With the world’s gazed fixed on Athens, a former academic with a penchant for leather jackets has taken centre stage. With no plan B and nothing to lose, he’s ready for battle — and if it all goes wrong, he says, he’ll just get back to his bookYanis Varoufakis, it is fair to say, was barely known not that long ago. True, he was a bit of a celebrity in the arcane world of austerity economics. His vivid views, conveyed through blogs, books, tweets and talks, were the focus of some animation whenever Greece careered in and out of its seemingly endless debt crisis. In Athens, the town where he was born and bred, the economics professor enjoyed a cult following among austerity’s opponents in Syriza, the far-left party that recently surged to power.When the crisis broke – and before he departed for the ivory towers of the University of Texas at Austin – he was a regular in the boisterous talk shows that dominate Greek television. But beyond that, Yanis Varoufakis was just … Yanis Varoufakis. In a wider arena, he was not a name to conjure with. So my first question when we meet in his office on the sixth floor of the finance ministry, which every finance minister has inhabited since Europe’s great Greek debt drama began, is: how does he feel? Is Yanis Varoufakis, the academic turned neophyte politician, entirely comfortable with his new star status? Related: Greece calls for bridging loan; anti-austerity protests in Athens - as it happened Related: Profile: Greece’s new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis Continue reading...
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