Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis strikes back and, as KeepTalkingGreece reports, urges Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to turn his back on Greece’s lenders, adopt a parallel payment system and to unilateral restructure the loans held by the European Central Bank.
In an op-ed in Efimerida ton Syntakton, Varoufakis, Varoufakis calls on Tispras to prepare for break with creditors in order to avoid rupture.
“This two-pronged preparation is the only way to prevent another excruciating retreat by the prime minister in the short term and [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schaeuble’s plan in the long term,” Varoufakis wrote.
In his article, Varoufakis suggested that Schaeuble’s strategy is to lead Greeks to the point of exhaustion so they ask to leave the euro themselves.
Noting that the “parallel payment system was already designed in 2014”, Varoufakis stresses that Tsipras had “two delusions” that led the government to the current impasse:
a. that on the night of the referendum, the dilemma was between Schaeuble’s Grexit Plan and the 3rd bailout
b. that the obedience to the 3rd bailout could be political manageable through a parallel, society-friendly program.
Both of these “working assumptions” were based only on autosuggestion, the ex finance minister stresses adding that he tried to explain this to the Prime Minister on the night of the referendum
“In reality there was never a basis for hope that the toxic third bailout would be gradually rationalized, in terms that the European Commission would support Athens so that the austerity and anti-social IMF measures would relax, the IMF would force Berlin to accept debt restructuring and lower primary surpluses, the ECB would include Greece in the bond purchase program (QE),” Varoufakis wrote
He accused leading European negotiators of lying.
“That Moscovici [EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner], Coerer [ECB] and Sapen [French finance minister] might have given such promises was not an excuse.
Since May 2015 we were fully aware that these gentlemen know how to lie and fail to deliver on their promises when they do not lie.”
More on parallel payment system and IOUs here, here, here
Varoufakis full article in Greek EfimeridaTonsyntakton
PS as Tsipras and Varoufakis went apart on the Referendum night in July 2015, I do not think that the Greek Prime Minister will accept the proposals of his former finance minister.