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Yanis Varoufakis

Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment Hardcover – Illustrated, October 3, 2017

by Yanis Varoufakis (Author)

884 ratings

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A Number One Sunday Times Bestseller

What happens when you take on the establishment? In Adults in the Room, the renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis gives the full, blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth.

After being swept into power with the left-wing Syriza party, Varoufakis attempts to renegotiate Greece’s relationship with the EU―and sparks a spectacular battle with global implications. Varoufakis’s new position sends him ricocheting between mass demonstrations in Athens, closed-door negotiations in drab EU and IMF offices, and furtive meetings with power brokers in Washington, D.C. He consults and quarrels with Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, the economists Larry Summers and Jeffrey Sachs, and others, as he struggles to resolve Greece’s debt crisis without resorting to punishing austerity measures. But despite the mass support of the Greek people and the simple logic of Varoufakis’s arguments, he succeeds only in provoking the fury of Europe’s elite.

Varoufakis’s unvarnished memoir is an urgent warning that the economic policies once embraced by the EU and the White House have failed―and spawned authoritarianism, populist revolt, and instability throughout the Western world. Adults in the Room is an extraordinary tale of brinkmanship, hypocrisy, collusion, and betrayal that will shake the global establishment to its foundations.

Print length

560 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date

October 3, 2017
Dimensions

6.36 x 1.67 x 9.32 inches
ISBN-10

0374101000
ISBN-13

978-0374101008
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A The Times Politics Book of the Year

"Varoufakis offers a fascinating lens on the euro system and its masters . . . Any political movement that hopes to reassert the values of European social democracy against its current legatees will have much to learn from his example, as well as his books." ―J.W. Mason, Boston Review

"Fascinating" ―Dani Rodrik, author of Economics Rules and The Globalization Paradox

"A gripping tale of an outspoken intellectual's sudden immersion in high-stakes politics . . . A solid work of explanatory economics. Most of all, though, it is an attempt to divine why smart, seemingly decent politicians and bureaucrats would continue pushing a pointlessly cruel approach long after its pointlessness had become clear . . . Varoufakis does a magnificent job of evoking the absurdities and frustrations of his tenure." ―Justin Fox, New York Times Book Review

"If Santa is listening, here’s a suggestion about what to deliver Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and David Davis, her chief Brexit negotiator: a copy of Yanis Varoufakis’s Adults in the Room. Mr. Varoufakis is the former Greek finance minister and his book sets out in excruciating detail the story of the 2015 negotiations between Greece’s government and its creditors. It feels like necessary reading for the Brexit team." ―Kenan Malik, The New York Times

"It reads like a novel centered on a globetrotting, motorcycle-riding hero fighting the forces of darkness and ignorance . . . It is hard to read “Adults in the Room” and not feel admiration for Varoufakis’s commitment to Greece and Europe . . . If Europe is to survive, it will need to pay more attention to democrats and idealists like Varoufakis." ―Sheri Berman, The Washington Post

"Varoufakis tells all this with exemplary verve, using stories such as the Faust myth, Frankenstein and even The Matrix. It’s great fun to read . . . Varoufakis has started a debate here, and he’s done it brilliantly"―William Leight, The Evening Standard

"Timely, fascinating and important" ―Evaggelos Vallianatos, Huffington Post

"Varoufakis’s account has the narrative drive of a rollicking detective novel .... very good, very readable, and ought to be on all the important “notable books of the year” lists." ―Stan Persky, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Varoufakis has written one of the greatest political memoirs of all time . . . It is the inside story of high politics told by an outsider . . . Varoufakis gives one of the most accurate and detailed descriptions of modern power ever written." ―Paul Mason, The Guardian

"A stylish memoir . . . deeply personal and very well written, with an impressive array of literary allusions . . . [Varoufakis] outlines a cogent case against the austerity heaped on Greece." ―Kevin Featherstone, Financial Times

"Riveting . . . An extraordinary account of low cunning at the heart of Greece's 2015 financial bailout . . . [Varoufakis is] a motorcycling, leather jacketed former academic and self-styled rebel who took pleasure in winding up the besuited political class . . . An admirably believable depiction of a Greek and European tragedy." ―John Kampfner, The Guardian

"Adults in the Room is a book that anyone interested in modern European politics should read. To say it is the best memoir of the Eurozone crisis is an understatement. It is a devastating indictment of [the] current state of Europe and a fascinating inside account of the logic of reformist politics and its limits and why it keeps going anyway . . . Varoufakis's account of the operations of EU 'decision-making' is truly shocking. He delivers a truly shocking anatomy of an apparatus bent on perpetuating its own bad logic and excluding alternatives." ―Adam Tooze, Shelby Cullom Davis Chair of History and Director of the European Institute at Columbia University, and author of The Deluge

"One of my few heroes. As long as people like Varoufakis are around, there still is hope." ―Slavoj Žižek

"A very, very clever person, and in the basic argument about what's been going on in Europe I think he's right." ―Martin Wolf

"An outstanding economist and political analyst." ―Noam Chomsky

"The most interesting man in the world." ―Business Insider

"The Thucydides of our time." ―Jeffrey Sachs

About the Author

Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the co-founder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and The Global Minotaur. After many years teaching in the United States, Britain, and Australia, he is currently professor of economics at the University of Athens.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Illustrated edition (October 3, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374101000
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374101008
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.36 x 1.67 x 9.32 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #130,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #29 in Historical Greece Biographies
- #112 in International Diplomacy (Books)
- #177 in International Economics (Books)

Customer Reviews:
884 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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Jose L Ferreira

The Emperor's New Clothes

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2017

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"Adults in the Room" is actually a much better title than the one I use for this review, for its acerbic irony if for no other reason. But the book does show, with great clarity, that the Emperor has indeed no clothes on.
This is a book every European, or any person who cares about Europe, should read. It is part memoir, part expose, part impassioned plea for a democratic, humane, rational European Union.
Iirrationality breeds irrationality. The "I know I'm wrong but don't you dare say so" attitude, so forcefully portrayed and so minutely detailed in this book, is one of the reasons why larger and larger numbers of Europeans vote against what they regard as a lying, rotten, despotic establishment.
One other reviewer notes that Mr. Varoufakis doesn't see Mr. Schäuble as a monster, but rather as a tragic character. Be that as it may, the hubris displayed by Mr. Schäuble, Mr. Dijsselbloem and others was nothing short of monstrous.

57 people found this helpful

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Ferro

EU tyranny exposed

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2019

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This is a riveting blow-by-blow account of one small member states battle for dignity against the might of the EU’s central command. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has penned an engaging memoir, including many actual conversations and correspondences involving well-known and senior politicians, that reveals the undemocratic and predatory nature of the EU project. As one trying to save the economy of his country, the author experiences the full force of Brussels technocrats as they seek to offload the debt of German and French banks onto his nation, and asset-strip and impoverish Greece via unrepayable loans and other financial shenanigans.

Given what he knows, however, it is mystifying why Varoufakis took the line of remaining in the Eurozone –or the EU- at all. His aim was to steer Greece to a point somewhere between surrender and Grexit. Despite the harm done to his country, he continues to remain a ‘Europeanist’, committed to reforming the EU by remaining a part of it, even when by doing so he commits his nation to a future of subservience to exploitative and meddling Eurocrats. He never convincingly outlines the logic of this. The EU project has already proven to be undemocratic and unable to reform itself from within. In recent interviews - even though his country is now a basket case - he still expounds this strange duality. On the one hand he viciously rails against the trickery of the EU and Brussels, then he comes out with a lukewarm and vague idealism of remaining committed to Europe. This is where he fundamentally loses credibility.

Grexit would have been the best thing for Greece in the long term. The author even spells out an adequate credit scheme that would’ve seen Greece through the painful short term consequences of leaving the Eurozone. Greece could’ve restored its sovereignty and autonomy by recreating its own currency and having its own banking system. Instead its leaders caved to the outrageous demands of the Berlin elite and sold their people into slavery. As things stand today, Greece remains a humanitarian disaster, enslaved to the self-serving machinations of the central bankers.

8 people found this helpful

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Mikenro

A Once In A Generation Book

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2017

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This book is unsurpassed as an account of the world of politics and economics as they truly exist - entwined together in the real world, immersed in the futile pursuit of power at any cost by an isolated elite who have no concern for the impact of their actions on the lives of millions. Anyone interested in stepping beyond the tired dogma of academia and the infantile myths of the mainstream media should read this book. But beware; for those who believe they understand the world from reading The Guardian, CNN etc it contains evidence, facts and unavoidable conclusions told by a brilliantly lucid narrator that you might find contradicts the comfortable nonsense you're used to. As a post graduate in politics, I've never read a book like it. Varoufakis, along with David Graeber, Warren Mosler and Nassim Taleb is one of the four most important authors of our time,

7 people found this helpful

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Dr. P. S. Buttar

A fascinating read, though a selective account.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 4, 2018

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Like most people, I'm inclined towards reading things with which I am likely to agree, but I've been trying to challenge this tendency towards 'confirmation bias'. I am very grateful to a friend who recommended this book to me, which I found fascinating, not least because of its portrayal of so many prominent figures. The frank view that austerity need not be the only way forward and the constructive proposal of alternative approaches was also an eye-opener, as was the constant strife between politicians and vested interests.

Where the book is weaker is the manner in which it gives only a selective point of view. The author implies that the Euro and single market were set up to benefit the richer industrialised states and effectively guaranteed that poorer nations would run a trade deficit, but membership of the Euro was entirely voluntary, and he is completely silent on the manner in which successive Greek governments repeatedly lied about their finances in order to get membership. It's certainly true that Greece ran a trade deficit of about 4 billion Euros per annum in the years before the financial crash, but he doesn't mention the 5 billion Euros that Greece received as EU subsidies.

His account of negotiations with Eurogroup members is fascinating. He criticises other states for lining up with the Germans, but doesn't spend very much time analysing why they did so. He seems unhappy that they wouldn't agree Greece a special deal that hadn't been permitted for any other country; nor did he or his fellow Greek ministers make much of an attempt to recruit those he labels as supporters of the German position to the Greek cause, perhaps by showing them how a reformed EU might work in their interests.

For much of the book, the narrative is of a country that is in a terrible state and his honest and principled attempts to remedy that state. The weakness of the book for me was a biased and incomplete analysis of how Greece had ended up in such a state, and the reasons why so few other nations were prepared to support the Greek position.

Nevertheless: I judge a book by how much it challenges me and provokes me mentally to chew over its content. On that score, this book is a great success.

64 people found this helpful

Edward B. Crutchley

Who needs fiction?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 2, 2017

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This no-holes-barred rollercoaster reads like a thriller. It is a riveting blow-by-blow account that highlights the hypocrisy and duplicity of Eurozone politics and the democratic and organisational flaws of an EU incapable of solidarity. It provides a scary exposé of financial shenanigans put in place in order to keep Greece appearing to remain afloat.
Janis Varoufakis manages to make a believable drama of his failed negotiations with the Troika to obtain fair debt restructuring for Greece despite a favourable Christine Lagarde and her IMF. His detailed accounts of off-the-record, secret and official conversations, phone calls and text messages, reveal a shameful side of the EU, hell bent on setting example, on teaching Greece a lesson, and above all on saving the French and German banks. One’s respect for many of the various characters he had to deal with takes a battering. There are plenty of villains, two-faced politicians unashamed to divide and rule and give the run-around to get their way out of a problem. For various reasons Jeroen Dijsselbloem stands out worst, one retains a liking for Lagarde and Macron, and disappointment in Tsipras to whom Varoufakis tried to remain loyal until it became blatantly clear that he has turned.
Throughout the months of negotiations up to Varoufakis’ departure there was the threat that Mario Draghi would close down the Greek banks. Varoufakis developed an ingenious method to circumvent the disaster by using Greece’s online tax system to provide credit, but it was never deployed. He also devised a method to track down tax evaders through their expenditure, but it got shouted down.
Varoufakis’ forceful and unpolitical character feels omnipresent, and clearly it put off a lot of the people he had to deal with, but he spends a lot of time explaining the compromises he tried to force through and the support that he got from prominent friends in and out of Greece, not to mention his colleagues. He doesn’t try to avoid the fact that Greece got itself into trouble in the first place, or, for that matter, suspicions of him being an American stooge.
In the end one is surprised that to this day he remains anti-Brexit.

40 people found this helpful

D L

Simply Stunning. A revelation.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2017

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Simply Stunning. A revelation, and a riveting read. All sorts of detailed narrative on where the power in the EU actually resides; how it is wielded and by whom; providing a clear illustration of the shamelessness and hypocrisy of continental (national and EU) politicians beyond your wildest imaginings. It also indirectly raises another important question: how was it possible that the British Foreign Office simply stood by for all those years watching Germany reach such complete ascendancy over the running of the EU, without acting to provide some sort of meaningful counterbalance? I find it all quite incredible.

27 people found this helpful

David J Warden

A battle-cry for democracy and humanism

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2017

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Varoufakis writes about 'this illiberal and anti-democratic Europe' and 'the dystopia unfolding as Europe disintegrates'. He writes that we need 'a pan-European, democratic, humanist movement whose purpose is to succeed where the generation of 1929 failed... to stem the descent into a post-modern 1930s'. This is a densely written but highly readable and gripping account of the 2015 Greek Spring which was crushed by the 'troika' (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund) and especially the unconstitutional and lawless Eurogroup of finance ministers which governs the Eurozone, aided and abetted by Greek oligarchs, a colonised Greek media, and a Syriza (radical left) government which eventually, like Orwell's Winston Smith, learned to love Big Brother.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch President of the lawless and unconstitutional Eurogroup, comes out as the worst bully. Wolfgang Schäuble, German Finance Minister, rips up democracy by declaring that "Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy" although he is somewhat redeemed as the book progresses by his confession that he would not submit to the troika's demands, were he to be in the shoes of Varoufakis. Mario Draghi, President of the ECB, is exposed as a political manipulator even while he pretends to be a mere technocrat. Angela Merkel remains an enigmatic off-stage presence. Christine Lagarde comes across as pleasant but powerless. Our very own Norman Lamont is an unlikely supporter for YV (or perhaps not surprising given his bruising experience of being ejected from the ERM), as is Jeff Sachs, Jamie Galbraith, and Bernie Sanders.

As is well-known, YV campaigned against Brexit despite his exposure of the EU's horrors. This is understandable given Greece's history but Britain is not Greece. One wonders, however, what tortures have been prepared for Britain's Brexit negotiators.

My only disappointment was with his summing up in which he writes "Europe's deep establishment lost all sense of self-restraint. I witnessed first hand what I can only describe as a naked class war that targeted the weak and scandalously favoured the ruling class". This seems a weak and clichéd explanation for the motives of the 'deep establishment'. The truth, surely, must be far more complex than this.

8 people found this helpful

NN

Negotiating with the EU

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2017

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This is a first hand account of the struggle by Yanis Varoufakis, in his capacity as finance minister of the government of Greece, to negotiate a restructuring of the enormous debts owed by Greece to the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2015. The action centres mainly on the various private and public meetings which he has with other European Union (EU) finance ministers and representatives of the ECB and IMF. In private they agree with him that the situation is intolerable for Greece because it cannot afford to repay its debts under existing loan agreements without crippling its economy and cutting public expenditure so greatly as to cause great poverty and hardship among the poorest sections of Greek society. But in public they all say that the existing programme of debt repayments must nevertheless continue. Eventually it dawns on Varoufakis that they are not interested in discussing the debt restructuring and other reform proposals which he puts forward because of their concern that, if they do agree to postpone repayments by Greece, other debtor countries within the EU, such as Spain, Portugal and Italy, will demand similar treatment with incalculable consequences for the financial stability of the Eurozone and the EU. If Greece has to be sacrificed to protect the EU, then so be it. That is the rock on which all negotiations break down. In the end the Greek government yields to the concerted pressure of its creditors, abandons the reform strategy worked out by Varoufakis and accepts the existing repayment programme. Isolated by the surrender (as he sees it) of his colleagues in the Greek government, Varoufakis resigns.
This is a fluent and vivid account of an important episode in recent European history which lays bare the ways in which the most powerful EU countries, particularly Germany, impose their will on the EU. Notwithstanding the different context there could well be a lesson here for the UK in its current Brexit negotiations with the EU. The EU will always act to preserve its own strength and stability. Just as Greece could not be offered a new deal for fear that other countries would want the same, so the EU will not allow the UK to leave on terms as favourable as those which it has enjoyed within the EU because, if that happens, other member states of the EU may well wish to do the same.

I wonder whether this

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