Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and professor for economy theory, had a few days ago an interview with the Swiss magazine "Republik" about the outcome of the US election and what this means for all of us. SInce the interview was only published German, I am giving here a summary of his most important opinions down below, here we go.
Varoufakis is a left wing European politician. Please remember below views are not mine, but entirely those of Varoufakis only.
The result of the presidential election and its consequences
Varoufakis thinks that the best result would have been a land slide win for Biden, which means having won the election and a majority in the senate.
The second best result in his opinion would have been a second term for Trump. Why? Because he considers this, what is going to happen now in his opinion to be far worse than another year of Trump.
So what's happening now? Varoufakis thinks, that the reactionist powers within the Democrats are now trying all they can do to prevent real left and green reforms at all. He would have actually preferred Sanders again as candidate, which did not happen. Instead there was now though a deal between the more progressive parts of the Democrats, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the reactionist ones which was: if you do you want our support and voters, you must implement some of our agenda. This is stuff to which Biden agreed to. Without the support of these people Biden would have never became president according to the polls. But now since the victory is so narrow, the new narrative is that the left are being responsible for this tight victory. Medicare for all needs to be turned down, and they need to appease the Repulicans. The Left are also responsible for not winning the majority in senate as well this narrative tells. This is now the used excuse to cancel the deals with the progressive parts of the Democratic party.
Why does he thinks that Biden's presidency will turn out actually worse than four more years of Trump? V thinks that the US economy will have a hard crash due to COVID-19 within the next two years. There'll be a big increase on unemployment, especially blue collar workers in industry and handymens. It will become much harder for black, latinos, the working poor to actually make enough money for a living. Biden with his result will hide behind senate in V's opinion, meaning he does not need to make programs to stimulate the economy, a Green New Deal nor big investments in infrastructure due to that. The Republicans will kill everything. And who will get the blame for this? The Left. Because with their progressive ideas they have prevented clear majorities, they will lie. Media will make hash attacks on them.
Couldn't just the opposite happen, that Biden realizes that he is unable to survive with the Left? V argues that the opposite has already happened. In Biden's team are almost only members of the party establishment, but no left. All left supporters, which worked for Biden, will now get demolished. The internal pressure is already high, for example on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She will also have to face harsh questions from the own faction, namely: "You told us that there will be a deal. You told us, that's the reason why we should swallow our pride and vote for Biden, who really means big business. So, what happened to the deal?" The deal is already dead. People will feel betrayed, and this will weaken the Left contrary to the Right.
Why will this actually strengthen the Right? 71 million people voted for Trump. This people are now convinced, even if a lie, that the election has been stolen. This is going to unify these people. They will do become more toxic, radical, fascist, alt-right. This is why the radical Right of America will profit from the coming great depression, while the Left will almost become meaningless as consequence of the narrow victory of Biden. This is why V would have preferred a Trump victory instead of this result now. A big victory of Biden would have strengthened the Left for a long time; and the Republicans would have splitted up instead.
Republicans splitting up, really? They already told us four years ago that this will happen due to Trump. V is convinced that it just is taking now somewhat longer, but in case of a big victory it would have happened pretty fast for sure. An example is the support of George W. Bush for Biden. The only good think about Trump is that he is a complete idiot, who is unable to keep even his own employeers, because he is firing them all of the time.
How Obama and the 2008 bailout created the path that lead to Trump
V tells, that he was quite happy 2008 that Obama became president. But today he must also see that Obama is the reason why there is now Trump.
To understand today you've got to look back at 2008. This is for V the historic disrupture: collapse of Wall Street, financial industry, financial crisis and the bail-out. The bail-out was the first big thing Obama did in the office, and there were no terms coming with it, which V considers as a grave mistake made. The Fed started to print trillions of dollars and handed them over to the banks. Socialism for the banks, and austerity for the rest until today. This was Obama's program, it's not a simple crisis response, but a historical discontinuity, nothing after it is like it was before with lasting consequences.
The events of 2008 are responsible for the increasing rise of an international nationalist movement, which is rooted in our generation like the fascism was in the 20th century.
V thinks that the politics of handing away money for free is bad due to this: the Fed for example then gives away the money with negative interest rates to private banks. Tons of money, which only partially make it up to the economy. The result is increasing stock prices, while the economy decreases, which affects then all of us: loss of income, job perspective, home, job, lower salaries. People spend less money. Companis, which are producing goods, are reducing their investments. The result is a negative multiplying effect: investments get reduced, good jobs are getting lost and replaced by Uber jobs, lowly paid joby, shit jobs. Nothing you can live from, no high-quality jobs.
The big problem with the money grabbed by the private banks and not reaching the economy is what happens then. The bankers are going to a stock exchange, and buying shares of their own company. The result are stock increases, which means that all employees get bonus payments who have this in their contract. They are getting bonus payment without investing anything into production and sustainability at all. Then they are going into the real estate market, and buy homes and apartments for high prices. Rents in these neighborhoods start to increase. The normal people, which due to the crisis need to spend less money, notice this and get sour. Pension funds are suffering due to the zero interest policy, the standard of living deteriorates, people get mad. Those people than abandon more moderate politicians and move to the far right, like Trump. In order to be viable for these people again, many politicians move to the more right themselves to do this. This is a toxic cycle, and the reason why the birth of this new fascism was the rescue of Wall Street in 2008.
V thinks, that in 2008 the old system mostly died. But the problem is that its replacement is still unborn, so anything is possible.
Ein düsteres Gespräch mit dem ehemaligen griechischen Finanzminister über Faschismus, das Ende des Kapitalismus und das Chaos, das darauf folgt.
www.republik.ch
