Greece: When Yanis played with banks

Who closed the banks in 2015? Mario Draghi. Yanis Varoufakis, although he had notified his wife Danai that “my love, I closed the banks” and shared his feat everywhere, now denies it. It is now “black establishment propaganda”. Who will be responsible if the banks close again? Draghi again. Since 2019, the head of the European Central Bank is Christine Lagarde, Draghi’s successor, but this is of no importance to Varoufakis. Reality has relative value for him, as we all saw broadcast live in the first half of 2015 when, as finance minister, he toured Europe to teach economics to his counterparts.

The conflict with Europe

If another finance minister had been expelled from the Eurogroup in the way he was in the “hard month of April” in Riga, Latvia, when he was effectively kicked out of the state dinner in a fit of self-centeredness, paradoxes and sleight of hand, he would have been held to account.

Varoufakis, however, does not let anything or anyone come between him and himself. What was he saying in 2015? That the government should bluff by reaching extremes in negotiations with the institutions, so that in the face of the threat of leavib they would panic and retreat.

Finally, both the Europeans and Alexis Tsipras had a hard time getting rid of him. In order to get back at them, Varoufakis exposed everyone’s dirty laundry, in his book “Adults in the Room”, and when his counterparts reacted, he informed them that he had illegally recorded the conversations. He submitted the relevant USB to the Greek Parliament, in order to deprive his critics of “the right to lie”. The Speaker of Parliament Kostas Tasoulas returned it to him as unacceptable.

After the referendum, Varoufakis exerted all his leverage on Alexis Tsipras to continue as they started. “Either you activate our plan, or surrender” he told Tsipras.

“Minister no more”

But Tsipras had understood the game very well and was trying to do his “volte-face” (kolotoumba meaning forward roll in Greek) without losing his supporters. He suggested to him, according to what he writes in his book, that they play a double game with the lenders. Publicly pretending to be the good guys and behind the scenes preparing their counterattack. However, Varoufakis wanted a genuine revolution and told Tsipras. The latter suggested Varoufakis take on the Ministry of Culture, which he refused. He returned home, told everything to his wife Danae’s camera, which had become his confessional, slept, and then wrote his seventh and final letter of resignation, announcing on his blog: “Minister no more.”

However, he did not leave a loser. He began to travel the world and give lectures for a fee, he also published his book, which became a global bestseller and a film by Costas Gavras. The title in the English version is “Adults in the room”, a phrase borrowed from a statement by Lagarde, who did not flatter him but Christine treated him more agreeably than the others, and so their tight-rope dialogues were quoted in the book, real or approximate.

Much has been written about Varoufakis’ psychological make-up, since we learned that as a student he still forced everyone to spell his name with one “n” instead of two as is the regulart Greek spelling. His family history suggested a different kind of development. His father Giorgos was born in Cairo, a leftist academic that had been exiled, and later served as the president of the Board of Directors of Halyvourgiki (the largest steel plant in Greece). His mother Eleni, a chemist and an active member of the feminist movement. When he went to study in Essex, he got a letter of recommendation from Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. He had a close relationship with the latter’s son, and also Prime Minister, George Papandreou, and was his advisor until the first memorandum, then he was won over by ant-memorandum protesters.

In 2018, he founded the European Realistic Disobedience Front (MERA25) and was declared its secretary general. The following year it entered Parliament with a percentage of 3.44% and elected 9 deputies, himself included. Along the way, three female MPs left, accusing him of bullying, nepotism and authoritarianism. He stopped appearing in Parliament, as he used to in flamboyant outfits, chosen by Danae, which had made headlines in the international media. Moreover, with the corona virus pandemic, he isolated himself in Aegina, and thus Parliament forgot his eccentricities, and for the procedural needs, everyone turned to MeRA25 MP Sofia Sakorafa. However, they have to say that MeRA25 was the only party that in the four years of its parliamentary term did not ask for the slightest of favors.

“Prophet of Doom”

On the MeRA25 website there is a speech by Varoufakis to the Central Committee of the party, entitled “Here we are building the new disobedient fighting Left is being”, the slogan of “responsible disobedience”. How responsible it is to take advantage of a difficult time for banks in the US and Europe to sow panic for Greek banks just before elections is up for debate. Some suspect that he is playing Mitsotakis’ game for his own reasons, but it is also possible that he is pretending to be the “prophet of doom”.

Criticism is wasted, Varoufakis doesn’t give a damn about the powerful and the regime, the only opinion he cares about is that of those in Exarchia, an Athens neighborhood known for harboring self-styled anarchists, which he frequents. When  anarchists beat him up while dining, af ew months ago (they were recently identified from videos they posted on social media and arrested) he told reporters that the assailants were gangster thugs, questioning even the video evidence.