Adults In The Room: A Heartwarming Musical for the Whole Family

Aldo Vesnaver: Questo libro documenta in dettaglio, con stile eccellente, le disavventure del popolo greco ad opera dei banchieri europei. Varoufakis mostra le loro astuzie e miserie, fatte all'ombra di comitati non eletti e che non rispondono fino in fondo all'opinione pubblica. Molti dettagli tecnici sono spiegati ai "non addetti" in modo da smascherare le vere responsabilità di un capitolo assai buio della storia dell' Unione Europea.

Italy on Nov 11, 2023

Harmonious: I bought this great book from a seller affiliated to Amazon. Amazon took care of the shipping and the copy of the book I received was in mint condition.
Regarding the actual content of this book, this is the story of a thoroughly decent European man, highly educated, but, seemingly lacking a true Christian foundation. This hero, due to the lack of a solid Christian foundation, was no match to the demons, in human form, that he (the hero) was forced to contend with. Every sort of indecency was thrown at our hero. Despite our hero being highly motivated, and highly proficient in his trade, the hordes of demons he was facing were able to wear our hero out, confuse him, make him run around, frustrate him, and, through trickery and low life treason, ultimately defeat him. Our hero never had a chance. Why? The reason our hero was doomed to be defeated was his exclusive trust on his natural abilities. The final outcome of his struggle might have been different had he, on top of his natural abilities, had incorporated the help and guidance of our Lord Jesus Christ and, the Holy Spirit. I know first-hand this to be the case because my father and I faced similar political struggles but...

United States on Jan 14, 2023

catxevans: How I wish Teresa May had read this book before she entered into her doomed dealings with the EU. Yanis Varoufakis’s account of his negotiations with the Eurogroup, the collection of EU member Finance Ministers during his five months as FM of Greece is as gripping as any thriller, as the stakes are so high, the battle so unequal and the characters so well-drawn. At stake is not only the long-term prosperity of his beleaguered country, but the dignity of its people, condemned to penury and multi-generational unemployment as a result of the ‘conditionalities’ they were forced to accept in exchange for the 2010 and 2012 bailouts thrust upon them by the ‘troika’: the European Commission (ie the EU’s executive body), the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Where the book diverges from thriller territory is the seemingly verbatim recounting of conversations which YV probably felt duty-bound to include in their entirety in the interests of fairness and completeness, but which a fiction writer could freely slash with a red pen. This may sound laborious, but in actual fact these exchanges are fascinating, and illuminate the characters involved far better...

United Kingdom on Sep 04, 2019

Russell Heath: Reads like a thriller. I look forward to reading an account by a more dispassionate author--but we will have to wait another decade for the historians and political scientists to do their work.

As an American and an EU naif, the question that haunts me is: How did the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund)--win? They beat everybody.

The troika beat:

1) Varoufakis
2) The Greek people--who voted 2:1 to reject the troika's deal
3) Syriza--the Greek left-wing party that just 5 months prior to its surrender had entered office committed to rejecting the deal. This was the most sinister troika victory since it used (in part) Greece's corrupt elites to subvert the elected government.
4) The all-powerful Wolfgang Schäuble who wanted a Grexit, who told Varaufakis that he, Schäuble, would not accept the troika's deal if he were in Varoufakis's position.
5) Merkel? This is unclear as Merkel was largely off-stage in this story. But at the beginning, she appeared to support Syriza, but by the end, she was firmly in the troika's camp.
6) The elected officials of the European Commission. There was a telling...

United States on Jul 27, 2019

R. Caplan: Adults in the Room is an expose par excellence of the cruelty, duplicity, perfidy and betrayal at the heart of the EU’s treatment of Greece and Greek democracy. But it is not just a coruscating account of the EU’s disgraceful antics. It also shines a light on the deceitful and cowardly behaviour of the Syriza led government that colluded with the EU in choking the will of the Greek people and selling them into decades of servitude as subjects of an EU vassal state.

Varoufakis masterfully explains complex economic issues in ways that are intelligible and interesting, illuminating a fast developing narrative in the style of detective novel, the result of which is well known but the details of its denouement propel you to read further. And it is this latter that makes this book so unique. The author was at the centre of the process that would make or break the Syriza phenomenon that rose to power out of almost nowhere promising to end the crippling austerity that was literally killing Greeks and robbing them of hope. Not that Varoufakis was a central player in the Syriza leadership. Quite the contrary, he was not even a member of Syriza.

Varoufakis, ostensibly...

United Kingdom on Jul 27, 2018

Graham H. Seibert: Adults in the room

Varoufakis' introduction compares what happened between Greece and its creditors to a Greek drama or a Shakespearean play. It is a tragedy, in which the individual players are usually neither good nor evil, but trapped by their own limitations and compelled to lead the drama toward a tragic conclusion.

He names the major players: Wolfgang Schäuble, Christine Lagarde, Mario Draghi, Barack Obama, Jack Lew, Larry Summers, Bernie Sanders, Angela Merkel, and Emanuel Macron. He says that among the people he dealt with were two types: fascinating and banal. "The banal went about their business ticking boxes on sheets of instructions handed down to them by their masters. In many cases, though, their masters – politicians such as Wolfgang Schäuble and functionaries such as Christine Lagarde and Mario Draghi – were different. They had the ability to reflect on themselves and their role in the drama, and disability to enter into dialogues with themselves made them fascinatingly susceptible to the trap of self-fulfilling prophecy."

He credits Lagarde with saying they needed "adults in the room" to resolve the drama. That gave him his...

United States on Oct 05, 2017

jeremy: I had watched some YouTube videos with Varoufakis, including one in which he is interviewed about this book. So I decided to order a copy and decided to go for the hardback version rather than put up with watery eyes from reading the Kindle version on my iPad. This book was a real page turner and I got through it in two days. Varoufakis is a very effective writer and I was amazed at how he could hold my interest through his recounting of interminable Eurogroup meetings. But far from being only a technical expert on international finance, he shows a deep understanding of the entire context of these issues, including the political side of things and, most importantly, the human side of things which encompasses the character and personalities of people like Schäuble, Djisselblum, Draghi, and Tzipras as well as ordinary Greeks who were the ones forced to suffer the results of these meetings.

What is most striking for me is how much empathy Varoufakis has for his countrymen and how he did not count the very high cost of defending them against the inhumanity of the Brusselcrats. I’ve recently been reading E Michael Jones’ book, “Barren Metal”, and I am very struck by the...

France on Jul 18, 2017

Seeker: May I say “thank-you” to those who have posted reviews before me, I have found them interesting and entertaining. May I encourage anyone reading this contribution to read them all, but more-so may I urge you to read the book! As Amazon reviewer ‘Wess’ advises, heed the reviews of authoritative commentators like the Financial Times: “Highly readable, important, deeply instructive”.

Well, here’s my attempt to build upon earlier reviews... ... ...

Curiously, as reviewer Mr S.P. observes, this book garnered three damning (1-star) Amazon reviews on the first day it was published… and predominately 5-star, highly appreciative, reviews ever since! … … with the conspicuous recent exception of reviewer ‘Alvin’ who pours opprobrium upon Mr. Varoufakis, his ideas and his writing in equally copious measure. I am firmly in the appreciative camp: ‘Adults In The Room’ clearly explains that Greece is bankrupt but, being a Eurozone state, it is not permitted to declare itself such by the powerful supra-national institutions that, instead, incessantly coerce it into borrowing ever-more €billions in order to service the interest-payments on debts that are...

United Kingdom on May 15, 2017