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Valve's Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Greece's Finance Minister
eldavojohn writes A turnover in the Greek government resulted from recent snap elections placing SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) in power — just shy of an outright majority by two seats. Atheist, and youngest Prime Minister in Greek history since 1865, Alexis Tsipras has been appointed the new prime minister and begun taking immediate drastic steps against the recent austerity laws put in place by prior administrations. One such step has been to appoint Valve's economist Yanis Varoufakis to position of Finance Minister of Greece. For the past three years Varoufakis has been working at Steam to analyze and improve the Steam Market but now has the opportunity to improve one of the most troubled economies in the world.
I don't know how to feel about this one...
EU trading cards to the rescue!
Time to swap those Euros for trading cards!
...is farm more gold. That'll solve all of our economic woes!
Finance Minister of Greece ranks pretty high on my list of "you could pay me enough, but it would be A LOT" jobs.
If he's working on "Valve's time", then he'll produce the first draft about possible solutions around 10 years after Greece has ceased to exist as a country.
and transitions to a diversified, hat-based economy.
I don't really want to compare Yanis to a gambling murderer, but I am anyways. This sounds a bit too much like John Law getting appointed to fix the French Economy. That turned out great for everyone didn't it. Appointing someone to run your economy who's primary job in economics was to make a bunch of gambling addicts to improve steams revenue doesn't sound like the kind of person who should be fixing an economy. But who knows, maybe he'll do something good and be crowned a genius.
Yes, he's worked with Valve but the the clickbait article makes it seem like that's all he ever did before being appointed.
Wikipedia has a page about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis
I can't help but think I'm not alone in deciding to wait to invest in Greece until all the DLC comes out and the price goes down.
you'd think he'd believe in at least one of them. Damn atheists. Get him to a nunnery, quick!
Digital Drachmas, 75% off!
He basically wants Eurozone banks to have a single rescue fund, for the ECB to issue bonds, and the EIB to invest into the periphery economies to get out of the crisis.
There's just one problem. Even if they make sense none of those things can be done by Greece alone. I hope he has a Plan B.
You can see him explain his views on the current economic crisis in this video.
I've been wanting to buy a good bunch of grappa. But, the reviews have been iffy so I've been waiting for it to be marked down.
That is some unexpected news, as I was reading an interview of a French economic newspaper with this guy.
Let me chime in for a personal revendication which might be useful for the working or modest or youth classes. Counterstrike 1.x is lacking servers both in quantity and quality, a small few are nice but it is a pain to suffer 24/7 dust2, zombie mods (wtf?) and too many gun game servers. We should organize to provide community servers with good map rotations, good map voting (but servers without voting as in the good old times too) and ensure popular education with such classics as cs_militia, de_aztec (CS 1.5 version), de_prodigy, de_nuke (old version where you can climb on roof), de_ccble you name it. Even a hundred servers ought to require not many hardware resources these days, they probably could run on one box.
Counter-Strike 1.6 also allows anyone to compete as it will run on a modest PC and even with a really crappy OpenGL driver (linux) at high framerates, actually a low end CRT monitor at 85Hz is plenty fine there. Counter-Strike 1.5 is even less demanding, doesn't need Steam and can still be run though there's the little aspect of no CD key checking on the network (everyone gets 2^32 - 1 as the CD key)
No need to get in debt to buy recent PC parts!
Assuming Alexis Tsipras is unsatisfied with his old job, maybe he's leaving just to blow off steam. But I don't know how much good that will do him: the job of Finance Minister of Greece is bound to be a pressure cooker. I just hope the problems there don't boil over.
Greece is seriously screwed and the election of the communists is only going to make things worse. On the resume this is going to look about as appealing as the entry for the guy who designed the brown zune.
Valve sale on Greece debt! 75% off! Limited time only, until insolvency supplies last.
The only thing he's going to find in Greece is what we all know is already there.
Systemic, ingrained, centuries old culture of corruption. Literally multi-generational families living rich off bribery and graft. So bad that is strangles the Greek economy and the reason they are in the shitter today.
The only thing he'll get by exposing and publicizing Greek economic issues is an early grave.
What can possibly go wrong?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
they need a magician. They are broke and no amount of populism or rhetoric is going to create wealth out of thin area. That said, nearly every major nation is broke, including the USA - the difference is there are still people willing to lend at reasonable rates to those other nations. There will come a day where that will no longer be the case and as Greece goes so will go the world.
I for one welcome our new virtual-currency overlords.
Geddit? Because Valve made Half-life 2, and...
Oh, forget it.
The fact that he is atheist has nothing to do with the story. Why mention it?
So I've heard that the Greeks haven't enjoyed austerity. What they really don't like isn't austerity, it's living within their means. I hope Germany finally cuts out it's problem child. No economist in the world can save Greece from itself. Greece can't save itself from stopping austerity. That's like blaming your doctor for telling you to stop drinking with liver psoriasis. There are good and bad economists. Bad economists think they can control or even foresee the economy. A good economist whispers in the government's ear that they aren't immortal and can't fight market theory.
This is nothing new... I remember my 1999 "all inclusive" vacation to Greece.
And hats, hats, as far as the eye can see!
There'd be precedent for that in the European Union. England had a law in effect from 1571 through 1597 to make failure to wear a British-made wool cap in public a crime.
France has had more (actual and technical) defaults on its debt in the last 500 years than Greece has had on its own debt. France's average time to resolve a default (renegotiate debt) is less than 1 year. Greece's average time to resolve a default is 44 years.
Conclusion: The core problem Greece has is that its people are stubborn and blame the lender for Greece's bad spending habits. It is time for the Greek people to say
"diko moi lathos" and make even deeper cuts to government spending.
Bread lines, rationing, shortages, and a complete lack of toilet paper.
It will be good to see Greece moving away from policies that were deliberately designed to keep creditors afloat, when banks irresponsibly lent them un-repayable amounts of credit. Hopefully Greece will now default, and shut down the insolvent banks.
Europe's most successful era was that of the application of socialist policies. The corrupt neo-liberal bank/frauster mentality needs to be eradicated, and a return to socialist values implemented.
I don't understand the mention that their leader is an atheist. I guess that most people with normal levels of brain power will be, given that believing in witches, gobblins, santa claus, the tooth fairy, god, mohamud, trolls, or jesus is just supersitious mumbo-jumbo. Surely nobody intelligent enough to rise to a position of real political power (at least not in a democratic country), is going to be stupid enough to believe any of that contemptibly childish nonsense.
Making sure it wasn't April 1st?
My knowledge of Greek economics doesn't go much beyond NPR, but the changes needed seem pretty straightforward:
1. Reform civil service
2. Aggressively prosecute tax fraud
3. Tax church assessts (i.e. church either make is assets poductive or sells them to someone who will)
An angry coalition leftists and iconoclasts might be pretty good at 2 of these things. Maybe all 3?
Don't be mislead by the debt problem. If Greece had economic growth, it would not have a debt problem.
Greece rankes "mostly unfree" on the Index of Economic Freedom:
By the way, regarding "austerity", Greece's public expenditures equal 58.5 percent of domestic output. That does not sound very austere to me.
Idiot redistributionists. Apparently they do not understand the basic problem of running out of other people's money. And it's gone. Zip. Zilch. Nada. He has no bargaining chips whatsoever.
I feel like taking bets on when the rioting starts and make some REAL money.
Another socialist..
Calling him "Valve's Economist" implies that this is Yanis Varoufakis' main role in life. It's not. He's done some economics research at Valve and some consulting there. He's mainly known for other stuff, as you can see from other posts here or from Googling him.
soylentnews.org
This more correct than incorrect
The EU cannot work. A common currency is incompatible with the indolent and politically unstable south and the industrious north. The Germans don't have enough money to support all of the taker nations. The ECB should write off Greek debt and cut them loose. It will be better for Greeks too, who, effectively contained, can pursue their socialist fantasies to the dead end.
The patient died, but the operation was a success.
Germans, in general, are not willing to work 60 hour weeks to support Greeks working 20 hour weeks. All the necessary reforms are things that are anathema to the new Greek administration, who (by all accounts) intends to double-down on everything that has made the Greek economy what it is today. We'll see how that works out for them.
Modern Economics is basically about picking up pennies off the ground, while standing in front of a steam roller.
Trying to predict with any degree of accuracy something as random and chaotic as the market (In Greece none the less) is bound to end up going poorly on a long enough time line.
The radio program This American Life had a good show on the Eurozone in general and the Greek situation in particular:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/455/continental-breakup
It's a little old but offers good insight into what's going on there and why it matters to the rest of us.
Why not treat Greece like a Company or an Individual?
Send in the Administrators and the Baliffs. Greece still has lots of assets, sell them off, starting with the museums, some of the islands.
Fire the entire civil service and make them reapply for their jobs, supervised by some people who know how to run a government - maybe the Swiss and Austrians?
Or simply let Germany foreclose on the entire country and no more debt! And all the people are then the responsibility of the German govt to house and feed.
It can get a lot worse.
fact
Good god! The proper spelling for "prizes" was even right there in the link you posted but you sure as fuck couldn't be assed to fix the rest of your shit. Lazy bastard!
My suggestion from 2008 when Greece ran out of tear gas: https://groups.google.com/foru... :-), no obvious external enemies declaring war, and so on. And they are so worried about their future ability to make and use things (which is how I translate "fears for Greece's economic future") that they are running out of tear gas? This all makes no *physical* sense. The place should be a paradise. Instead it is in "self-destruct mode" according to one editor. It must be *ideology*. Or, more correctly, ideology *embodied* in a certain type of productive infrastructure. ... :-) Instead, we have a system in the middle that produces some variety at a huge expense of human effort taken away from family and civic duties, and it is a system now with so many questions about its uncertain future (including that anyone who is young will have a dignified place in the economic scheme of things) that an entire country has just run out of tear gas. This makes no sense (except of course, that some people do benefit from this, like tear gas manufacturers, school teachers who get paid to keep kids off the streets preparing them for non-existent jobs, people who are near the top of the economic hierarchy already and feel secure, etc.). :-) But, no need to move with the internet really. Maybe somebody on the list could coordinate moving the rioters off th
"Now, does this make any sense if you understand the possibilities of open manufacturing or an open society? In Greece you have a warm climate, access to oceans, lots of sun and wind, an educated populace with a 2000+ year history of democracy (on and off
So, ironically, we have the worst of both systems. We could have a really centralized system run efficiently with a tiny fraction of the workforce now, with a lot less variety perhaps (that is, all the old Soviet Central Planning stuff would work now that we have the internet and great software and great designs and great computers if we accept some voluntary simplicity), but with everything very cheap (essentially, just given away) and 99% of the population doing whatever they wanted with their time. Or, we could have a freewheeling diverse gift economy of local open manufacturing where people just make whatever they want in an open way, with all sorts of useful and useless items. (Aspects of the two extremes may even converge, since what are the 99% of people going to do with the generic stuff but customize it?
Anyway, this suggests one target of open manufacturing could be a community of size ranging from Iceland (about 300,000 people) to Greece (about 11,000,000 people). That's certainly an interesting size range. I would think 99% closure of those economies by mass should be easily doable. Computer chips, some medicines, and maybe some other specialized components might be the major imports after the system was set up. Note that while one may not expect Greece or Iceland to "self-replicate" any time soon, the ability do do so ensures it can be self-repairing.
Anyway, it kind of comes down to how much economic security is worth to a country compared to minimum effort. Given the massive youth unemployment in Greece, and the economic fears of depending on a global economy, it would seem like maximizing productive efficiency through participating in global production would not be at the top of their priority list now that they are out of tear gas. Unfortunately, they did not invest in this research ten years ago. So, this is only theoretical at this point. It might take a very expensive crash program to bring together thousands of researchers for a year to make headway in any time that might make a difference. Still, politically, that is an out for Greece. We could all move there, recruit all the educated youths off the streets, and spend a year figuring out how to make Greece work for everybody and be 99% self-sufficient by mass.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
That is what is deeply wrong with the Euro (although the European Union was probably otherwise a good idea). The Euro went the wrong way. A solid currency needs to be backed by a community, city, state, or nation that has a well-defined common constitution governing the issuance of the currency according to the community's needs. The Euro never had that. Also, Jane Jacobs said currencies need to fluctuate based on the management of those communities -- so the more currencies you have, the finer grained-signals can be sent about people's confidence which helps communities self-correct their policies and manufacturing base and similar factors underlying their overall wealth production (including from "import replacement" as their currency becomes low valued relative to others and imports become expensive). Jane Jacobs outlines how the economic life of cities can be self-correcting if they have their own currencies, but if you have only one currency for many cities, then this only applies to the most powerful capital city and the rest of them tend to suffer relatively. So, the Euro was a dumb idea. Especially dumb in an age of computers and digital currencies that can be instantly converted. And now many countries in Europe (including Greece) are paying for it in human suffering.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Yianis is one of the very few economists that actually has a proposal to fix EUs broken economy. Look it up: modest proposal.