Professor Varoufakis Might Be Right about the European Crisis but not Without a Number of Asterisks

By Con George-Kotzabasis

I was not referring as to whether Varoufakis’s arguments about the crisis were right or wrong. They might be right, after a steep climb on the learning curve. As I believe that from 2007 to 2009 he was an advisor to the former prime minister George Papandreou, whose policies totally failed Greece in the last two critical years (and which the conservative leader of the Opposition, Antonis Samaras, predicted they would), and thus he too might have learned from his own mistakes during his advisory role. I was specifically referring to his severe criticism of both Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos for their presumed mistakes during their service as technocrats to the EU, and their purported inability and political and moral strength to correct them, if such mistakes were made, and therefore, according to Professor Varoufakis, these past errors disqualifies both of them to start a new course for their countries.

If I have been mistaken and Professor Varoufakis is not a barren pessimist but an optimistic pessimist, then I would nimbly correct my error and be the first to applaud him by removing all hovering asterisks in my mind.