Comment by bluepoint

I think people are too gentle with this guy in this thread. He really does not deserve any of the attention that he gets and he desperately seeks. When he was in power he caused major damage, and as part of the current opposition he is basically a clown, looking for opportunities to get some more attention saying silly things. And since even in Greece he tends to get ignored (even by journalists who used to enjoy making fun of him), he is seeking for attention abroad. Like other commenters say, he raises some interesting issues about the society and then he proposes solutions that are at the same depth of political thought as discussions in a party (of the wild ones, with drugs and alcohol). He became important, when he was appointed as the minister of finance by the populist prime minister of a populist government, which came to power because people were really angry about the economic crisis. The prime minister, simply did not know much, he did not even speak english (he is still learning), or held any job before being a prime minister (yeah, Greek politics broke through the floor), but he finally realized his grave mistake and kicked him out, but not before capital controls were imposed in the country. Those capital controls were largely because of his useless role in the debt relief negotiations where he was basically avoiding to take any action or talking seriously to anyone, hoping that with this vague attitude (by the way, he termed his “creative vagueness” and he is proud of it, I am not making this up) the biggest leaders in europe will just bend the knee in fear of vague threats. He loves attention and he wants to be a sensation, which is not what you want from the guy who can kill the banks overnight (but admittedly less than your pilot or your surgeon). Some people that may not know him, may project on his image their own frustrations about life, politics or the economy. Maybe it is understandable, he is relatively photogenic and expresses himself with complete sentences (with verbs and nouns and propositions and all). But, really, we can all project our frustrations to people of higher quality, pretty please?