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cali

(114,904 posts)
Mon Feb 15, 2016, 12:17 PM Feb 2016

Former Greek Finance Minister on Bernie Sanders


Yanis Varoufakis: Bernie Sanders’ backers aren’t voting for socialism


The last socialist to freak out the establishment with a radical plan, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, said Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is earning votes for his common sense, not his political theory, in a recent Quora post:

Last year, the Greeks elected people like me not because they suddenly became leftwing! Similarly with Bernie Sanders. The New Hampshire voters did not suddenly discover they were democratic… socialists! They just had enough of phoney politics and decided to back someone who has been saying the same common sense stuff for decades. They would not vote for a ‘transition to socialism’ (like my voters would not have voted me in last year if I was proposing such a ‘transition’ to them).

But they understand that Bernie and us—his comrades on the Atlantic’s other side—are modest in our aims. We understand that socialism is far, far away—and that it will probably only become pertinent when technology develops further … For now, all we propose is the return to basic liberal democratic principles that the establishment has confined to the dustbin of history—at the cost of everyone (except some, very few, entrepreneurial spivs).

Varoufakis captivated the media with his long-shot efforts to push his country out of a punishing debt repayment plan, but they ended in his own resignation and national capitulation to the EU’s unrealistic demands. Last week, the IMF official in charge of monitoring Greece wrote that that the country’s inadequate pension reforms and the EU’s refusal to consider debt relief mean a Greek exit from the euro zone will soon be back on the table.

<snip>
http://qz.com/617049/yanis-varoufakis-bernie-sanders-backers-arent-voting-for-socialism/
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Former Greek Finance Minister on Bernie Sanders (Original Post) cali Feb 2016 OP
What does Hillary's position on Austerity reveal? cali Feb 2016 #1
In other words. PyaarRevolution Feb 2016 #2

PyaarRevolution

(814 posts)
2. In other words.
Mon Feb 15, 2016, 12:40 PM
Feb 2016

They didn't go far enough with the pension reforms?! To SCREW people with austerity?! The same organization that keeps South American governments in poverty by forcing those govts to take ridiculous loans with Draconian terms or to face assassination of said leader("Confessions Of An Economic Hitman&quot .
Yanis is right and he's GREAT!!!! I remember him leaving the Greek Government because he smelled the blood in the water, that Syriza was going to sell out to the IMF and he wanted no part of it.
We need people like Yanis to serve as economic consultants to our government.

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