And the Weak Suffer What They Must?
Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
**THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER**
The most recognisable economist on the planet, Yanis Varoufakis, puts forth his case to reform an EU that currently fails it weakest citizens.
In this startling account of Europe’s economic rise and catastrophic fall, Varoufakis pinpoints the flaws in the European Union’s design – a design thought up after the Second World War, and one responsible for Europe’s fragmentation and resurgence of racist extremism.
When the financial crisis struck in 2008, the political elite’s response ensured it would be the weakest citizens of the weakest nations that paid the price for the bankers’ mistakes. Drawing on his personal experience of negotiations with the eurozone’s financiers, and offering concrete policies to reform Europe, the former finance minister of Greece shows how we concocted this mess and points our way out of it.
And The Weak Suffer What They Must? highlights our history to tell us what we must do to save European capitalism and democracy from the abyss. With the future of Europe under intense scrutiny after Brexit, this is the must-read book to explain Europe's structural flaws and how to fix them.
'If you ever doubt what is at stake in Europe - read Varoufakis's account' Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The financial catastrophe that nearly undid the euro, the flawed, fragile currency of most of Europe, is placed under a microscope by Varoufakis (The Global Minotaur), an economics professor whose seven-month tenure as Greece's finance minister in early 2015 was marked by debt crisis and bitter disputes with more powerful Eurozone members, particularly Germany. To tell this story, he delves back into economic history, starting with the "Nixon Shock" of 1971, which unraveled the Bretton Woods global monetary system installed at the end of WWII. Economists will debate the rightness of Varoufakis's convictions, summed up by a quote from ancient Greek historian Thucycdides that "rights are only pertinent between equals" and that strong powers "actually do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." He sees this principle in the decades-long development of the euro, a process marked by fractious debates between France and Germany. At his pithiest, Varoufakis is a trenchant critic he observes that the bridges and arches decorating euro banknotes are as fictitious as the political unity they represent but the density and jumpiness of the book makes it difficult to understand how his proposed solutions to Greece's, and the Eurozone's, problems might be achieved.
Customer Reviews
Enlightening
Thiis book presents the problems inherent in the EU as it stands today. It also presents a practical, "modest" set of solutions.
Varoufakis' English prose is delightfully idiomatic, and he draws many parallels to illustrate his points - for example to Greek legends such the Minotaur. Yet he is precise in his definition and use of technical and economic terms.
His experience in the corridors of Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris was clearly painful. His criticism of the self-interest of bureaucrats and bankers as they sacrifice the citizens of deficit economies such as Greece and Eire is excoriating.
This reader is left with the strong impression that the EU must wise up.
Continuing the blind ideology that despises and tramples deficit economies will eventually cause crisis in the surplus economy of Germany. That has never ended well and affects the whole world, not just Europe.