Adults in the Room

Yanis Varoufakis 
Random House Children's Books 

 
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Created by Universidad Nómada ​ ​ – Last synced March 28, 2020 
 
 

Part One: Winters of our discontent

If our sharply diminished circumstances can be 20

blamed on a conspiracy, then it is one whose
members do not even know that they are part of it.

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March 28, 2020 

But when they got their hands on evidence or 20

information foreshadowing terrible developments,
they faced Summers’s dilemma: leak it to outsiders
and become irrelevant; keep it to themselves and
become complicit; or embrace their power by
exchanging it for other information held by someone
else in the know, resulting in an impromptu
two-person alliance that turbocharges both
individuals’ power within the broader network of
insiders. As further sensitive information is
exchanged, this two-person alliance forges links with
other such alliances. The result is a network of power
within other pre-existing networks

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March 28, 2020 

It is my view that the 2008 financial crisis, which is 22

still with us almost a decade later, is due to the
terminal breakdown of the world’s super black boxes
– of the networks of power, the conspiracies without
conspirators, that fashion our lives.

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March 28, 2020 

The reason why my signature mattered so much was 23

that, curiously, it is not presidents or prime ministers
of fallen countries that sign bailout loan agreements
with the IMF or with the European Union. That
poisoned privilege falls to the hapless finance
minister.

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March 28, 2020 
The rescue deal, as the cover-up was euphemistically 29
known, was signed and sealed in early May 2010. The
European Union and the IMF extended to the broke
Greek government around €110 billion, the largest
loan in history. 1

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March 28, 2020