The fall of the Athens Stock Exchange accelerates, which by mid-afternoon leaves more than five percentage points on the ground. Sales intensified after the appointment of Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister in the new Greek government led by Alexis Tsipras. Economist and fierce opponent of "hateful debt", Varoufakis has been the spokesperson for the anti-austerity front in recent months. Now it will be up to him to negotiate the revision of the agreements with the Troika, made up of the European Commission, the ECB and the International Monetary Fund.
"We will destroy the foundations on which they have built, decade after decade, a system that sucks the energy and economic power out of every other member of society," the new minister said in a recent interview with British TV.
According to Varoufakis, the austerity policies launched so far by the Eurozone are "fiscal waterboarding" which risks transforming Europe into "a Victorian reformatory". However, while considering Athens' entry into the euro as a mistake, Varoufakis does not believe that Greece should leave the monetary union today, but argues that Europe must radically change its approach to the crisis.
"As Finance Minister - he said today -, I can assure you that I will not go to the Eurogroup looking for a solution that is only good for the Greek taxpayer and bad for the Irish, the Slovak, the German, the French and the Italian" .
Varoufakis was a former advisor to George Papandreou and today teaches Economics at Lyndon Johnson University in Austin, Texas. He is the author of volumes on the financial crisis and on game theory.
