Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis says his country is now willing to make "big compromises" as the Eurogroup meeting in Riga draws to a close. That's according to Bloomberg. Just over a week ago Varoufakis was saying he was very confident that a deal would be done Friday — but by the time it came, so little progress had been achieved that pretty much nobody expected an agreement. According to Bloomberg, Varoufakis was referred to as a "time-waster, a gambler, and an amateur" by another European finance minister. Reuters has some of Varoufakis' other comments just out: "We have agreed that we are going to speed up the negotiations, that we will take another look at the processes," Varoufakis said, suggesting that EU/IMF teams may not need to meet both in Brussels and Athens. "You can choose to look at it as a half full or half empty bottle. We choose the optimistic way .. The two sides have come much closers on issues like privatizations ... the government has proposed to set up an independent tax commission ... we have had very good discussions on the need to reform the judiciary." Less than 24 hours earlier Varoufakis published this article on Project Syndicate, suggesting a less compromising approach: The Greek government wants a fiscal-consolidation path that makes sense, and we want reforms that all sides believe are important. Our task is to convince our partners that our undertakings are strategic, rather than tactical, and that our logic is sound. Their task is to let go of an approach that has failed.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 'Game of Thrones': The Iron Throne is a terrible investment
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