What Greece's new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Insight

Here's what the Greek-Australian had to say about how to transform Europe and fix the euro crisis.

Insight host Jenny Brockie interviewing Yanis Varoufakis.

 

• WATCH: Insight program "Greek Ruins" where Varoufakis discusses the crisis in Greece
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He's taught at Cambridge, University of Sydney and the University of Athens but now, Yanis Varoufakis has a new role, after being appointed Greece's new finance minister following the victory of the Syriza party.

From 2004 to 2007, Varoufakis was an economic advisor to George Papendreou, who went on to serve as Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011.

The self-proclaimed "accidental economist" celebrated his party's win by declaring the "time for crisis-denial, retribution and finger-pointing is over".

"Today, the people of Greece gave a vote of confidence to hope. They used the ballot box, in this splendid celebration of democracy, to put an end to a self-reinforcing crisis that produces indignity in Greece and feeds Europe’s darkest forces," the 53-year-old wrote in a blog post.

"Greek democracy today chose to stop going gently into the night. Greek democracy resolved to rage against the dying of the light. Fresh from receiving our democratic mandate, we call upon the people of Europe and, indeed, the world over, to join us in a realm of shared, sustainable prosperity."

In a recent interview with ABC's Phillip Adams, Varoufakis says there's no doubt he has been heavily influenced by Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes but what is his take on the Greek crisis?

Here's a look back at what Varoufakis said during his guest appearance on Insight in 2011:

"When that crisis hit us, hit the whole world the eurozone started to crumble and it started crumbling at its weakest link. Of course the weakest link being Greece."

"I'm not saying there is something fundamentally wrong with being a member of the currency union, what I am saying is that this particular currency union was always going to start disintegrating after the great disaster of 2008 and had Greece pulled itself together and had gotten its act together in the last 20 years ... we would have been in the place of where Portugal is or Ireland and we would not have been the first domino to fall but we would have been one of the first few dominos to fall."

"The decision to join the eurozone was an ill fated decision for every eurozone member country because let's face it, they are all regretting it now."

"Once you are into the eurozone you cannot get out but what you can do ... you can default within the eurozone and let the Germans work out how to deal with that situation."

"It [the euro] is a currency I never wanted to see come into operation but now that we have it, it is essential for the global economy that we sustain it and that we fix it and we sure it up and eject cement into the foundations. Because if we don't, If we do not Europe will drag the rest of the world in the mire for the third time in one century."

 

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