Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe.

Today's program will be devoted, in its entirety, to an interview with Janus Varufakis.

He is a member, even though I know many of you don't need this information, I want to give it to

you anyway. He is a member of the Parliament

in Greece, and he's a parliamentary leader of the party that he helped found, known as the

European Realistic Disobedience Front. It belongs to the larger European-wide organization, Democracy in Europe Movement 25. I have known,

Janus, for quite some time. We have worked together on occasion. I have admired his intellect,

his writings in economics, a field that I share with him, and his leadership on many, many levels

over a long period of time.

I'll get into that in a moment.

So I count him as a friend and a colleague and someone who deserves the respect of a world

that has fewer and fewer political leaders that deserve

much of it. In his own words, Janis Varufakis was, quote, thrust into the public scene

by Europe's inane handling of an inevitable crisis. I love it in the few words he was able to get in a whole theory of

how crises happen in capitalism on a regular basis, and each time seemed to be handled by the

bourgeoisie, if I can say that, as if it were a surprise and stunning and unique and somehow

exceptional when it is none of those things.

In January 2015, he was elected to Greece's parliament with the largest majority in the country,

and he served as Greece's finance minister between January and early July of 2015.

During those tumultuous six months, he fought against three institutions

determined to oppose on the poorest of Greeks the harshest austerity in history.

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