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The Global Minotaur

The Global Minotaur

Yanis Varoufakis | Paul Mason

(2015)

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Book Details

Abstract

'The emerging rock-star of Europe's anti-austerity uprising.'
Daily Telegraph
'A spirited book.' New Yorker
In this remarkable and provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, explodes the myth that financialisation, ineffectual regulation of banks, greed and globalisation were the root causes of both the Eurozone crisis and the global economic crisis. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a Global Minotaur was born.
Today's deepening crisis in Europe is just one of the inevitable symptoms of the weakening Minotaur; of a global system which is now as unsustainable as it is imbalanced. Going beyond this, Varoufakis reveals how we might reintroduce a modicum of reason into what has become a perniciously irrational economic order.
An essential account of the socio-economic events and hidden histories that have shaped the world as we now know it.
Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece. He was for many years a professor of economics in Britain, Australia and the USA before he entered government. He is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. Since resigning from Greece's finance ministry he has co-founded an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, which campaigns for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of Adults in the Room and the Sunday Times Number 1 bestseller And the Week Suffer What They Must?

'The emerging rock-star of Europe's anti-austerity uprising'
Daily Telegraph

'His argument has an ambitious sweep.'
The Times

'This trenchant and readable critique sets the eurozone crisis within a much longer context.'
London Evening Standard

'A spirited book.'
New Yorker

'The book is one of those exceedingly rare publications of which one can say they are urgent, timely and absolutely necessary.'
Terry Eagleton

'Yanis Varoufakis is a rare economist: skilled at explaining ideas, happy to join in public debates and able to put his discipline in a broader context.'
Aditya Chakrabortty, Guardian lead economics writer

'Yanis is one of the best, brightest and most innovative economists on the planet.'
Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics

'Clearly and strongly written, with logical organization building towards simple conclusions, the book is an easy yet rewarding read ... perhaps should become the standard way we think about the nature of our increasingly dysfunctional world economy.'
Joel Campbell, International Affairs

'In the most comprehensive guide to the contemporary economic crisis yet written, Yanis Varoufakis traces out the path from post-war US economic supremacy to the current predicament.'
Gary Dymski, University of California, Riverside

'If you want to know how serious the current crisis is, you should read this book. With much eloquence, Yanis Varoufakis argues that the current financial problems are connected to the emerging fault lines of the international monetary system.'
Shaun Hargreaves-Heap, University of East Anglia

'An all-encompassing account of Western postwar history, seen through the lens of one overriding problem: how to resolve the imbalances in financial flows between nations.'
The European Legacy


Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Front Cover Front cover
About the Author ii
Title Page iii
Copyright iv
Contents v
Abbreviations vii
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xviii
1: Introduction 1
The 2008 Moment 1
Six Explanations for Why It Happened 4
The Parallax Challenge 20
The Global Minotaur: A First Glimpse 22
2: Laboratories of the Future 26
Our Two Great Leaps Forward 26
Condorcet’s Secret in the Age of Capital 29
The Paradox of Success and Redemptive Crises 33
Raising the Stakes: Crashes, Crises and the Role of Finance 35
The Crash of 1929 38
Midas Loses His Touch: The Collapse of the Gold Standard 43
The Two Gremlins: The Labour and Money Markets 45
The Ghost in the Machine 50
Epilogue: Incubation of the Global Plan 54
3: The Global Plan 57
The Remarkable Opportunity 57
Bretton Woods 58
The Lost Opportunity 61
The Rise of the Fallen 67
The Marshall Plan to Dollarize Europe and Rehabilitate Germany 71
The European Union and the Japanese Miracle 75
The Global Plan’s Geopolitical Ideology 79
American Domestic Policies During the Global Plan 82
Conclusion: Capitalism’s Golden Age 85
4: The Global Minotaur 90
The Global Plan’s Achilles Heel 90
The Global Plan Unravels 91
Interregnum: The 1970s Oil Crises, Stagflation and the Rise of Interest Rates 94
The Global Minotaur 100
The Minotaur’s Four Charismas 101
A Most Peculiar Global Surplus Recycling Mechanism 109
Conclusion: The Global Minotaur’s Glittering Triumph 110
5: The Beast’s Handmaidens 113
Minotaur Envy 113
Takeover Fever: Wall Street Creates Metaphysical Values 115
Hedging and Leverage 120
An Ideology of Cheapness for the Age of Excess: The Walmart Effect 123
Tainted Houses, Toxic Cash: Wall Street Generates Its Own Private Money 127
Toxic Theory, Part A: Trickle-Down Politics, Supply-Side Economics 133
Toxic Theory, Part B: Economic Models and Assorted Delusions 139
Epilogue: The Writing on the Wall 142
6: Crash 146
Tumbling Piles 146
Chronicle of a Crash Foretold: Credit Crunch, Bailouts and the Socialization of Nearly Everything 147
The Low-Down 160
Epilogue: The Slide into ‘Bankruptocracy’ 164
7: The Handmaidens Strike Back 169
With a Little Help from My Friends: The Geithner–Summers Plan 169
Europe’s Version of the Geithner–Summers Plan 174
Biting the Hand that Saved Them: The Ugliest Handmaiden at Its Boldest 178
The Return of Predatory Governance, Vacuous Economics and the Curious Tragedy of Market Fundamentalism 181
Epilogue: The Worst of Both Worlds 183
8: The Minotaur’s Global Legacy: The Dimming Sun, the Wounded Tigers, a Flighty Europa and an Anxious Dragon 185
The Dimming Sun: Japan’s Lost Decades 185
Wounded Tigers: Japan, America and the South East Asian Crisis 191
Germany’s Europe 195
The Deutschmark’s New Clothes 198
German Reunification and Its Global Significance 201
First as History, then as Farce: Europe’s Bank Bail-Outs 203
Greeks Bearing Debts 206
Tumbling Mountaineers and the Euro Crisis 208
Why Is Europe Dithering When the Crisis Could Be Resolved Simply and Quickly? 209
The Dragon Soars, Then Plunges into Angst 212
Epilogue: Between the West’s Bankruptocracy and the East’s Fragile Strength 219
9: A World Without the Minotaur 221
The Global Minotaur Hypothesis: A Summary 222
The Minotaur Is Dead! Long Live America's Deficits! 224
The Minotaur's Death in Pictures 227
America After the Minotaur 229
Quantitative Easing as the Most Complex Form of Wishful Thinking 232
Europe After the Minotaur 236
China After the Minotaur 244
Postscript 247
History's Actors 247
Self-Restraint and the Dangers of Success 249
Can the Minotaur Survive? 250
A World Economy Stunned 251
The Missing Mechanism 252
And Now What? In Search of History's Next Actors 253
Notes 257
Recommended Reading 267
Select Bibliography 269
Index 272
Back Cover Back cover