Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis

This post has 17 comments with rating of 5/517

• 
  caesar963
  July 14th, 2019
  

  Not another Deep Establishment with a Hidden Agenda! Who can keep up? Simple fact: the Greek economy was an utter basket case, with ludicrous & truly bizarre corruption at all levels. It duly imploded, and the most vulnerable suffered, as per usual. Their government should not have cooked the books to get into the Eurozone (take a bow, Goldman Sachs). None of these grave faults can be imputed to the EU’s democratic deficit. And what democratic structures are without sin?

  Fiscal realities were rendered clear to this chap and he quit, retreating to one of his luxury villas. There to write bitter screeds which oddly, but nonetheless conveniently, depict himself as an Homeric hero.
  Thanx, uploader.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  pournlodes
  July 15th, 2019
  

  You don’t know what you’re talking about, caesar963, you know-it-all blowhard.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  trikon000
  July 15th, 2019
  

  Has bad meta data, shows it as -9kBit/s for bitrate. Whatever you used for ripper kinda sucks or needs tweaking.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  caesar963
  July 15th, 2019
  

  Ya got me, pourno! You’ve pierced the facade! Everything I said was so blatantly factually erroneous. What really stings is that I could’ve gotten away with it, had it not been for the pesky etc.
  Yanis’ ‘Room’ solely contained ‘Adults’ only after he had departed.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  pournlodes
  July 15th, 2019
  

  I’ve read several of his books, including this one, and listened to many of his talks over several years, and believe me, YOU DON’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. But I think you already sense that. Why else would you waste your time expressing your opinions on this dark alleyway of a comment feed?

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  caesar963
  July 15th, 2019
  

  Dark alleyway sounds bloomin’ scary! You sound like a fan of the author, but objectivity rather than blinkered emotion would be the ideal approach.

  So, the fundamentals of the Greek economy were sound, and not as I described them - no corruption, incompetence, etc? Goldman Sachs did not help the government falsify accounts? The most vulnerable did not suffer from this systematic mendacity? Greece should have joined the Eurozone? We can blame the mismanagement & implosion of Greece on flaws in EU democracy? The author did not behave as described?

  Should I also lend credence to barmy, sinister conspiracy theories?
  It’s a deeply human tendency to present the most self-serving narrative possible after a foul-up. So, at the very least, the conduct is psychologically explicable. However, we have to familiarise ourselves with counter-narratives, in order to arrive at even a semblance of fact. One view will not do.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  pournlodes
  July 16th, 2019
  

  Oh, I see. Uh huh. BUT….. you have LISTENED CAREFULLY TO THE ENTIRE AUDIOBOOK RIGHT? Because usually that’s the point when you form opinions about it. That’s pretty standard.

  But then there’s YOUR way: form a picture of the author in your mind, blame him for the qualities that your own shadow casts upon him, grab a few convenient bits of info to justify what you already felt to be true, dismiss the book outright, invalidate several hundred pages of stuff you’ll never read.

  Your cartoonish opinions about a situation and a man, when this is really about a BOOK.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  caesar963
  July 16th, 2019
  

  You got me on not reading the book yet (there’s no call to CAPITALISE on my shame). I remember paying close attention to the disintegration of Greece because we had experienced similar economic upheaval just prior to them. I wanted to see whether Syriza‎ & Yanis would generate different panaceas & how they would negotiate with the EU. I, in common with many others, was disabused & disappointed without much delay.

  Of course, the author & his book are not expediently separable; and objectively established facts, like the inconvenient points outlined, can hardly be dismissed as feelings. And blaming old Caesar can’t be the only remaining gambit?

  The EU, whose flaws I readily admit, is too often used by European politicos as a strategic scapegoat for their own hideous incompetence & woeful failings. The pattern is long established, an intrinsic part of our political furniture. So, pardon me for being cynical. The conspiracy theories are depressingly rife and have a tendency to bleed into one another. They never take us anywhere.

  Good points, well observed.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  pournlodes
  July 16th, 2019
  

  Well it’s not a conspiracy theory to describe actually occurring scenes behind closed doors. Descriptions and theories are very different things. Are you honestly suggesting that he, as former Finance Minister of Greece, didn’t actually have private conversations with the European Commission board members? You are the one dreaming up the image of a conspiracy. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies have private meetings. So what? I think you are confused. But that is perfectly understandable for someone to be confused about a book they haven’t read.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  pournlodes
  July 16th, 2019
  

  And authors and books certainly are separable. Do you judge Hamlet based primarily on Shakespeare’s biography? You can do that of course, but why? It’s very strange when you think about it. I mean, the primary content type for this site is aubiobooks. The content type is not authors, or author trading cards. Authors are actually very boring I should think.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  pournlodes
  July 16th, 2019
  

  And by the way, Yanis is one of the most Pro-EU people out there. So much so, that he actually has detailed proposals for reforming it.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  pournlodes
  July 16th, 2019
  

  But that is beside the point really. This book is not about assigning blame or demonizing the EU. It is largely about a man’s effort to bring pragmatic reforms to the central banking system, only to be met with absolute resistance from those who manage the central banking system. If you are focused on solutions, as the author is, then what can be gained from assigning blame? Obviously that would be a waste of energy.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  caesar963
  July 16th, 2019
  

  Incisive points. The sinister guiding hand of the conspiracy is to be seen in perspiring phrases like - the Hidden Agenda of the Deep Establishment! And the terrifying imminence of “the same policies that required the tragic and brutal suppression of Greece’s democratic uprising hav(ing) led directly to authoritarianism, populist revolt and instability throughout the Western world” (a bit of a reach).
  So we receive the “urgent wake-up call to renew European democracy before it is too late” - it’s like the trailer for a disaster movie (”only one man saw through the fiendish plot - he was alone & was the last man who could save etc.”).

  We honestly hear stuff like this all the time. In our neighbouring country (UK) they’ve driven themselves crazy with this sort of noise. They have effectively turned themselves into a disaster-zone, unable to talk about anything else, or address any real political problems - for over three years. With no end in sight.

  You’re bang-on, the EU is a massive bureaucracy, and it just keeps getting bigger. Such structures always involve confusion & waste. That’s it, really. No dire machinations, just the standard self-aggrandising political circus. Decisions arise out of the typical fudge & horse-trading between self-interested member states (to the stirring soundtrack of Beethoven’s 9th).

  Like all such large political entities, the EU is unresponsive & unwieldy, a slow, lumbering beast (its “democratic” institutional structures are notorious). However, we can’t blame it for local political failings, that’s just too easy. And it lets the national politicians off the hook.

  These accounts, written by former politicians, rarely take the direct “I totally messed up” approach. Which is to say: I misread the fiscal & political realities; I misjudged the negotiators & the institutional structures - what they were capable of, in real terms. I oversold the notion of EU responsibility for Greek maladministration.

  Such honesty would not conduce toward presenting oneself as an economic technocrat. That lucrative, burgeoning trajectory would be rapidly sabotaged. Far sexier the image/brand of the doughty Spartan warrior confronting the mighty “Persian” Empire.
  The subtext of this kind of veiled, hagiographical
  approach to events is the portrait of the author which the reader is intended to imbibe. It doesn’t have to be that subliminal, of course.

  Fairly uncontroversial, the idea of author & book being inextricably connected. The contents of their head splashed across the page, as it were. To a far greater extent when they’re writing explicitly about themselves & their constructed narrative of a sequence of events. In addition, Yanis’ sketch of the meltdown is well-rehearsed at this stage. He’s given his version in multiple cities, universities, studios, conferences & studios.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  caesar963
  July 16th, 2019
  

  Drat! Second “studios” should read “formats”

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  dan.cove
  August 13th, 2019
  

  

  Superb book, well narrated. It’s long (20+ hours) but fascinating. Just to clarify in case you were influenced by the above thread - it’s not a deep state / conspiracy theory book.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  kfn1019
  September 20th, 2020
  

  Brill! Thanks for uploading.

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  integspec
  April 23rd, 2024
  

  Thank you

  Adults in the Room - Yanis Varoufakis

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