The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy (Economic Controversies)

The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy (Economic Controversies)

Language: English

Pages: 304

ISBN: 178360610X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In this provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis—the fiery former finance minister in Greek’s new Syriza-led government—explodes the myth that financialization, ineffective regulation of banks, and generalized greed and globalization were the root causes of the global economic crisis. Rather, he shows, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise, one that can be traced all the way back to the Great Depression, then through the stagflation of the 1970s, when a “Global Minotaur” was born. Today’s deepening crisis in Europe, Varoufakis shows, is just one of the inevitable signs of the weakening Minotaur—of a global system that is now as unsustainable as it is unbalanced. Rather than simply diagnose a problem, however, Varoufakis also offers a solution, a program for introducing reason into what has become a perniciously irrational economic order.

An essential, powerfully polemical account of the hidden histories that continue to shape our world and economy today, this book from a major player on the stage of world finance, and with a new introduction by Paul Mason, will be essential reading for economists, policy makers, and regular citizens alike.

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green shoots to flourish and grow into the mighty pillars that the dollar-zone required for long-term support. Never before in history has a victor supported the societies that it had so recently defeated in order to enhance its own long-term power, turning them, in the process, into economic giants. The Global Plan’s geopolitical ideology The United States emerged from the Second World War with a healthy respect for the colonized and considerable hostility toward their European colonizers.

white working class, but also racism. The Great Society will be remembered for its effective dismantling of American apartheid, especially in the southern states. Between 1964 and 1966, four pieces of legislation saw to this major transformation of American society. Moreover, the Great Society had a strong Keynesian element that came to the fore as Johnson’s unconditional war on poverty. In its first three years, 1964–66, $1 billion were spent annually on various programmes to boost educational

1990s) were relatively unscathed by the Crash of 2008. While it is true that China successfully used simple Keynesian methods to delay the crisis, spending more than $350 billion on infrastructure works in one year (and close to twice that by 2010), a study by Beijing University shows that poverty rates have actually increased, the rate of private expenditure has fallen (with public investment accounting for the continuing growth) and even consumption has declined markedly (as a proportion of

people of the IMF, turned these economies into the financial equivalent of scorched earth. So, quite naturally, when these nations eventually rose from their ashes, they saved and saved and saved, so as to preclude any repetition of that nightmare. And what happened to these savings? They flocked to New York, fuelling further the Minotaur’s continuing rise. Paradoxically, the ‘never again’ spirit that emerged from the wreck of the Latin American and South East Asian crises proved that the

nein-cubed: nein to a bail-out for Greece; nein to interest rate relief; nein to a Greek default. That triple nein was unique in the history of public (or even private) finance. Imagine if, on 15 September 2008, Secretary Paulson had said to Lehman Brothers: ‘No, I am not going to bail you out’ (which he did say); ‘No, I shall not organize very low interest rate loans for you’ (which he also probably said); and ‘No, you cannot file for bankruptcy’ (which he would never have said). That last ‘no’

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