The Econoclasts

🔗Get your tickets for The Econoclasts Live with Hasan Piker here: http://unherd.com/econoclastsliveIn this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau debunk the myth of European strategic sovereignty and the lie at the heart of the City of London, exposing how Germany’s failure to innovate within its declining car industry leaves it defenceless against Trump’s revenge tariff assault, while the UK’s ‘finance curse’ has replaced productive industrial investment with a parasitic reliance on property speculation and shareholder payouts.

In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau debunk the orthodox view that the newly established U.S. dollar swap lines for Gulf states are a charitable bailout for the Middle East, arguing instead that these facilities are a desperate signalling mechanism designed to bail out the American financial system and the petrodollar recycling machine, as the escalating war in Iran threatens to permanently dismantle U.S. economic hegemony.

In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau pull back the curtain on the fairy tales of Western geopolitical and technological independence, arguing that Europe is sleepwalking into a decade of industrial decline and techno-vassalage because it has allowed its core innovation to be hollowed out by Silicon Valley, while simultaneously failing to acknowledge the reality that its own energy security and economic survival will ultimately force a desperate reconnection with Russia, even as China successfully weaponises Western sanctions and digital isolation to leapfrog a generation ahead in the global AI war.

In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dismantle the orthodoxies surrounding the Iran war and Hungarian election by arguing that Donald Trump’s "blockade of the blockade" in the Strait of Hormuz is less a repeat of the 1956 Suez crisis than a catalyst for a new electro-economy and a non-dollar financial architecture, while simultaneously warning that the landslide victory of Péter Magyar over Viktor Orbán is not the liberal restoration the West is celebrating, but rather the replacement of one right wing leader with a fresh face of the same illiberal nationalism.

In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the crumbling facade of Western geostrategic and economic orthodoxies, arguing that the United States has already reached a military checkmate against Iran, while simultaneously warning that Europe’s delusion of energy independence and perilous vulnerability to supply shocks will likely collapse into a humiliating, American-mediated return to Russian gas.

In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dismantle the orthodoxies of European leadership and AI-driven warfare, breaking down how the EU’s structural fragmentation make it incapable of filling the global power vacuum, and exposing how corporations like Palantir provide absolution from accountability by replacing human judgment with the clinical, automated efficiency of cloud capital.

Live from a packed Emmanuel Centre, the Econoclasts brought their podcast to London for a sweeping ‘around-the-globe’ deconstruction of the failing orthodoxies shaping our modern world. From the structural drivers of ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East to a sobering analysis of the Ukraine-Russia stalemate and the undeniable rise of Chinese technological supremacy, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau strip away the myths regarding China’s industrial success and Europe’s own productivity collapse, and debate whether the West’s current trajectory can be reversed or if we are witnessing a permanent shift in the global balance of power.

In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dismantle the narratives surrounding the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, breaking down how the resulting energy shock could trigger a permanent global recession. As the West faces systemic economic damage and a depleted military arsenal, and Russia reaps a massive financial windfall, is the West sleepwalking into a dual defeat in both Iran and Ukraine?