Obama told the former Greek finance minister that 'austerity sucks'

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published 27 July 2015

"Austerity sucks," quoth Obama.

The president blurted this gem while speaking to the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who didn't have a whole lot of experience under his belt before taking office in the midst of the worst debt crisis the EU has ever seen. Having previously worked only as an academic, a blogger, a race car driver, and as the white, Greek head of his university's Black Students' Alliance, The New Yorker reports that Varoufakis received a couple of sorely needed words of encouragement from Obama during a Greek Independence Day celebration at the White House.

Obama, Varoufakis said, had told him that he didn't envy him. (In fact, many politicians surely do envy circumstances where there's so little to lose, professionally, by acting on long-held beliefs in exactly the way demanded of them by a clear-voiced electorate.) Varoufakis told Obama that things were tough: "You inherited a mess when you came to office, but at least you had your central bank behind you. We inherited a mess and we have a central bank" — the European Central Bank — "trying to choke us."According to Varoufakis, Obama replied, "Don't underestimate how tough it was for me," adding that bailing out Wall Street was "contrary to my politics" and "political poison." He urged Varoufakis to "swallow bitter stuff." (The White House declined to comment about the conversation.) [The New Yorker]

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Obama showed more solidarity than Varoufakis was expecting. "I know — austerity sucks," Obama said. ("He used those words. Very un-Presidential.") According to Varoufakis, the President was referring less to austerity's unpleasantness than to its ineffectiveness. Obama meant that austerity "doesn't work — it creates misery, and it's self-perpetuating, and it's self-defeating." [The New Yorker]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.