And the weak suffer what they must? by Yanis Varoufakis

"Alas by 1963 it was clear that the horse was developing a mind of its own and the coachman was losing his grip."

Yanis Varoufakis is an engaging speaker and I was fortunate to see his charm in action at the recent Sydney Writer’s Festival, where I grabbed myself a copy of this latest work, And the weak suffer what they must?.

The intriguing title stems from a passage of Thucydides' The Peloponnese  War,  found underlined by John Maynard Keynes within his documents at Kings College. It demonstrates the inequality of decision making between unequally matched interests  with a direct inference on the outcomes of the Bretton Woods meeting and the cherry picking of Keynes’ notions for a post war IMF and currency market.

The book makes for an interesting and at times worrying read. It is rare that the curtain is drawn away from global economic with such ease and intrigue.I have to say it has lent a new lease of life in my interest in world economic policy and learning from the mistakes of the past. If only more people would study history so we were not continually forced to repeat it. I think I took a star off just because I find the idea of the imbalance of power as an alarming one - yet another thing to have nightmares about.

 4 out of 5 times, the banks are to blame.