Adults in the Room
Ratings5
Average rating4.2
"After being swept into power with the left-wing Syriza party, Varoufakis attempts to renegotiate Greece's relationship with the EU--and sparks a spectacular battle, with global implications. Varoufakis's new position sends him ricocheting between mass demonstrations in Athens, closed-door negotiations in drab EU and IMF offices, and furtive meetings with power brokers in Washington, D.C. He consults and quarrels with Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, the economists Larry Summers and Jeffrey Sachs, and others, as he struggles to resolve Greece's debt crisis without resorting to punishing austerity measures. But despite the mass support of the Greek people and the simple logic of his arguments, Varoufakis succeeds only in provoking the fury of Europe's elite. Varoufakis's unvarnished memoir is an urgent warning that the economic policies once embraced by the EU and the White House have failed--and spawned authoritarianism, populist revolt, and instability throughout the Western world."--Inside book jacket.
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Systems built on systems consisting of systems, all tied together, each with their own agenda, and incredibly hard to knock off their path. The world of politics and economics and national debt is complex. I don't claim that I understand it after reading this book, but I feel I now have more empathy for politicians that go into politics with ideals and simply get ground down by bureaucracy, unflexible minds and the inertia of systems in motion.
Not gonna deny that this is a very one-side view on the events surrounding the Greek government-debt crisis, and that the author definitely comes off a bit too convinced of being the only smart person in every room. He had the freedom of going into this world with an ultimatum and escape plan in mind. Most career politicians don't have luxury.
Sometimes dense, often hard to keep track of numbers and debts, near impossible to understand the bureaucratic and legalistic web tying together the main players (ECB, EC, IMF, the Troika, the ‘institutions', the ‘politicians'...) but always a fascinating portrait of what must have been a very complicated and very frustrating time for all the players involved.
Listening to the Slate Money The Greece Edition episode (2015) after reading the book, was very helpful.
This needed an editor. It was super long to describe the arc from brave posturing to caving in. If I hear the word haircut again to describe reducing loans owed I might scream.
