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A few months later, at a conference in Italy, Jens Spahn, Wolfgang Schäuble’s deputy, reprimanded me for saying that the third bailout was an example of latter-day gunboat diplomacy. ‘But your parliament voted in favour of it with a large majority, didn’t it?’ he pointed out. Sure it did, I replied…

‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘I find it just amazing that in the Wall Street Journal
you defended the pharmacists. I thought, Not Yanis! I found it amazing that you
support their monopoly of baby foods and cosmetics – which I know causes
problems, from when I was finance minister. And I had my fights…

In response I told Wieser that unless we received a sign from the creditors
that they were serious about a compromise on the reform agenda and a
sensible fiscal policy made possible by meaningful debt restructuring, we
would not reach 30 April without a default to the IMF. ‘Independently of our
…

As we were making our way to lunch, I spotted a canteen where some employees were taking a break and broke away from my hosts to speak to them. They shook my hand and smiled a lot, but when I asked them about working for Cosco they were coy. ‘It’s good,’ was about as much as they were willing to sa…

‘Greek shipyards are dying, and skills acquired over millennia are dying with them,’ I told the ambassador. So I proposed, in a second phase of collaboration, that Cosco and other Chinese companies should invest in our three main shipyards, turning them into repair hubs for the container ships that…