Austerity by Yanis Varoufakis

Author:Yanis Varoufakis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2018-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

Parsimony versus Austerity

THE SENTRY OUTSIDE Maximos was aghast. ‘Are you going out alone, Minister?’ he asked.

I nodded as the electric gate opened, mindful of the waiting photographers camped outside but determined to arrive at the Ministry of Finance on foot and in solitude. They were just as taken aback as the sentry and scrambled to follow me, laden with equipment, falling over their cables and each other. By the time I had turned left onto Queen Sophia Avenue at the corner of the National Gardens, which separate Maximos from Parliament House and Syntagma Square, they had given up.

The sun had set and a cool January breeze was rattling the remaining leaves on the trees, sending pedestrians hurrying on their way. The street lights had not yet come on, and in the dusk it took a few moments to locate the tree, enshrined with flowers and handwritten messages, next to which Dimitris Christoulas, the retired pharmacist, had shot himself. With almost no one around, I took a moment to build a mental bridge between that tree and the brightly lit offices of the Ministry of Finance that I could see opposite. A moment later I had crossed Philhellenes Street to enter the ministry that would be my crucible for the next 162 days. As I entered the building, a cheer rose from the fifty or so women camped outside: some of the ministry’s legendary cleaners, who had been dismissed overnight and without compensation two years before by the previous government. ‘Don’t betray us!’ they shouted.

‘I won’t,’ I replied firmly as I headed for the lift.

The lift door opened onto the sixth floor, and a secretary led me to the ministerial suite where my predecessor awaited. He was alone and greeted me graciously. His desk was strikingly bare. None of the gadgets that fill a modern office was in sight, not even a computer. Its only visible weapon against the sea of troubles that besieged it was an icon of the Madonna on the shelf behind the minister’s desk. The large high-backed desk chair, which was no doubt intended to project authority, looked as uncomfortable as it was ugly. The array of old-fashioned phones on a side desk were straight out of a 1970s movie, and the books on the shelf were clearly gifts that no previous minister had cared enough to read or take away. The oil paintings on the wall were on loan from the National Gallery. It would have taken only a word to have them replaced, but I felt no urge to get comfortable in that office.

The rest of the furniture had an air of decadence, especially the fading red velvet couch – perfect, I thought, for the finance ministry of a bankrupt state. The only exception was a large rectangular wooden meeting table, which I immediately decided would become my workstation, a long way from the ministerial desk, which I made a point of never using. The table made me feel as at home as it was possible or desirable to feel in that spacious but sad office with such a sorry recent past.

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