“We should have defaulted. They would have come around and we would have a compromise agreement, but I wasn’t allowed to use that weapon,” former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said in an interview to The Guardian.
Speaking about the times of negotiations between Greece and the lenders, the former FinMin who was forced out of the government after the Referendum in July 2015, said that he has not regrets about the strategy he followed all this time.
“He was eventually forced out of government when the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras decided that he had to accept the unfavourable debt relief terms offered by the nation’s creditors.
However, Varoufakis has no regrets about his time in office and still believes he did the right thing.
“With the benefit of hindsight, one would always alter one’s actions. I could give a long list if I’d known in advance what was going to happen.
“But the general strategy was correct. I took over as finance minister 15 days before we went into bankruptcy. The loan was unsustainable and part of the extend and pretend policy. I was not going to be part of that and we had a tough line.
“But creditors were more interested in the demonstration effect of crashing a government for daring to oppose them so that they could intimidate others such as Spain, Ireland and France.
“Greece was treated like a pawn on a chess board so it was very hard. We had a chance [to default] and we missed it.
“We should have defaulted. They would have come around and we would have a compromise agreement, but I wasn’t allowed to use that weapon. But something will have to give. Unfortunately the resolution as it stands now is not consistent with the interests of European countries.”
Varoufakis analyzed also the Refugees’ Crisis in the context of failing European solidarity saying “Europe is being broken apart by refugee crisis” and that “the monetary union has ‘failed spectacularly’ leaving Europe too fragmented to respond to influx of refugees.”
No, nothing of nothing
No! I don’t feel sorry about anything
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PS some mean Greeks insist that for the win-win Game Theory to be successful, both players must be willing to play.
All I can say about this thought piece from Varoufakis is: “Si tacuisses…”