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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Yanis Varoufakis just trashed Greece's bailout deal with a line-by-line takedown

Since his resignation as Greece's finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis has managed to find more time for blogging, much of which hasn't exactly been supportive of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Quickly after Varoufakis stood down, new Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos proposed a deal that looked extremely similar to the one rejected in Greece's July 5 referendum. The government emerged with a deal after tough negotiations last weekend, and Varoufakis has now slammed it in an article on his site. It's a line-by-line evisceration of the deal, which requires pretty severe austerity measures, mass privatisation, and the sort of economic reforms, such as pension cuts, that Syriza campaigned against. He calls it "the terms of Greece's surrender," which pretty much sets the tone. Remember, this is a deal that Tsipras, Varoufakis' former boss — and presumably his friend — is proposing that his party vote for on Wednesday night. Tsipras clearly doesn't like the deal, but Varoufakis' timing is particularly bad for the PM. Here's a snippet. The part inside the square brackets is Varoufakis' commentary, while the rest is the actual text of the deal (emphasis ours): Immediately, and only subsequent to legal implementation of the first four above-mentioned measures as well as endorsement of all the commitments included in this document by the Greek Parliament, verified by the Institutions and the Eurogroup, may a decision to mandate the Institutions to negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) be taken [i.e. The Syriza government must be humiliated to the extent that it is asked to impose harsh austerity upon itself as a first step towards requesting another toxic bailout loan, of the sort that Syriza became internationally famous for opposing.] He then calls the deal a Carthaginian peace, says the Greek parliament is once again becoming "an appendage of the troika," and adds "it may be possible that pigs will fly" to the section suggesting Greece could raise even more money from privatisations. In Varoufakis' first post-resignation interview he said he couldn't stand the "negatively charged atmosphere" and "air of defeat" around Tsipras since the July 5 referendum in which Greece voted against accepting the bailout deal in its form at the time. Varoufakis said during the referendum that if the Greek people voted "no," an improved deal was already on the table that he could then sign, and banks could open on July 7, now more than a week ago.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 mind-blowing facts about Greece's economy


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