Peter
McMillan teaches English part-time and writes part-time.
Several books (fiction and non-fiction) published under
his name and a pen name (Adam Mac) are licensed under
the Creative Commons and available for free download as
PDF books.
Adults
in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment
is the memoir of Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Minister of Finance
in the first six months of 2015. Published in 2017, it is Varoufakis’
apologia for his leadership during negotiations with Greece’s
creditors—the EU and the IMF, often referred to as the
‘troika’ as the principals are three: the EC, ECB
and the IMF. Varoufakis, an academic economist, had been persuaded
by the incoming Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, to join
the newly-elected Syriza government and lead the negotiations.
Syriza, founded as a party of the radical left, was a relatively
young party, established in 2004 and only registered as a party
in 2012, and this was its first opportunity to govern. It had
won the January legislative election and declared this to be
a mandate from voters to renegotiate the EU-IMF bailout in light
of the adverse effects of the accompanying austerity requirements—protracted
recession, declining incomes and persistent double-digit unemployment.
The new government committed itself to negotiate better terms
specifically around restructuring the debt to the EU and IMF
and pushing back on the austerity demands related to labour
market flexibility (code for weakened worker rights), privatization
of government assets, pension reductions and increased taxes.
Key to Varoufakis’ strategy was the ‘nuclear’
option to leave the Eurozone (the group of EU countries using
the common euro currency) if the creditors refused to budge
on debt restructuring (e.g., with respect to interest rates
and maturity dates) and the scaling back of austerity measures.
Ultimately, it was the Prime Minister’s unwillingness
to trigger the ‘nuclear’ option even after an overwhelming
rejection of the latest creditor proposals in a July referendum
that led to Varoufakis’ resigning his cabinet portfolio
in opposition to Tsipras’ decision to accede to the creditors’
demands.
In the book, Varoufakis answers his critics in the party, the
government, Europe and elsewhere documenting his actions throughout
his tenure as finance minister. In doing so, he leaves the reader
with the sense that he single-handedly undertook the herculean
task of defending Greek democracy and the victims of the creditors
and their bailout—the old and the poor—only to discover
that he was endlessly rolling the stone up the hill and seeing
it roll back down to where he started. (Varoufakis is well known
for his literary references, though less so in this book than
Talking to My Daughter About the Economy or, How Capitalism
Works--and How It Fails, originally published in 2013 but translated
into English in 2017.) He describes his efforts as being directed
at adversaries across the table, within Greece’s oligarchic
and corrupt elite and among the members of his own government.
For anyone familiar with working in a complex bureaucratic environment,
his accounts of the duplicity, intransigent proceduralism, blatant
incompetence, internecine jurisdictional infighting and backstabbing
ring true. However, this being a memoir, it is an inherently
subjective account of who did what, when and why, though he
does provide considerable evidence to support his claims in
the main. And for those acquainted with the standard operating
procedures of the IMF and the EU’s central bank, the ECB,
the adversarial relationship between lender and borrower does
not appear to be exaggerated. Both lenders have global reputations
for being harsh and disinclined to factor in the humanitarian
consequences of their enforced fiscal austerity on the general
population. Witness the IMF’s longstanding treatment of
Argentina.
In some respects, Varoufakis’ memoir is to be read with
caveats similar to those that would apply to reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s
An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains
of the Day (a couple of recent reads), both first person
introspective narratives thematically focused on the struggle
between the individual and their conformity or complicity with
dark forces inimical to democracy. While Varoufakis’ account
does not quite portray him as the white knight in battle with
dark forces, it does generally present him in a favourable light.
He is the protagonist one roots for in his battles with IMF
and EU creditors and the conservative Greek establishment. In
no way do his words or actions suggest collaboration, yet throughout
he defends himself against what he considers to be the false
accusations of those who wish to discredit him and thereby his
program that threatened to shake up the status quo. In the book,
he writes, “Indeed, while these lines are being written
a charge of high treason is hanging over me in Greece’s
parliament for undermining Prime Minister Tsipras by means of
a ‘secret plot’.”
So, just how much veracity should the reader place in the narrative
given that the narrator recounts numerous lengthy conversations?
The narrator is, after all, reaching back to the past, and one
must acknowledge that one's objectivity is naturally influenced
by the passage of time, the subjective nature of remembering
and the singular objective of a memoir, viz. to get a ‘fairer’
hearing. As an academic he is accustomed to presenting his arguments
with extensive notes, references and appendices. And of course,
in the age of massive stores of information and data easily
accessible by google research, one has to be especially diligent
in maintaining accuracy. But absolute objectivity is impossible
as the minds of others are fundamentally inscrutable.
There are two important themes in the book that bear mentioning.
The first relates to the conflict between bureaucracy and democracy
in general and the issue of the democratic sovereignty of Greece
as a member of the EU in particular. The second concerns the
role of the whistleblower, the outsider, in the context of the
individual versus the state. These will be taken in turn.
Varoufakis gives many, many examples of how the bureaucracies
of the IMF, EU and Greek state frustrate democracy. First, to
the question whether voters can adequately comprehend the complex
issues that are decided by those with information access and
expertise in Washington, Brussels and Athens—insiders
whose ideological and technical fallibility was exposed to the
world during the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. In Chapter
16, Varoufakis recounts a conversation concerning a proposed
referendum on whether to accept or reject the creditors’
latest proposal in which the Italian foreign minister asks how
normal people can be expected to vote on issues beyond their
knowledge and understanding. Varoufakis responded,
We are strong believers in the capacity of the people, of
voters, to be active citizens . . . And to make a considered
analysis and take decisions responsibly concerning the future
of their country. This is what democracy is all about.
This
gets to a foundational question about democracy. Should the
people always defer to their elected representatives or should
people also have access to direct democracy, e.g., by means
of referendums? Related to this is the question who is to determine
which people are qualified to vote. This is one of the themes
of Italo Calvino’s short story, "The Watcher,"
(another recent read) where the narrator, a poll watcher for
the Communist Party in an Italian election, wavers over the
seemingly easy question of whether the residents of Turin's
Cottolengo Hospital for Incurables, all of whom are incidentally
expected to vote for the Christian Democrat in this Catholic
facility, can justly be denied the right to vote on account
of mental and/or physical disability . . . despite the anti-egalitarian
resemblance to Hitler’s Germany.
A second aspect of the theme of bureaucracy and democracy is
the fact that in the Eurozone (and the EU as a whole for that
matter), not all countries are equal. This is especially the
case with respect to economic policies that spill over into
the political realm. For example, if membership in the Eurozone
requirements compliance with strict deficit and debt levels,
why is it that the EU’s central bank is more lenient towards
Germany and France, the former the dominant economy in the EU
and the latter one of the founding members of the EU’s
precursor, the European Coal and Steel Community? Why are the
relatively poor southern European countries—pejoratively
referred to as the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and
Spain)—judged to be profligate spenders whose people deserve
the severe austerity policies of the IMF and the EU?
To illustrate his antipathy for such second-class citizen treatment,
Varoufakis describes a political cartoon by Yannis Ioannou in
which,
Greece appears on her knees, her arms bound behind her back,
struggling to escape. A menacing figure representing the EU,
wielding an executioner’s axe, castigates her for refusing
to stay still and place her head obediently on the block:
‘Will you at last show a modicum of responsibility?’
And
to explain why the Greek demos might be skeptical of the IMF’s
and EU’s good intentions and offended by the intrusion
on Greek sovereignty, Varoukis offers this perception of the
foreign creditors:
For years now groups of technocrats dispatched by the IMF,
the European Commission and the European Central Bank had
arrived at Athens airport, from which they had been driven
at high speed under police escort in a convoy of Mercedes-Benzes
to the various ministries, where they had proceeded to interrogate
elected ministers and dictate to them policies that affected
the lives of millions. Even if these policies had been wonderful,
they would have been resented.
A
particularly telling anecdote is given in the following exchange,
‘You have no right to do this. Just vote no!’
A young woman shouted these words at a member of parliament
as he struggled past the Syntagma Square occupiers into Parliament
House to vote for one of the Bailoutistan 2.0 bills.
‘Who are you to judge what I should or shouldn’t
vote for?’ he barked back at her as he elbowed his way
in, sweat running down his face.
Her devastating answer came effortlessly: ‘Who do I
have to be?
Varoufakis
believes that the creditors wanted to make an example of Greece,
punishing it severely as a deterrent to other debtor countries.
Incidentally, this is where the lenders choose to behave with
discretion—or bias—giving the lie to the notion
that they are being perfectly objective and disallowing politics
to influence their economic policymaking. According to him,
the fact that Syriza is a leftist party and was challenging
the authority of the troika made Greece a perfect target and
example for the smaller debtor countries. The exceptions: Germany
was the original sponsor of the deficit and debt rules in the
Stability and Growth Pact and had the political and economic
influence to avoid punishment for breaching the thresholds,
and France owing to its status as a founding member and its
relative power in the Eurozone could also expect greater latitude
in its deficit and debt management. The southern Europeans were
the ones who needed the lesson in fiscal discipline.
The second key theme of the book to be presented in this review
concerns the role of the whistleblower, which is what Varoufakis
considers himself to be. He makes the case that his support
for a European solution, i.e., for Greece to remain in the Eurozone,
and for a fair and just agreement on resolving Greece’s
debt crisis was unflagging from the time he assumed his portfolio
as finance minister until the time that he resigned. He maintains
that he sought fairness for both Greece and its creditors and
justice for the Greek people as well as for the people of debtor
countries across the Eurozone, insofar as a new precedent would
be established. One can almost imagine him playing the part
of Antigone in Sophocles’ eponymous play—or at least
seeing himself playing such a role.
* * * * * * *
The
book is well written and quite accessible to a lay audience.
It does not require intimate knowledge of sovereign debt crises,
and it is an unexpectedly captivating narrative given subject
matter that tends to be abstruse. Varoufakis alternates between
being an outsider and an insider weaving a storyline that could
even sell in Hollywood as a tale of political intrigue, though
much of the internal monologue about the complex struggle between
fiscal responsibility and democratic governance would be lost.
Nevertheless, the protagonist could be characterized as somewhere
between quixotic and worldly-wise. And, unless you are fairly
knowledgeable about the events and details of the Greek debt
crisis during the period from January to early July 2015, the
book is surprisingly suspenseful. For the reviewer, it was not
altogether certain exactly how things would turn out in the
summer of 2015. Was this in fact a modern-day Greek tragedy?
NOTA
BENE: The title is taken from remarks
made by Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director and former
French minister of finance, with reference to the how participants
in the debt negotiations were behaving. It does not appear
to have been borrowed from its frequent usage during the Trump
Administration, which came later.
