The Global Minotaur

Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781780320144
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In this remarkable and provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis explodes the myth that financialisation, ineffectual regulation of banks, greed and globalisation were the root causes of the global economic crisis. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a 'Global Minotaur' was born. Just as the Athenians maintained a steady flow of tributes to the Cretan beast, so the 'rest of the world' began sending incredible amounts of capital to America and Wall Street. Thus, the Global Minotaur became the 'engine' that pulled the world economy from the early 1980s to 2008. Today's crisis in Europe, the heated debates about austerity versus further fiscal stimuli in the US, the clash between China's authorities and the Obama administration on exchange rates are the inevitable symptoms of the weakening Minotaur; of a global 'system' which is now as unsustainable as it is imbalanced. Going beyond this, Varoufakis lays out the options available to us for reintroducing a modicum of reason into a highly irrational global economic order. An essential account of the socio-economic events and hidden histories that have shaped the world as we now know it.

The Global Minotaur

Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783606126
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
'The emerging rock-star of Europe's anti-austerity uprising.' Daily Telegraph 'A spirited book.' New Yorker In this remarkable and provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, explodes the myth that financialisation, ineffectual regulation of banks, greed and globalisation were the root causes of both the Eurozone crisis and the global economic crisis. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a Global Minotaur was born. Today's deepening crisis in Europe is just one of the inevitable symptoms of the weakening Minotaur; of a global system which is now as unsustainable as it is imbalanced. Going beyond this, Varoufakis reveals how we might reintroduce a modicum of reason into what has become a perniciously irrational economic order. An essential account of the socio-economic events and hidden histories that have shaped the world as we now know it.

And the Weak Suffer What They Must?

Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473545684
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Book Description
**THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER** The most recognisable economist on the planet, Yanis Varoufakis, puts forth his case to reform an EU that currently fails it weakest citizens. In this startling account of Europe’s economic rise and catastrophic fall, Varoufakis pinpoints the flaws in the European Union’s design – a design thought up after the Second World War, and one responsible for Europe’s fragmentation and resurgence of racist extremism. When the financial crisis struck in 2008, the political elite’s response ensured it would be the weakest citizens of the weakest nations that paid the price for the bankers’ mistakes. Drawing on his personal experience of negotiations with the eurozone’s financiers, and offering concrete policies to reform Europe, the former finance minister of Greece shows how we concocted this mess and points our way out of it. And The Weak Suffer What They Must? highlights our history to tell us what we must do to save European capitalism and democracy from the abyss. With the future of Europe under intense scrutiny after Brexit, this is the must-read book to explain Europe's structural flaws and how to fix them. 'If you ever doubt what is at stake in Europe - read Varoufakis's account' Guardian

Another Now

Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199569
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
What would a fair and equal society actually look like? The world-renowned economist and bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis presents his radical and subversive answer in a work of speculative fiction that recalls William Morris and William Gibson The year: 2035. At a funeral for Iris, a revolutionary leftist feminist, Yango is approached by Costa, Iris’s closest comrade, who urges him to carry out Iris’s last wish: plough into her secret diaries to tell their story. “But”, Costa insists “leave out anything that might help Big Tech replicate my technologies!” That night Yango delves into Iris’s diaries. In them he discovers a chronicle of how Costa’s revolutionary technologies had unveiled an actually existing, fully democratized, postcapitalist society. Suddenly he understands Costa’s obsession with the hackers trying to steal his secrets. So begins Yanis Varoufakis’s extraordinary novelistic thought-experiment, where the world-famous economist offers an invigorating and deeply moving vision of an alternative reality. Another Now tells the story of Costa, a brilliant but deeply disillusioned, computer engineer, who creates a revolutionary technology that will allow the user a “glimpse of a life beyond their dreams” but will not enslave them. But an accident during one of its trial runs unveils a cosmic wormhole where Costa meets his DNA double, who is living in a 2025 very different than the one Costa is living in. In this parallel 2025 a global hi-tech uprising, begun in the wake of the collapse of 2008, has birthed a post-capitalist world in which work, money, land, digital networks and politics have been truly democratized. Banks have been eliminated, as well as predatory, data-mining digital monopolies; the gig economy is no more; and the young are free to experiment with different careers and to study ”non-lucrative topics, from Sumerian pottery to astrophysics.” Intoxicated, Costa travels to England to tell Iris, his old comrade, and her neighbor, Eva, a recovering banker turned neoliberal economics professor, of the parallel universe he has discovered. Costa eventually leads them back to his workshop in America where Iris and Eva meet their own doubles, and confront hard truths about themselves and the daunting political challenge that "the Other Now" presents. But, as their obsession with the Other Now deepens, time begins to run out, as the wormhole begins to deteriorate and hackers begin to unleash new attacks on Costa’s technology. The trio have to make a choice: which 2025 do they want to live in? Varoufakis has been claiming for a while that we already live in postcapitalist times. That, since the 2008 crisis, capitalism has been morphing into technofeudalism. Another Now, a riveting work of speculative fiction, shows that there is a realistic, democratic alternative to the technofeudalpostcapitalist dystopia taking shape all around us. It also confronts us with the greatest question: how far are we willing to go to bring it about?

Minotaur

Author: Benjamin Tammuz
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 1609459202
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Book Description
“With echoes of Kafka and Conrad,” the acclaimed Israeli author of Castle in Spain offers “a provocative, spare, slow-to-unfold mystery of character” (Kirkus Reviews). On the day of his forty-first birthday, Israeli secret agent Alexander Abramov encounters a beautiful young redhead on a city bus. He immediately recognizes her as the woman he has been searching for all his life, the one he has loved forever. Though they have never met, he is certain this young woman named Thea is an essential part of his life’s destiny. Using all the tricks of his trade and communicating through anonymous letters, Abramov takes control of Thea’s life without ever revealing his identity. Soon, Abramov’s desperate, dangerous love for a woman half his age consumes everything in its path: time, distance, and rival suitors. And for Thea, keeping her lover safe from the amorous “Mr. Anonymous” becomes an obsession of her own. Only Abramov’s own story, of a life conditioned by isolation, distrust, violence, and murder, can explain his devastating manipulation of the woman he professes to love. Hailed by Graham Greene as “the best novel of the year” upon its initial release in 1981, Minotaur is a highly inventive literary thriller.

Modern Political Economics

Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136814744
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 543

Book Description
Once in a while the world astonishes itself. Anxious incredulity replaces intellectual torpor and a puzzled public strains its antennae in every possible direction, desperately seeking explanations for the causes and nature of what just hit it. 2008 was such a moment. Not only did the financial system collapse, and send the real economy into a tailspin, but it also revealed the great gulf separating economics from a very real capitalism. Modern Political Economics has a single aim: To help readers make sense of how 2008 came about and what the post-2008 world has in store. The book is divided into two parts. The first part delves into every major economic theory, from Aristotle to the present, with a determination to discover clues of what went wrong in 2008. The main finding is that all economic theory is inherently flawed. Any system of ideas whose purpose is to describe capitalism in mathematical or engineering terms leads to inevitable logical inconsistency; an inherent error that stands between us and a decent grasp of capitalist reality. The only scientific truth about capitalism is its radical indeterminacy, a condition which makes it impossible to use science's tools (e.g. calculus and statistics) to second-guess it. The second part casts an attentive eye on the post-war era; on the breeding ground of the Crash of 2008. It distinguishes between two major post-war phases: The Global Plan (1947-1971) and the Global Minotaur (1971-2008). This dynamic new book delves into every major economic theory and maps out meticulously the trajectory that global capitalism followed from post-war almost centrally planned stability, to designed disintegration in the 1970s, to an intentional magnification of unsustainable imbalances in the 1980s and, finally, to the most spectacular privatisation of money in the 1990s and beyond. Modern Political Economics is essential reading for Economics students and anyone seeking a better understanding of the 2008 economic crash.

Austerity

Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473556112
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 111

Book Description
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. How do we choose between what is fair and just, and what our debtors demand of us? Yanis Varoufakis was put in such a dilemma in 2015 when he became the finance minister of Greece. In this rousing book, he charts the absurdities that underpin calls for austerity, as well as his own battles with a bureaucracy bent on ignoring the human cost of its every action. Passionately outspoken and tuned to the voices of the oppressed, Varoufakis presents a guide to modern economics, and its threat to democracy, like no other. Selected from the books And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and Adults in the Room

The Frackers

Author: Gregory Zuckerman
Publisher: Portfolio
ISBN: 9780670923670
Category : Hydraulic fracturing
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
Meet the Frackers. George Mitchell, the son of a Greek goatherder, who tried to extract gas from rock that experts deemed worthless. He faced an unexpected obstacle in his quest to change history. Aubrey McClendon, the charismatic descendant of an Oklahoma energy dynasty, who scored billions leading a land grab. He wasn't prepared for the shocking fallout of his discoveries. Tom Ward, who overcame a troubled childhood to become one of the nation's wealthiest men. He could handle natural-gas fields but had more trouble with a Wall Street power broker. Harold Hamm, the son of poor farmer, who believed America had more oil than anyone imagined. Hamm was determined to find the crude before others caught on. Charif Souki, the dashing Lebanese immigrant who saw his career crumble and his fortune disintegrate, leaving one last, unlikely chance for success. Mark Papa, the Enron castoff who panicked when he realized a resurgence of American natural gas was at hand: one that his company wasn't prepared for. Praise for The Greatest Trade Ever 'Simply terrific. Easily the best of the post-crash financial books.' Malcolm Gladwell 'The definitive account of a strange and wonderful subplot of the financial crisis.' Michael Lewis 'Zuckerman is a first-rate reporter who is able to explain the complexities of finance in layman's terms. At times, The Greatest Trade Ever reads like a thriller.' The New York Times

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

Author: Steven Sherrill
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 184195487X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
Five thousand years on and the Minotaur, or M as he is known to his colleagues, is working as a line chef at Grub's Rib in the American Deep South. He has been reduced from a monster with an appetite for human flesh to a broken creature with very human needs.

I Am the Minotaur

Author: Anthony McGowan
Publisher: Oxford University Press - Children
ISBN: 1382020791
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
When his mum is sent back to prison, Al knows exactly who's to blame. Mr Brayker, who lives downstairs, has been making trouble for Al's mum ever since they moved in, and Al's determined to get his revenge. Ignoring advice from his gran and sister, Plum, Al takes things into his own hands with a plan that involves the only two creatures he can rely on: his pet rats, Venom and Vulture. But things don't turn out exactly as he'd imagined ... Written by award-winning author, Patrice Lawrence, this is a moving story of community, loneliness, and how you never quite know what's going on in someone else's life.