Yanis Varoufakis - Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment

What happens when you take on the establishment? In this blistering, personal account, world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis blows the lid on Europes hidden agenda and exposes what actually goes on in its corridors of power.

Varoufakis sparked one of the most spectacular and controversial battles in recent political history when, as finance minister of Greece, he attempted to re-negotiate his countrys relationship with the EU. Despite the mass support of the Greek people and the simple logic of his arguments, he succeeded only in provoking the fury of Europes political, financial and media elite. But the true story of what happened is almost entirely unknown not least because so much of the EUs real business takes place behind closed doors.

In this fearless account, Varoufakis reveals all: an extraordinary tale of brinkmanship, hypocrisy, collusion and betrayal that will shake the deep establishment to its foundations.

As is now clear, the same policies that required the tragic and brutal suppression of Greeces democratic uprising have led directly to authoritarianism, populist revolt and instability throughout the Western world.

Adults In The Room is an urgent wake-up call to renew European democracy before it is too late.

Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and now the figurehead of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He speaks to audiences of thousands worldwide and is the author of the international bestseller And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Born in Athens in 1961, he was for many years a professor of economics in Britain, Australia and the USA before he entered government. He is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

yanisvaroufakis.eu / @yanisvaroufakis

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy

And The Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability

For all who eagerly seek compromise but would rather be crushed than end up compromised

In a book of this nature, in which so much depends on who said what to whom, I have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of quoted speech. To this end, I have been able to draw on audio recordings that I made on my phone, as well as on notes I made at the time, of many of the official meetings and conversations that appear in this book. Where my own recordings or notes are unavailable, I have relied on memory and, where possible, the corroboration of other witnesses.

The reader should note that many of the discussions reported in this book took place in Greek. This includes all conversations that occurred with my staff at the finance ministry, in parliament, on the streets of Athens, with the prime minister, in cabinet, and between my partner Danae and me. Necessarily, I have translated those conversations into English.

The only discussions I report that took place in neither Greek nor English were those I had with Michel Sapin, the French finance minister. Indeed, Mr Sapin was the only member of the Eurogroup not to address the meetings in English. Either we communicated through translators or, quite often, he would address me in French and I would reply in English, our grasp of the others language being good enough to carry on those conversations.

In every instance I have confined my account strictly to exchanges that are in the public interest and have therefore included only those that shed important light on events that affected the lives of millions.

My previous book, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability, offered an historical explanation of why Europe is now in the process, decades in the making, of losing its integrity and forfeiting its soul. Just as I was finishing it in January 2015 I became finance minister of Greece and found myself thrust into the belly of the beast I had been writing about. By accepting the position of finance minister of a chronically indebted European country in the midst of a tumultuous clash with its creditors Europes most powerful governments and institutions I witnessed first hand the particular circumstances and immediate causes of our continents descent into a morass from which it may not escape for a long, long while.

This new book tells that story. It could be described as the story of an academic who became a government minister for a while before turning whistle-blower. Or as a kiss-and-tell memoir featuring powerful personages such as Angela Merkel, Mario Draghi, Wolfgang Schuble, Christine Lagarde, Emmanuel Macron, George Osborne and Barack Obama. Or as the tale of a small bankrupt country taking on the Goliaths of Europe in order to escape from debtors prison before suffering a crushing if fairly honourable defeat. But none of these descriptions convey my real motivation for writing this book.

Shortly after the ruthless suppression of Greeces rebellion in 2015, also known as the Greek Spring or the Athens Spring, the left-wing party Podemos lost its momentum in Spain; no doubt many potential voters feared a fate similar to ours at the hands of a ferocious EU. Having observed the EUs callous disregard for democracy in Greece, many supporters of the Labour Party in Britain then went on to vote for Brexit. Brexit boosted Donald Trump. Donald Trumps triumph blew fresh wind into the sails of xenophobic nationalists throughout Europe and the world. Vladimir Putin must be rubbing his eyes in disbelief at the way the West has been undermining itself so fabulously.

The story in this book is not only symbolic of what Europe, Britain and the United States are becoming; it also provides real insights into how and why our polities and social economies have fractured. As the so-called liberal establishment protests at the fake news of the insurgent alt-right, it is salutary to be reminded that in 2015 this same establishment launched a ferociously effective campaign of truth-reversal and character assassination against the pro-European, democratically elected government of a small country in Europe.

But as useful as I hope insights such as this may be, my motivation for writing this book goes deeper. Beneath the specific events that I experienced, I recognised a universal story the story of what happens when human beings find themselves at the mercy of cruel circumstances that have been generated by an inhuman, mostly unseen network of power relations. This is why there are no goodies or baddies in this book. Instead, it is populated by people doing their best, as they understand it, under conditions not of their choosing. Each of the persons I encountered and write about in these pages believed they were acting appropriately, but, taken together, their acts produced misfortune on a continental scale. Is this not the stuff of authentic tragedy? Is this not what makes the tragedies of Sophocles and Shakespeare resonate with us today, hundreds of years after the events they relate became old news?

At one point Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, remarked in a state of exasperation that to resolve the drama we needed adults in the room. She was right. There was a dearth of adults in many of the rooms where this drama unfolded. As characters, though, they fell into two categories: the banal and the fascinating. The banal went about their business ticking boxes on sheets of instructions handed down to them by their masters. In many cases though, their masters politicians such as Wolfgang Schuble and functionaries like Christine Lagarde and Mario Draghi were different. They had the ability to reflect on themselves and their role in the drama, and this ability to enter into dialogues with themselves made them fascinatingly susceptible to the trap of self-fulfilling prophecy.