He has described the settlement imposed on Greece in July as doomed to failure and will “go down in history as the greatest disaster of macroeconomic management ever”.

Echoing the call for innovation by new prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Varoufakis said Australia should redirect its economy from “rent” in the shape of selling commodities to “entrepreneurial profit” in the form of greater innovation.

“Australia has excellent pockets of innovation such as CSIRO. But there is a glass ceiling where they usually have to sell up and move to the US in order to progress.

“It was Paul Keating who said Australia needed to move from being the lucky country to being the smart country. But the government didn’t help that and Australia still has a problem taking ideas to the next stage.”

• Yanis Varoufakis will be appearing in conversation with Mary Kostakidis at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre on 28 November (wheelercentre.com) and the Sydney Opera House on 29 November (sydneyoperahouse.com)

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/21/yanis-varoufakis-australia-is-a-plaything-of-world-economic-forces-it-cannot-control

JOKE 

But really would not that be swell? 

Rather than the potty tight-arse Morrison with no idea about life and with Australia's luck looking like a tattered dead chook, we could do better with someone like Yanis (what a great name, isn't it?) — a Yourpean "décontracté" as the Aussie treasurer and giving this country a boost up the back-side — rebooting the happiness hormones we desperately need. Of course when Turdball got rid of Turdbott, we had a few seconds of euphoria, but the moment has passed and this country is now feeling like the set of Mad Max— fury road, the day after.

Yanis of course knows Australia. For many years, he was a professor of economics at one of Australia's best university. Today after having been self-dismissed, having failed to be recognised as the best Greek treasurer ever, he is starting a new popular movement in Europe: trying to get people interested in life and feeling good about being alive while rewriting the rules of the money game, which so far have been written by the American scrooges who are robbing the world. Simple really. 

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Former Greek Minister for Finance Yanis Varoufakis is planning a comeback - in Germany. EurActiv Germany reports.

In February, he wants to launch a "third alternative" to renationalisation and the "anti-democratic European institutions".

Varoufakis wants to launch his pan-European project as early as February. The initiative, under the name of "Democracy in Europe Movement 2025" (DiEM 25), wants to bring interests together in order to "democratise Europe and stop the creeping fragmentation", according to Neues Deutschland.

>>Read: Syriza’s new man in Berlin

Varoufakis intends to launch his new project on 9 February in Berlin, at the Volksbühne theatre, which over the years has seen the start of many movements, including many that worked for the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The former finance minister has repeatedly said that he wants to start a new movement, not a political party. Instead, his proposed "third alternative" wants to highlight the wrong direction and decisions of nation states and the "anti-democratic European institutions".

Varoufakis, who constantly fought against the austerity measures demanded by Greece's creditors, resigned his office in the summer of 2015. Since then, he has been a regular participant in discussions that seek to find an alternative to the return to the nation state or the collapse of the eurozone. If the euro were to collapse and the crisis to continue ad nauseum, this would lead to "hopelessness, depression and anxiety" and contribute to a resurgence of renationalisation, ultra-nationalisation and xenophobia, he warned in a recent interview with the Spanish newspaper El Diario.

>>Read: Commission silent over Greece’s distorted energy market

In November, a meeting had been planned in Paris regarding "the struggle for a plan B in Europe", but did not take place due to the terror attacks that hit the French capital. The meeting has been rescheduled for this month in the same location. Planned participants include Susan George, a global social justice activist, and Stefano Fassina and Oskar Lafontaine, the former finance ministers of Italy and Germany.

http://www.euractiv.com/sections/europes-east/varoufakis-launch-new-movement-berlin-320696

ps: as an aside, "Commission silent over Greece’s distorted energy market" has not read that the price of nickel has gone through the bottom of the barrel. 

General Mining and Metallurgical Company (Larco) is a state-owned company that was established in 1963. It is currently the biggest ferronickel producer in Europe, and one of the five largest producers worldwide.

Despite high international demand for nickel, the company has ended up being a heavy burden on the cash-strapped Greek economy.

This would make our own Clive Palmer spit chips. The price for nickel is not worth a dime...