ALMOST every recent Greek finance minister has been an Athens university economics professor moonlighting as a politician. Yanis Varoufakis is no exception. But unlike his predecessors, Mr Varoufakis has become a global celebrity, to the annoyance of many in Syriza, the leftist party in power. To his critics, Mr Varoufakis’s lifestyle—riding a powerful motorbike, spending evenings in chic bars and weekends at a smart island villa belonging to his wife—is embarrassingly close to that of the rich Greeks he castigates for avoiding taxes by stashing cash abroad. The leather-jacketed Mr Varoufakis is not much liked by his euro-zone colleagues either. He lectures them and shows little interest in the details of reforms demanded by Greece’s creditors. The pace of negotiations has picked up as Greece’s cash crunch gets more acute. But Mr Varoufakis continues to raise obstacles, say officials in Brussels and Frankfurt. He is deeply reluctant to cross any of Syriza’s “red lines”: no more cuts in pensions, no more labour reforms, no increases in value-added tax and no privatisations beyond the handful that are already under way. Divisions within Syriza’s economic team do not help. Amazingly, Mr Varoufakis is often away on the international conference circuit. In his absence Yannis Dragasakis, the deputy prime minister, who is close to Mr Tsipras but not to Mr...
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