Expert: Yanis Varoufakis – “You should be screaming from the rooftops, stop doing this!”

Bryce: [00:00:15] Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a podcast that follows our journey of investing, whether you're an absolute beginner or approaching Warren Buffett status. Our aim is to help break down your investing barriers from beginning to dividend. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy, Ren. How are you going? 

Alec: [00:00:31] I'm very good, Bryce and I am very excited for this episode. We have a big name guest joining us all the way from Europe. So we appreciate him taking the time to speak to us today.

Bryce: [00:00:41] Yes, it is our absolute pleasure to welcome to the Equity Mates studio. Yanis Varoufakis. Yanis, welcome. 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:00:47] Well, thank you very much, folks. It's also very, very good for me to connect or reconnect with you. So I still today. 

Bryce: [00:00:54] So Yanis is a Greek economist and politician, a former academic. He served as the Greek minister of finance from January to July of 2015. And we're going to cover a lot of ground today. His thoughts on COVID and the post-COVID economy, as well as the future of the global economy with everything that's going on at the moment. So we'll kick it off with a bit of an introduction. Ren Let's take it away. 

Alec: [00:01:18] Yeah. So Yanis, we always like to start these interviews with experts by hearing the story of their very first investment. We generally find there's a good story or a good lesson that can come out of it. So to kick us off today, can you tell us the story of your first investment? 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:01:32] I will. But before I do that, let me say that your audience will be much better off if they don't take me as an investor. I'm, as you said, an academic. So I have fantastic theories as to why one cannot make money systematically. But please do not follow my lead. And this will be disastrous for your portfolio. Okay. What was my first financial investment? Because everything we do in life is a for investment. The financial investment? Well, I must have been 24. I was a lecturer, a young lecturer at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, in England. My rent was a very significant proportion of my puny university salary, and I decided it was better to get a huge mortgage, almost 100% mortgage and mortgage. The fact to invest, invest to get the bank to buy an apartment for me and the very risky, stupid decision I made was to go for what was back then referred to as an endowment mortgage, a financial products that was criminally insane, that should never be allowed to exist in the sense that you only paid interest and not even the full interest, hoping that the capital gains would repay the rest. So I deserve to be destroyed by that decision. But it wasn't because and that's where Australia comes in. At some point I got an offer from the University of Sydney to move to Australia and I said No, why should I ever want to go to Australia? Within a week I changed my mind because I switched on breakfast television one day and it was the bicentennial back then and I saw people swimming in body in the middle of the night and I was stuck in my flat during a snowstorm. I had bakeries, I'm going to Australia so I sold and I made money out of this awful financial product. So don't do what I did. Even when I made money, it was completely a fluke. So that's your story? I would have lost everything. I would have been, you know, the value of that apartment within two months went down by 70%. Wow. Wow. 1987. 

Bryce: [00:03:52] Timing is everything. There you go. 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:03:54] Black Tuesday, if you recall. 

Bryce: [00:03:56] We went alive. But I.

Alec: [00:03:57] Know. But we've heard stories. 

Bryce: [00:03:58] We've heard. So between 1989 and 2000, you you did live over here in Australia and became an Aussie citizen as an economist that grew up in Greece and studied in Britain, what were your initial observations of Australia's economy? 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:04:15] What most people knew it was an economy driven up or down by commodities. In the 1970s and 1980s it was completely commodity linked and I was also aware of the even then increasing role of real estate in creating this kind of link between the fate of houses and holes, holes in the ground to extract the resources and the houses in which to deposit any surplus. Financial surplus people had not a very good foundation for a first world economy. 

Alec: [00:04:58] Yeah, well, that idea of houses and halls very is, you know, holds true today. I'm sure a lot of people listening can understand that. Do you keep an eye on Australia's economy today? Do you have any thoughts on where we are still reliant on houses and halls in 2022? 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:05:15] Yes, absolutely. Australia is at the top of my list of priority countries, primarily because, you know, my, my, my daughter lives in Australia. So my connection with Australia is absolutely robust and continuous. Where does one start look like? Let me see the financial forecast. Let me say that, you know, Australians worry about a lot of things. We will worry about a lot of things all over the world. But the one thing that you should really be worried about or we should be worried about as an Australian, to have the right to say that is the one thing we don't worry about too much and that is private debt. I mean, Australia has no public debt problem and yet there's a lot more discussion of the problem of Australia's public debt, which is increased during COVID like everywhere else. But the real time bomb in the foundations of the Australian economy is private debt legislation, which is bordering on the criminally insane with negative gearing, for instance. I mean trying to explain negative gearing to anybody who doesn't come from Australia. They say what you are subsidising economic rent. How crazy is that? I mean, what economic doctrine supports that? None of that. No left wing, right wing centrist economies of the world. Who would think that negative gearing is anything other than madness in action? So private debt. Private debt is the number one thing. And also, let's face it, I mean, I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know. You know, we have a new government now in Canberra. They have serious intent. I don't know how serious that will be in terms of their policies for dealing with the green transition, especially when it comes to energy. Australia has to find a way of maintaining a net export surplus in terms of energy, but it must go from black and brown energy to green energy and that will require a very serious investment that the private sector is not going to do. 

Alec: [00:07:32] On the on the housing story. You know, we often talk here about like what the endgame is. You know, you mentioned negative gearing as a policy, and it seems that every political incentive is to keep pushing house prices up. In this recent election, we had one side of politics talking about the government taking equity in your house to help you buy a house. The other side, the other side saying I would let you tap into your retirement savings to buy a house. But both sides don't want to bring the price down. They just want to give you more money to spend. It doesn't feel like there's any you know, it's tough to know what the endgame is here. You know, you've you've studied economies around the world. When you look at Australia, what do you think the end game is for housing like or does it just keep slowly grinding up forever? 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:08:17] There's no end game. This is just petty politics, caressing the ears of the middle ground with policies that are catastrophic for the middle ground in the long term. The problem that Australia has is we need an Australia over the next two years, three years, we need 1 million homes because what we need, we need to increase supply. This is not happening neither by the private sector nor the public sector. So anything that boosts demand is going to make the problem of affordability worse. And to expect the productive sectors of the economy, especially the ones that are in high tech, what is left of the high tech Australian industry, the ones that are going to be producing value in the future. Right. To expect them to subsidise the increasing spiral of house prices in Australia is insane. You should be screaming from the rooftops, stop doing this! Let's find a way of building private and public housing to the tune of 1 million homes, to expand supply. That's what needs to happen. And, you know, at some point, I mean, when I moved out of Australia, in 2000, as you kindly reminded our viewers, one of the things I didn't miss, I missed a lot of things about Australia, but the one thing I didn't miss was the dinner party, the conversations about real estate. You know, it's a nation that is caught up in a frenzy of orchestrated idiocy, of talking about house houses, as investment houses should be places where we live. And the investment should be going into the things that produce future value. Houses do not produce future value. They can produce economic trends, which comes at the expense of the dynamism of one's market economy. 

Bryce: [00:10:04] Well, unfortunately, rent and I aren't in the property game, but we still have certainly do have dinner parties that dominates conversation. So not nothing has changed over the last 20 odd years. So. So, Yannis, as we mentioned a couple of times, you've you're an academic and you've been thrust into the spotlight in the middle of the Greek debt crisis. And I think this is where I sort of really certainly came across you. So are you able to tell us a bit about that time, some of the sort of key takeaways and I guess the craziness that it was? 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:10:34] Well, actually, I would put it a bit more brutally than that. The only reason why I got into politics was because the Greek state went bankrupt and I could see it coming. So after I left Australia in 2000, at around 2005 to 2006, I started getting very jittery about Wall Street. Subprime mortgages. I could see that this was going to happen. But because, you know, whenever the United States, Wall Street or Northern Europe catch a cold, Greece gets pneumonia. And having moved to Greece, I was particularly worried about Greece and I thought, okay, now I could be. I looked at the level of private debt and particularly public debt, although, my goodness, if we have a Wall Street collapse which was going to happen, then Greece is going to become a basket case. And the number one priority I had, I had no intention of entering politics. None. Zero. I mean, I loathe party politics. I love politics. I loathe party politics. You can't imagine how soul numbing and destroying it is to be a member of parliament. To be a minister is to be is a fate worse than death. This is how I feel about it. I have very strong feelings against being a politician, but. And yet I am one, right? So this is my personal drama. But the reason it happened was because I between 2006 and 2009/2010, I had a good relationship, a good relationship with many of the politicians who actually ruled this country. Prime ministers and ministers. I knew them. I'd agree with them. But we were in reasonably good terms. And I was I was holding private meetings with them. And that one thing I said, I remember telling that the then Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, in 2009, end of 2009, I said, look, you're not an economist. If you trust me about anything, let me tell you that the states that you are governing over supposedly is going to be well and truly, catastrophically bankrupt within a month. There's nothing you can do about that. It's not your fault.  He had only been prime minister for a few months. Right. But don't you dare take a large credit card from which to draw money in order to pretend that you're making the repayments of the Greek state is like getting a credit card to repay your mortgage. You just don't do that. You lose the house, declare bankruptcy, embrace bankruptcy, embrace the pain of bankruptcy and start afresh. Do not take. And what does he do? They take the largest loan in human history, €110 billion, which something like 190 billion AUD for a country that is smaller than than what, New South Wales in terms of the economy, much more than New South Wales, the largest loan in absolute terms and in relative terms the absolute largest loan in the history of the world on conditions of crushing austerity that was guaranteed to reduce GDP further. I mean, you don't need to be an economist to know that that is crazy. You don't do that. And he did it and the whole political establishment did it. And I, I realise that once the lenders, official creditors, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, its own on the reason why they give them that loan was they never expected to get it back. The reason why the foreign creditors gave them that loan was because they actually took it. They took the money from poor Germans, Slovaks, Portuguese and so on to give it to the Greek state so that the Greeks, it would make Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, you know, the French and the German banks, the idiotic French and German banks to make them whole. So it was a cynical transfer of money from European citizens and the weakest, because the song is Don't pay taxes, as we know, to the German and French banks. In the end, this was portrayed as a bailout for Greece. It was not the bailout of Greece. It was another yet another toxic bailout for the French and German banks. And the price that the Greek population paid for that was debt bondage forever. Have you noticed what our debt to GDP ratio is today? It's 210% right. And we're not Japan. I mean, Japan don't mind having 300% because they have the printing presses, printing the yen in which their debt is denominated. We don't even have a central bank. We have a foreign currency imported from Frankfurt. So, you know, you can tell I'm getting agitated, even remembering all this. So at some point, a young man who was going to become prime minister soon, that was in late 2014, said, look, what you're saying is absolutely right, but I don't have anybody. Carry out the haircuts, which is necessary to clash with the creditors on this. You've got to be minister of finance. I thought, oh, my God, I should have kept my mouth shut and the rest is history. So I accepted the role. I tried to do it for five, six months. Then that young man surrendered to the creditors. I refused to surrender to the creditors. I resigned. And then the onus was on me to create a political party to continue the struggle against the bondage. So, you know, but I really dislike big politics, seriously dislike it. 

Alec: [00:15:48] So the last few years, you know, the COVID affected years have been defined by these big financial institutions, central banks and the like. So thinking back to your time dealing with them in the mid 20 tens, what did you learn about those financial institutions, the European Central Bank, the big the big private banks, the IMF and the like?

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:16:11] All the private banks look, the private banks went bankrupt in 2008. The only thing they cared for was that the state and the central bank in the United States, in Australia, not so much in say it didn't have the same problem centrally in the European Union, in the United Kingdom, so on that they refloat them, that they print enough trillions to refloat them. Once that happened, by 2009, 2010, 2012 in Europe, it was all done. So the you know, the private banks had been saved from their own hubris with taxpayers money and central bank money. Again, from that moment onwards, bankers, private bankers were not in the picture. Let them be with them. They're out of it. And they are completely zombified by the central banks. They are connected. There is a tube connecting them to the ECB, to the Fed and so on. The ECB, the Fed keep pumping money into them and commercial banks are not even interesting institutions anymore right then. They're not players. They are not agents in this game. But what happened was that once central banks, primarily the Fed and the European Central Bank of the Bank of England, once they refloated finance, once they did that, which never happened after the 1929 collapse of Wall Street, because after 1929, the banks went to the wall, they closed. The difference between 2008, 19, 1929 was this, that that was the one difference. The bankers were saved. But to be saved, the balance sheet of the central banks expanded magnificently and lots of money printing. Quantitative easing is the official polite term that not moment central banks became hostages to conglomerates. And to me, it's like it's an addiction. It's a reality. Since 2009, let's say April 2009, when this global re floating based on central bank money begun, they remember governments are fiscal distressed central banks print as if there is no tomorrow. This means money markets have been doing magnificently. Magnificently. Because COVID was not nothing new. COVID simply exacerbated what was happening before. Because how did the West you know, the North Atlantic countries, Europe, America and Britain, how did they respond to COVID? They did more of the same. They printed more money, right?  And threw it at the problem. Well, fine. But the problem has been for 13 years now that because of austerity, universal austerity, fiscal austerity, and socialism for financial markets - because that's what it is - the state printing money and giving it to the financiers. That's socialism for the financiers. So austerity for the people, and socialism for the financiers created a very unbalanced situation. In particular, never before have we had so much money sloshing around in the financial sector, never before in the history of the world. At the same time, if you compare the amount of money sloshing around the financial sector, with real investment, investment in fixed capital formation, okay, it's like that. So investment is demand for money, liquidity is supply of money. When supply massively exceeds demand, what happens? The price keeps falling. And that's the interest rate. That's why we have still still today as we speak, as you and I are speaking today, the rate of interest in the European Central Bank overnight is -0.7% when inflation is 10% right now. Why is this happening? Because they can't do otherwise. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. If they increase interest rates in accordance with the rate of inflation, Italy will go bust because the whole of the Italian debt has been serviced by is being serviced by negative interest rates. Italy's bankrupt Greece is bankrupt. Spain is bankrupt. We are all bankrupt. Right. And it's only extending and pretending by the ECB. You know, imagine being Christine Lagarde, the president of the ECB. It's a complete nightmare. You know, what do you do? Do you increase interest rates to snuff out inflation and destroy Italy? If you destroy Italy, then Italy's out. Of the euro, then the ECB ceases to exist because the ECB is the central bank of the euro. It will be no euro if Italy gives out €3 trillion of debt will not be serviced. If that goes out, I think what will happen next? The next morning, Germany will print the deutschmark and will leave the euro. And then what happens is going to be a central bank. So, you know, this is the conundrum they are facing. There are ways of dealing with it. There are ways of dealing with it. And we can discuss it if you want. But the politics has been box ified so much by this combination of socialism for the finances and austerity for everybody else, that we really don't have governments capable of doing anything. They're scared of their own shadows. I mean, look at Germany. And these Angela Angela merkel used to be a strong leader. Now, do you know who the chancellor of Germany is? Somebody who got all offshore. All offshore. Nobody knows anything about him. All right. Sure. But, you know, he says the better, right? Emmanuel Macron is great on grandstanding, but, you know, he's the president of a deficit country. So if you are presiding over a deficit country attached to a surplus country like Germany, which is leaderless, there's not much that you can do. So we are now suffering the nemesis of 13 years of this hubris of free floating finance without reforming or forming a proper investment strategy.

Alec: [00:21:41] We would love to follow up on this idea of Europe. And you mentioned a few countries being bankrupt if interest rates rise. I think we need to follow up on that. But first, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. So, Joanna, before the break, you mentioned there that the European Central Bank can't raise their interest rates because if they do, a number of countries, Italy, Spain, Greece would be in serious trouble. What is a central bank to do? You're in Europe at the moment. Inflation is high in Europe and around the world. What levers do they pull? How does Europe get out of this?

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:22:16] Well, the logical policy would be threefold. I would do three things. The first thing I would do is I would increase interest rates from -0.7% to 3%. Nothing huge, but 3%. I mean, let's face it, most businesses are not paying -0.7%. They pay 7% to the -0.7% is only on only the finances. So that creates asset bubbles, asset bubble inflation, real estate inflation, push it to 3% to present is a reasonable interest rate to have at the moment. I wouldn't put it 7%, 3%. You know, these things, you know, 25 basis points here and there go to 3%. So that's the first thing I would do. So one thing I would do is I would restructure the Italian, the Greek and Spanish debt. The debt that cannot be repaid, gets restructured. That's what works in bankers do. Why can't we do it at the public debt level? It is this is what I was elected to do when I was finance minister, but they wouldn't let me do it. If you cannot service a debt, it is even in your creditors interest to get it restructured so that you get something back as opposed to nothing for very little. So instead of extending and pretending a debt that cannot be repaid, cut it. Rationalising. So there's a second thing. So first thing, increase interest rates to 3%. Secondly, that restructured private debt and public debt. And the third thing I would do, I would continue with QE. You see, this is something that that frustrates me a lot because historically after 2008, they reduced interest rates to zero, hoping to stimulate the global economy after the GFC. That didn't work. Of course it didn't work for reasons of gains as well. So then they started printing money and because first they reduced interest rates to zero and then they printed money. They're assuming that to reverse that. First they must stop printing money and then increase interest rates, which is I can see why that must be the case. So, you know, we need to invest in green energy, right? Okay. Instead of printing money, as we have been doing for seven years, to give to McDonald's and to bankers, which is a wasteful print money, you know, to create hydrogen producing facilities. You know, hydrogen is a fantastic way of storing the renewables and having and convert your cement factories. You are still producing factories in a green way, and we need that. It's something humanity needs. In any case, we create very good quality jobs. It would be scientifically very progressive. Thank you. Let's print some money for that purpose, not for extending and pretending unpayable loans and at the same time increase interest rates. So these are the three things I would do increase the interest rates to at least 3% haircut, private the public debts, and continue to print money to put it directly, directly into investments of good quality jobs and green energy that the world needs.

Bryce: [00:25:23] So that's kind of the situation over in Europe. But you know, during COVID, the US and Australia obviously printed extraordinary amounts of money as well. And where, you know, as Warren said, facing inflationary pressures here and in the states as well. So how would you I guess I rate the response of policymakers in the US and Australia and be I guess our current situation doesn't seem to be as precarious as some of the countries over in Europe. But yeah, just kind of get your thoughts on how you see some of our central will, our central bank particularly making moves at the moment. 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:26:00] Look, let me let me concentrate on Australia since we are in Australia, figuratively speaking. It was a good thing that the printed a lot of money very quickly because when you got due to the lockdown, to government intervention, when a large amount of economic activity is prohibited, the number one priority is to prevent the short term prohibition from turning into long term bankruptcy. Okay, you want to save all the viable firms and families and people in the short run, and if that requires that you should print money, you should do it. Okay, so full points on this. However, at the same time, you must think I'm printing all this money. This money is going to go into the circular flow of income at some. The lockdown will end. This money is going to stop chasing after goods and services. What goods and services will they be imported? Will they be home produced? Will they be brown? Or will they be green? Given that Australia we mentioned that at the very beginning of our conversation has a very serious challenge independently of COVID, of the green transition, without which it will simply fall behind the developments. Because at some point, even if Tony Abbott becomes Prime Minister again and decides to dig up everything from from deep within the land, at some point even the Chinese will not be buying or the Brazilians will not be buying because the world would have moved in the direction of the green transition. So nobody will want Australian coal even if every Australian becomes a coal mine. So there was never a serious discussion in Canberra. Okay, we are turning this into a superstate, a state that locks people up and decides to replace the labour market. So this is, you know, socialism gone mad. I'm a socialist. I don't mind that. But let's do it properly. Let's ask ourselves the question. Okay. So, you know, how are we going to divert this money away from the housing market? Because if we don't do anything, this river, this Amazon of money eventually is going to hit the real estate market. And then you're going to have, you know, an enhancement of the problems that we always had in Australia. And nobody told us that. It was never in discussion. So zero points on this. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:28:31] We've spoken about Europe. We've spoken a little bit about Australia. I do want to ask you one question about the US, because in your 2011 book you called the US the Global Minotaur and you spoke about how the global economy was built around some US deficits, their trade deficit, the government deficit, and that it all sort of hinged on the supremacy of the US dollar and that things started to unravel in the GFC in 2008. And I guess, you know, we're where we are now. People are starting to question the US policy response during COVID and the amount of money they printed and because of the, you know, the US dollar status as a reserve currency and you know, anything that threatens, that threatens the US a lot. So I guess, you know, given that you wrote this book a decade ago and now you're looking at the US today, what do you think about their economy? What do you think about their status as a reserve currency? I know these are big questions, but what? What happens if US economic hedge money starts to break down?

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:29:33] Well, you know, this is a discussion that has been going on since the end of the 1960s. In 1970, there was a fantastic meeting in Washington in which a certain Mr. Henry Kissinger, who's still around and has opinions about things, and a certain Mr. Paul Volcker, who later became the the chairman of the Federal Reserve, had a conversation. And Kissinger, who was not an economist, asked Volcker, who was the banker, how do we maintain our hegemony, given that we are now a deficit country is in discussion? So the United States is slipping into a deficit position since the 1960s. How can we maintain maintain that hegemony? And Volcker said, well, we need to enhance our deficit, trade deficit and make other people pay for it. This is exactly what has been happening since the 1970s. So the deficit, the trade deficit of the United States is increasing. The budget deficit of the federal government is increasing. And this is the exorbitant privilege of the reserve currency and particularly of the hegemonic authority of the United States. And that includes its military footprint around the world, that capitalists in Germany, in Holland, in Japan and in China take 70% of their profits and send it back to the United States to invest it in Wall Street and therefore closing the recycling loop. So this is what keeps the United States hegemony. And even though it has fallen below 10% of global GDP from 50 something percent, it maintains that authority. Now, having said that, there are serious reasons to worry. It's not China, because the Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks are very smart people. Whether you like them or not, is neither here nor there. They're very smart people. Don't forget that they have invested $1,000,000,000,000 in US Treasuries. Didn't want to see the dollar lose its value. They do not want the remaining be the one to replace the dollar. The Americans are perfectly capable of destroying the hegemony of the dollar on their own without the help of any adversary like China. And the war in the Ukraine now is a serious challenge to the authority of the dollar system. Why? Because I think they have crossed a bridge that was too far. President Biden. His urge yearning to punish Putin included in the sanctions. One move that I think is going to be historically significant. I'm not passing judgement now on Putin and so on. I have no time for Putin. He's a war criminal. He was a war criminal back in 2001, killing 250,000 Chechens. Forget the moralism here. Speaking financially by confiscating the reserves of the Central Bank of Russia. Forcing the Central Bank of Russia to default to Western banks. Imagine having the money to pay your debt and not being allowed. That casts a very long shadow on the dollar payment system. Yeah. What if you are Brazilian, Indian, Nigerian? Whatever. You start thinking, I'm going to take them out of my savings, dollar savings. U.S. Treasuries, you know, are they safe in the dollar payment system? Now, if you take into consideration the fact that for its own reasons, the Chinese Central Bank has introduced three years ago, three years ago, a digital one, which is global because it's digital. So like the Internet, a German manufacturer can now, as we speak, have a digital wallet, free digital wallet with the Chinese Central Bank. It's a crypto one state crypto, not bitcoin like. And she can use this or she can use this to buy stuff from China, sell stuff to China to transact with people. And he can transact also through this digital wallet with Nigerians and Russians and Americans who may have these digital. Now, that is a serious threat to the dominance of the dollar. It won't happen overnight, but digital central bank currencies that the Americans and the Europeans are resisting are the game to watch because they are free, they are safe, and they allow for a degree of mobility that bypasses commercial banks. And the war in Ukraine inadvertently may be what triggers, you know, a shift of payments from the dollar system to non dollar systems like we need. It's only one that may be a serious challenge to the global MINITER that I described in my 2011 book, and thank you for mentioning it. I think that that was the reason a reasonably good book. 

Bryce: [00:34:16] Available in all good bookstores now. Yanis, before we wrap with our final two questions that we all always ask our guests, we we did just want to get your sort of concluding thoughts on, I guess, the broad question of where to from here. There's plenty of people in our community who are, you know, experiencing increases in interest rates for the first time and and going through, you know, inflationary pressures that we sort of haven't seen for a decade and those sorts of things. So with everything that's kind of going on around the world and central bank responses. If you could just conclude with a couple of thoughts on. Yeah, where to from here? 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:34:51] Well, don't pay attention to my advice because as I say, I am not giving advice. If you look at my bank account, you would know you don't want my advice because I am completely and utterly, irredeemably risk averse. I don't believe in risk taking. I'm not a gambler. I hate gambling and I hate the stock exchange for that matter. You know, I believe in safe investments. I would use inflation indexed bonds despite very low returns. But that's me. 

Bryce: [00:35:24] Fickle, fickle. 

Alec: [00:35:26] I will be honest. We want to say a massive thank you for joining us today. It's been a great conversation. I'm sure we could have spoken for twice as long, but we do have two questions that we always like to finish these interviews with. 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:35:38] Okay. 

Alec: [00:35:39] So the first one is, do you have any books that you consider a must read?

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:35:43] Oh, well, absolutely. The Iliad by Homer. Yes. It's a very, very topical and, you know, apt book for the period that we're going to be talking about the war, which is endless and most of the people involved in that, I don't think this is the award itself, but they're interested in making money and stealing loot from one another. I think it's a it's a great parable for our times. 

Alec: [00:36:12] About I don't know if we've had The Iliad suggested before, so we'll definitely add that one to our list and people can check out the full list on our website. And then, Yanis, final question. If you think back to your younger self buying that first property back in the UK or maybe when you first moved out to Australia, what advice would you give to your younger self? 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:36:36] Oh, never take advice from your older self. 

Bryce: [00:36:41] Well played. That was like we haven't had that response before, so I liked that early on. It's been an absolute pleasure. As Ren said. Thank you so much for your. This afternoon. It's we've thoroughly enjoyed speaking to you. We hope it's not the only time as well. And we look forward to connecting again at some point. But thank you very much. Thank you. 

Yanis Varoufakis: [00:37:03] Very much, folks. Thank you.