This account of Greece’s war of words with the IMF by its former finance minister is both riveting and believable Maybe Barack Obama isn’t such a saint after all. Before welcoming Greece’s embattled finance minister to the Oval Office, the then president told his Greek-American audience: “I might as well walk up to him and ask to borrow some money.” The presidential joke fell flat. Greece had become the object of mirth and bullying by the major powers. Yanis Varoufakis’s six-month tenure was a story of almost daily confrontations with the IMF, the European institutions and, most of all, with a German government that seemingly held him in contempt. Varoufakis has had his revenge, or perhaps catharsis, by writing a riveting hiss and tell. _Adults in the Room_, borrowing a term used pejoratively by Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, provides an extraordinary account of low cunning at the heart of Greece’s 2015 financial bailout. The more defiant the leftwing Syriza government became, the more it was met with intimidation from some or duplicitous reassurance from others. The most venal of the first category was Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s hard-as-nails finance minister. He was joined by various EU bureaucrats who will soon be negotiating against Theresa May’s Brexit crew. One of the most intriguing members of the “trust me, we’d really like to help you, but when push comes to shove, we won’t” camp was Emmanuel Macron, France’s new president. Macron promised to help and he did try, but he came up against the stumbling block of President François Hollande. His embarrassed boss intimated that he had been put in his place by Angela Merkel. Related: Yanis Varoufakis: ‘If I’m convicted of high treason, it would be interesting’ Continue reading...
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