The author of Adults in the Room: My Battle With the European and American Deep Establishment and currently an economics professor at the University of Athens, Varoufakis continued his long-running critique of austerity in a Project Syndicate op-ed published over the weekend, and added a new argument about the inflation that has shocked the world in 2022.
Central banks have given corporations a type of “lavish socialism” since the 2008 financial crisis, Varoufakis wrote, while workers have been stuck with “harsh austerity,” and the highest inflation in 40 years is just the latest twist.
A half-century–long power play
The economist’s argument is based on the idea that corporations have led a “half-century–long power play” to boost their stock prices, creating unsustainable business models and fragile global supply chains along the way. But it’s all gone wrong in recent years, and workers have been left to clean up the mess.
Before the great crisis of 2008, he said, U.S. corporations used “pyramids of private money” from cheap and plentiful imports and consistent foreign investment to create a
— source yanisvaroufakis.eu | Yanis Varoufakis | 18/09/2022