Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis is an author, academic economist, parliamentarian, political leader, and Greece’s former Finance Minister. He is also the co-founder of DiEM25 – Europe’s first transnational movement and leader of its political party in Greece, MeRA25.

In his own words, Varoufakis was “thrust onto the public scene by Europe’s inane handling of an inevitable crisis.” In January 2015, he was elected to Greece's Parliament with the largest majority in the country and served as Greece’s Finance Minister between January and early July of 2015. During those tumultuous six months, he faced down the world’s most powerful institutions – the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank; three institutions committed to a self-defeating strategy of enormous loans and history’s deepest, income-sapping austerity. Varoufakis resigned from the finance ministry when he refused to sign a loan agreement that perpetuated Greece’s debt-deflationary cycle at a great cost to Greece in particular and to Europe more generally.

A year later, Varoufakis co-founded DiEM25 (the Democracy in Europe Movement), and two years later, in 2018, he launched its Greek electoral wing (MeRA25). Also in 2018, together with US Senator Bernie Sanders, he established the Progressive International – a global movement whose affiliated members today exceed 200 million persons from across the world. In addition to these organizational endeavors, he has traveled extensively, delivering talks at political, activist, academic, and corporate venues.

Varoufakis read mathematics and economics at the Universities of Essex and Birmingham and subsequently taught economics at the Universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Sydney, Glasgow, Texas, and Athens, where he still holds a Chair in Political Economy and Economic Theory. He is also Honorary Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Honoris Causa Professor of Law, Economics and Finance at the University of Torino, Visiting Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, London, and Doctor of the University Honoris Causa at the University of Sussex.

Varoufakis regularly appears on media such as CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, etc., and has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Telegraph etc. He also has a regular column on Project Syndicate. Varoufakis’ best-selling books include: "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism," "Another Now: A novel," "Adults in the Room: My Struggle Against Europe’s Deep Establishment," "Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A brief history of capitalism," "And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to," and "The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy."

His academic books include "Economic Indeterminacy," "Game Theory: An introductory Text," "Foundations of Economics," and "Rational Conflict."