectured...

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” – Margaret Thatcher Greece is liberal economics on steroids, Detroit writ large, and a place where the "takers" outnumber the "makers." In other words, if you want to know what the end road is for the sort of economics pushed by people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Paul Krugman, Greece is it. According to the World Bank, Greece’s labor participation rate is only 53%. It’s hard for private industry to take advantage of an underemployed populace because government regulations and powerful unions make it difficult...

There are no “good” options for now to end this Greek tragedy. It’s best for Greece to take the least bad option, which would be forced bankruptcy. Let Greece go bankrupt. And then let this once rich nation, hit the restart button to rebuild its economy. What I’m suggesting for Greece is what we might call the Detroit option. Put Greece under receivership and let these new authorities figure out how to manage the debt and decide who will take a hair cut – pensioners, bond holders, welfare recipients, government workers, the IMF. It’s tough love, but it’s the only...

Socialism’s Greek Staring Contest The day will come when America faces its own inner Greece. July 5, 2015 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. The Greeks gambled in their referendum that European elites were more committed to their ideological obsession with integrating Europe than with mere economics. Stand up to a bunch of corrupt Greek civil servants and Europe risks going back to the bad old days of nation states and independent economies. It is likely that their bet will pay off. After all even a cursory...

The Greeks gambled in their referendum that European elites were more committed to their ideological obsession with integrating Europe than with mere economics. Stand up to a bunch of corrupt Greek civil servants and Europe risks going back to the bad old days of nation states and independent economies. It is likely that their bet will pay off.

Whether you like him or not, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis is now a political legend. Here’s why: 1. The way he communicates With his blog and his Twitter account , he speaks directly to the people, his fans and his detractors, when he wants, how he wants it, without the media filter. Non-verbal communication is important too. The infamous video of Varoufakis ‘flipping his middle finger’ to Germany, which caused uproar in German media, may or may not have been faked by a German satirical TV show. In the end it doesn’t really matter. He may have an...

ATHENS — Greece’s combative finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who took a strong stand in demanding that creditors write off some of his country’s debts, abruptly resigned on Monday morning. Mr. Varoufakis had played a central role in rallying votes for a resounding no on a referendum on Sunday that asked Greeks whether they were willing to accept an arrangement with creditors that would require considerable further austerity, such as pension cuts. Mr. Varoufakis had threatened last week to resign in the event of a yes vote, and his decision to step down after he and his allies prevailed in the...

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned from his post Monday after Greek citizens voted to reject further austerity measures the day prior, the Associated Press reported. Varoufakis said he was told shortly after the voters rejected Sunday's referendum regarding demands by international creditors to impose further austerity measures in exchange for a bailout package for its bankrupt economy, that the other eurozone finance ministers and Greece's other creditors would prefer he not attend the ministers' meetings. Varoufakis issued an announcement saying Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had judged that Varoufakis' resignation "might help achieve a deal" and that he was leaving...

"If necessary, we will issue parallel liquidity and California-style IOU's, in an electronic form. We should have done it a week ago," said Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister. ... Syriza sources say the Greek ministry of finance is examining options to take direct control of the banking system ... They want a new team installed, one that is willing to draw on the central bank's secret reserves, and to take the provocative step in extremis of creating euros. "We have to restore stability to the system, with or without the help of the ECB. We have the capacity to print...

Greek banks are preparing contingency plans for a possible “bail-in” of depositors amid fears the country is heading for financial collapse, bankers and businesspeople with knowledge of the measures said on Friday. The plans, which call for a “haircut” of at least 30 per cent on deposits above €8,000, sketch out an increasingly likely scenario for at least one bank, the sources said.

Greek banks are preparing contingency plans for a possible “bail-in” of depositors amid fears The plans, which call for a “haircut” of at least 30 per cent on deposits above €8,000, sketch out an increasingly likely scenario for at least one bank, the sources said. A Greek bail-in could resemble the rescue plan agreed by Cyprus in 2013, when customers’ funds were seized to shore up the banks, with a haircut imposed on uninsured deposits over €100,000. Meanwhile, Yanis Varoufakis swears this is nothing but a "malicious rumor": FT report of a Gk Bank Bail In is a malicious rumour...

The party's hardline chief and defence minister, Panos Kammenos, dismissed them contemptuously. "We are at war and there will be no backing down. Whoever does not have the stomach for war, be gone," he said... Mr Varoufakis vowed to resign if the Greek people voted yes. "I prefer to cut off my own arm rather than sign an agreement without debt restructuring," he told Bloomberg TV. He said there is not a "smidgeon of an iota of possibility" that the terms on offer can lift the Greek economy out of a deflationary tailspin, insisting that the talks broke down because...

Greece has threatened to seek a court injunction against the EU institutions, both to block the country's expulsion from the euro and to halt asphyxiation of the banking system. “The Greek government will make use of all our legal rights,” said the finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. “We are taking advice and will certainly consider an injunction at the European Court of Justice. The EU treaties make no provision for euro exit and we refuse to accept it. Our membership is not negotiable,“ he told the Telegraph.

Reports claimed the government was prepared to reduce at least three different VAT rates to one, and limit exemptions. Prime minister Alexis Tsipras had opposed the move, claiming that the change would hit poorer people. The country will also press-on with privatisations it had also previously vowed to block, according to reports. However, Syriza has said that demands by creditors to reverse an increase in the minimum wage and cut pensions remain "red lines" that the leftist leadership is unwilling to cross... Mr Sakellaridis said that failure to reach an "honest compromise" with creditors would most likely lead to a...

With Greece digging around in the couch cushions to try and scrape up €2 billion by Friday in order to make payments to the IMF, the ECB, and Goldman, and with celebrity FinMin Yanis Varoufakis doing his absolute best to sink the entire ship with a series of epic PR faux pas, one is left to wonder just where Athens will turn when Berlin and Brussels finally reach the end of their ropes with what increasingly looks like gross incompetence in the Aegean. We may have gotten the answer to that question today via Reuters: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras...

Shares in Greek banks crashed by more than a quarter yesterday as Athens urged Berlin not to go on humiliating a ‘proud nation’. Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s new finance minister, issued an extraordinary defiant statement invoking the rise of the Nazis when Germany was crippled by debts between the wars. After a tense meeting with his German counterpart in Berlin, Wolfgang Schaeuble, he declared: ‘We didn’t even agree to disagree.’

Before he entered politics, Yanis Varoufakis, the iconoclastic Greek finance minister at the centre of the latest eurozone standoff, wrote this searing account of European capitalism and and how the left can learn from Marx’s mistakes ___ In 2008, capitalism had its second global spasm. The financial crisis set off a chain reaction that pushed Europe into a downward spiral that continues to this day. Europe’s present situation is not merely a threat for workers, for the dispossessed, for the bankers, for social classes or, indeed, nations. No, Europe’s current posture poses a threat to civilisation as we know it....

End 'Gross Indignity', Greek FM Varoufakis Tells Germany Yanis Varoufakis is in Berlin attempting to renegotiate Greece's debt Greece's new finance minister has urged Germany to help end the "gross indignity" of the Greek debt crisis. Yanis Varoufakis said "too much time, hopes, lives" had been wasted by Greece's forced austerity programme. He was speaking after talks with his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said a reduction of Greece's debt was off the agenda. Mr Varoufakis has been seeking support for Greece's plan to renegotiate its massive international bailout. On Thursday evening, thousands of people gathered in front of the...