Yanis Varoufakis's response to ASI's endorsement of Greece's debt restructuring plan features in CityAM
Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, Ben Southwood, was quoted in CityAM on Yanis Varoufakis's response to the ASI's endorsement of Greece's debt restructuring plan. From CityAM:
The world's most interesting finance minister has expressed his surprise at being backed one of Britain's leading free-market think-tanks.
Yanis Varoufakis, the man appointed by Greece's radical left wing party Syriza to sort out the country's debt crisis, tweeted "we live in a strange world" after reading comments from the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) published by City A.M.
From Ben:
Head of research at the Adam Smith Institute, Ben Southwood, said:
These are strange times indeed when Greek Marxists are seeing eye-to-eye with British free marketeers, but the European Central Bank's crazy monetary policy has done just that.
While we don't support the entirety of Syriza's radical programme—for example cracking down on holiday makers or hiking the minimum wage drastically in the middle of a depression—Varoufakis's idea of linking debt to the economy is a good one.
One of the advantages of Varoufakis's plan is that it would be resistant to policy mistakes that stem from the European Central Bank (ECB). Southwood argues:
It effectively makes the debt burden impervious to the ECB's herky-jerky decisions over interest rates and quantitative easing, meaning that if the ECB drove Greece into deflation in a future crisis, this would not raise the real value of its debt and cause a sovereign debt catastrophe.
The ASI will work with anyone to achieve a richer, happier, better world—party allegiance is irrelevant—and this move could do just that.