Name: And the weak suffer what they must?
ISBN: 9781568585048

And the weak suffer what they must?

""The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must." --Thucydides The fate of the global economy hangs in the balance, and Europe is doing its utmost to undermine it, to destabilize America, and to spawn new forms of authoritarianism. Europe has dragged the world into hideous morasses twice in the last one hundred years... it can do it again. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Finance Minister of Greece, shows here that the Eurozone is a house of cards destined to fall without a radical change in direction. And, if the European Union falls apart, he argues, the global economy will not be far behind. Once America abandoned Europe in 1971 from the dollar zone, Europe's leaders decided to create a monetary union of 18 nations without control of their own money, without democratic accountability, and without a government to support the Central Bank. This bizarre economic super-power was equipped with none of the shock absorbers necessary to contain a financial crisis, while its design ensured that, when it came, the crisis would be massive. When disaster hit in 2009, Varoufakis argues that Europe turned against itself, humiliating millions of innocent citizens, driving populations to despair, and buttressing a form of bigotry unseen since the Second World War. Here, Varoufakis offers concrete policies that the rest of the world can take part in to intervene and help save Europe from impending catastrophe, and presents the ultimate case against austerity.

What Hacker News says

leto_iiFeb 2020

Might be worth taking a look at And the Weak Suffer What They Must?. While I still think Varoufakis is a bit too much of a calculated politician, the book is compelling in showing that the treatment imposed on Greece stemmed to an important degree from the creditor state's desire to save their own banks and from cultural animus.

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poloticsAug 2018

You wrote: "Germany is carrying half of EU on its shoulders." This statement is ludicrous! There is no prosperity transfer of any kind to poorer states in the EU, and a very clear wealth transfer to the center of the EU. May I suggest you read "And the weak suffer what they must" by Yannis Varoufakis?

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sromJul 2018

1) Adults in the room - Yanis Varoufakis (2017)

must read for anyone leaving in, or interested in the politics of the European Union; the book is a political memoir of Varoufakis' fight against the EU institutions during his 6 months as finance minister of Greece in early 2015.

The people of Greece had elected the syriza government to put an end to the incredibly harsh austerity they've been through during the past 5 years. But the Greek government had agreed to, and was bounded by the terms of the two bailout programs from the Eurozone & the IMF. Faced with a dilemma, democracies must compromise. But Democracy has no place in the Eurozone, as Wolfgang Shäuble, former finance minister of Germany, puts it very clearly during his first meeting with Varoufakis: "Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy".

Three years after the events recounted, this book is still very much relevant, and anyone wanting to understand EU politics ought to read it.

2) And the Weak Suffer What They Must? - Yanis Varoufakis (2016)

Companion book to the first one, it explained how the Eurozone crisis came to be by recounting its history from the end of the second world war to today. A key book to understand the institutions of the European Union, whether or not you agree with Varoufakis' economic theories. I highly recommend it, as it is very well written, in plain english, with no economic background required.

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micro_camJan 2017

Yanis Varoufakis "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future"

Varoufakis fascinates and inspires me in that he studied math and mathematical statistics at a high level and moved into Economics at a high level (he's a professor and recently he was greek finance minister) yet resists the tendency to reduce everything down to a shity mathematical model.

He does a better job than most at exploring the factors that contributed to our current political and economic situation (the book was published before trump's win but deals with analogs in greece and europe).

And it opens with his childhood memories of hiding under a blanket to hide the sound of democratic radio from fascist ears.

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grub5000Dec 2016

> The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy by Yanis Varoufakis [1]

Have you read "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?"? It's fantastic. Really helped shape my view before the EU Referendum here in the UK.

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B1FF_PSUVMJul 2023

"Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state", as a wit later put it.

But yeah, reading Thucydides (also an out-of-sorts Athenian) leaves you with a lingering doubt about the inherent goodness of political regimes - "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

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