Tim's guest: Yanis Varoufakis

Our very first guest on Conflict Zone is former Finance Minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis. For some, he's the man whose stubborn approach pushed Greece back into economic meltdown when a fragile recovery was in sight. He sees himself as the voice of sanity railing against eurozone policies that make no economic sense. The "rock star" finance minister certainly shook up the usually quite dull world of European financial politics with his unique style, his motorcycle and his undiplomatic language.

An "erratic Marxist" at work?

Yanis Varoufakis, the economist who was, in his own words "thrust onto the public scene by Europe's inane handling of an inevitable crisis", was born into a politically active Greek Orthodox family. Despite a privileged upbringing – his father became chairman of Greece’s biggest steel producer and he attended a private school – he developed an interest in communism at an early age: "Karl Marx was responsible for framing my perspective of the world we live in, from my childhood to this day."

Giving an early hint of his rebellious and non-conformist attitude, Varoufakis insisted on having his name spelt with only one "n" since elementary school. He neglected "Yannis" for "aesthetic reasons", accepted the bad grade his teacher gave him for it and stuck with the shorter version ever since.

He received an MSc in mathematical statistics from the University of Birmingham and completed his PhD in economics at the University of Essex, where his slogan was "subvert the dominant paradigm", an attitude he appears to still be keeping up today. After his studies, he took up university appointments in Cambridge, East Anglia, Glasgow, Sydney, Athens and Texas.

The self-proclaimed "accidental economist" entered the Greek political debate in 2010 and opposed the official line of supporting a Greek bailout from the beginning. He said on Conflict Zone: "If you insist on striking the cow that is to produce the milk, you’re going to kill it and not get the milk," referring to EU-imposed austerity measures.

Saving capitalism from itself

But really, all he was just trying to do was "save capitalism from itself", as he said in a lecture in Croatia in 2013. That talk sparked outrage when a German TV show broadcast an excerpt from it in which Varoufakis says "stick the finger to Germany" while making the appropriate gesture. He later denied ever making the gesture although it is generally believed the video is genuine.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appointed Varoufakis Finance Minister on 25 January 2015 after the leftist Syriza won the parliamentary election. His primary task was to negotiate new bailout terms with creditors. Varoufakis faced a €2.3 billion revenue shortfall at the beginning of 2015 - along with a national crisis that had stopped being purely economic long ago.

In January, the overall unemployment rate stood at 26 percent, while 50 percent of young people were out of work. "It is preposterous that in 2015 we have people that had jobs, and homes, and some of them had shops until a couple of years ago, that are now sleeping rough", he said in a Channel 4 interview.

For the next six months, he pushed for a further write-off of Greek debt and refused to seek an extension of the bailout. His uncompromising approach didn't make him any friends in the Eurozone. He was seen as the ideological opposite of Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's finance minister.

In a DW guest column, he wrote in 2012: "It is not a question of whether Greece can be viable within the eurozone but whether the eurozone, as currently constructed, is viable with or without Greece."

Fiscal waterboarding

Clearly not shying away from controversy, he referred to the crisis as "fiscal waterboarding" that turned Greece into a "debt colony". When Tsipras announced that Greece would hold a referendum about a bailout, Varoufakis put capital controls into place that limited cash withdrawals to €60/day and shut Greeks banks.

The majority of Greek citizens voted "No" in the referendum on 5 July 2015, a response his Syriza party had long campaigned for. Varoufakis responded by stepping down, giving disputes with his European colleagues as reason. As a result, talks between Athens and its creditors could be resumed.

"I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride," he blogged. After the resignation, rumours surfaced that Varoufakis had been working on a secret plan B that would have him launch a parallel payment system, should Greece be ejected from the euro. Claiming it would have been "remiss" not to have drawn up such contingency plans, he also said the small team didn't do anything that went beyond the confines of the law.

Yanis Varoufakis has been accused of brinkmanship and playing hard and fast with the fate of millions in Greece and the eurozone. Serious charges relating to his six months as finance minister. Tim Sebastian is ready to hold him to account.

Enter the #dwZone now.