Yanis Varoufakis
speaker
23 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2011
last heard Feb 2013
Yanis Varoufakis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
As we know, statistics is a highly imprecise and dodgy enterprise at the best of times.
And if you are to try to restore the Greek statistical office's reputation, you might as well err on the side of caution and on the side of overestimating the budget deficit rather than underestimating it.
He's been accused of inflating the 2009 Greek budget deficit number by something like one, one and a half percentage point for the purposes of helping the government convince members of parliament that further austerity, harsh austerity measures should be passed through parliament.
I must tell you, I have no idea, but I don't think there is any chance that he's going to be found guilty.
I don't even think there's going to be a trial.
What happens is that the prosecuting service has a statutory obligation to investigate any such claim.
And let us not forget that this is not just an idler case.
making this allegation.
These are members of the board of directors and they are actually academics who are independently minded and whose job is to be part of the Greek statistics office.
I think that it will simply blow over once that investigation is completed.
Look, what I think, he had an enviable task.
Greek statistics is now an internationally recognized term for underreporting deficits and debts.
And his job was to be brought in and to revamp the whole operation and to regain or gain credibility on behalf of the Greek state regarding the state of its national statistics.
My personal view is that he did possibly err on the side of caution.
And the number that he reported for 2009 was probably...
slightly inflamed.
So effectively, he was going the other way in order to re-establish the credentials of his office.
If this is all he was doing, I think that the accusations are unfounded.
There is a question, however, as to whether he was
collaborating in this to some extent with policymakers whose purpose was at that point to sway the opinion of a number of marginal members of parliament who were not convinced at that time that extra harsh austerity measures were necessary.
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