Thursday, March 24, 2016

COMING: A Book by Yanis Varoufakis on the Gold Standard?

Yanis Varoufakis, who was for awhile the Greek finance minister during the height of the Greek financial crisis, until he was forced out by European banksters who found him too difficult to deal with, has written an about to be released book, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future.

FT's Peter Spiegel sat down for lunch with Varoufakis and reports:
Nine months since resigning, Varoufakis is now a regular on the lecture circuit and serves as a freelance adviser to a melange of leftist political leaders. Before entering politics, he held positions teaching economics at universities around the world. But the ostensible reason for our meeting today is the imminent publication of his book, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?. I tore through it eagerly, hoping for a first-person account of his stormy tenure in government. Instead, it’s a rather long discourse on the gold standard and its demise where, somewhat unexpectedly, Paul Volcker is the protagonist, followed by a surprisingly conventional criticism of how the eurozone crisis played out.
From the book's blurb:
 A titanic battle is being waged for Europe’s integrity and soul, with the forces of reason and humanism losing out to growing irrationality, authoritarianism, and malice, promoting inequality and austerity. The whole world has a stake in a victory for rationality, liberty, democracy, and humanism.
In January 2015, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor teaching in Austin, Texas, was elected to the Greek parliament with more votes than any other member of parliament. He was appointed finance minister and, in the whirlwind five months that followed, everything he had warned about—the perils of the euro’s faulty design, the European Union’s shortsighted austerity policies, financialized crony capitalism, American complicity and rising authoritarianism—was confirmed as the “troika” (the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission) stonewalled his efforts to resolve Greece’s economic crisis.
Here, Varoufakis delivers a fresh look at the history of Europe’s crisis and America’s central role in it. He presents the ultimate case against austerity, proposing concrete policies for Europe that are necessary to address its crisis and avert contagion to America, China, and the rest of the world. With passionate, informative, and at times humorous prose, he warns that the implosion of an admittedly crisis–ridden and deeply irrational European monetary union should, and can, be avoided at all cost.


4 comments:

  1. Hey Bob,
    FT is not worth a subscription for me. Is Volcker a good guy or bad guy in this book? 'Cause in MY book he saved America for a couple of decades.

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    1. FT doesn't say but I plan to read and review the book. I agree with you on Vlocker, far from perfect but he killed an inflation that was getting way out of control.

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  2. Paul Volker: “Gold Was The Enemy”

    JBGJ attended a meeting in NY last night at which Paul Volcker spoke. The fervor with which Volcker repeatedly asserted that gold was ‘the enemy’ during his term as Federal Reserve Chairman was striking. – John Brimelow, “JB’s Gold Jottings”

    That meeting referenced was last night, March 25, 2015. Over the years Paul Volker has made it no secret that the Federal Reserve has assumed a policy in which it seeks to control the price of gold. From his memoirs, excerpted by “The Nikkei Weekly” in reference to the dollar revaluation of the dollar by the U.S. Treasury on February 12, 1973 (Volker was the Treasury’s undersecretary for international monetary affairs at the time) November 2004:

    That day the United States announced that the dollar would be devalued by 10 percent. By switching the yen to a floating exchange rate, the Japanese currency appreciated, and a sufficient realignment in exchange rates was realized. Joint intervention in gold sales to prevent a steep rise in the price of gold, however, was not undertaken. That was a mistake. - source link

    Gold is the mortal of fiat currency and therefore is the mortal enemy of modern Central Bankers. Fiat currency is the mechanism by which those who are in control of the system suck wealth away from everyone else.

    http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/paul-volker-gold-was-the-enemy/

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