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7 Things You Should Know About Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's Cool New Finance Minister

7 Things You Should Know About Greece's Cool New Finance Minister
Asa Bennett
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Anti-austerity party Syriza has swept into power in Greece, with leader Alexis Tsipras now leading a coalition government with the Independent Greeks.

Tsipras has appointed a leading anti-austerity critic, Yanis Varoufakis, as his finance minister. Varoufakis' role will be especially significant as Greece tries to drag itself out of the economic mire.

Dr George Kyris, lecturer in politics at Birmingham University, told the Guardian that "while often very confrontational, Varoufakis might well provide a very good example of how Syriza has adjusted and has become more moderate, something which, after all, could be seen as a reason for its victory in last Sunday’s elections.”

Here are seven things you need to know about Greece's new finance chief.

7 Things To Know About Yanis Varoufakis
He knows his economics...(01 of06)
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Varoufakis worked as a visiting professor at both of the University of Athens and the University of Texas. The 53 year old went on to co-author "A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Eurozone Crisis" while at Texas, along with prominent left-wing economist James Galbraith. (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
He's a self-described "accidental economist"(02 of06)
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Varoufakis originally wanted to study physics, but gave economics a go at the University of Essex. However, he was within weeks left "aghast" by the "inane musings" of his lecturers and switched to mathematics, before being lured back to do a doctorate in economics at the University of Birmingham. (credit:Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)
He knows the value of sleep(03 of06)
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Writing on HuffPost last year, Varoudakis took issue with former Tory premier Margaret Thatcher for portraying sleep as a form of inefficiency.He wrote: "It did much to establish the 'hamsters-on-a-treadmill' environment in government, in the City of London, in the corporations...quantity came to trump quality on every turn. It would not stretch credulity too far to say that the vast pyramids of bad quality assets, which crashed and burned in 2008, had their origins, at least in some small part, in this cultural shift."
He worked for the creators of Half Life(04 of06)
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Varoufakis worked with Valve, creators of the Half Life video game series, where he studied economies in video games.
Will he turn up to international summits in a tie? (05 of06)
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Like Tsipras, who has made a point of not wearing a tie in public, Varoufakis likes to dress down.
And being in government won't stop him blogging...(06 of06)
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Varoufakis revealed that he had been advised to close down his blog, but chose to ignore their advice. He wrote on his blog, "The time to put up or shut up has, I have been told, arrived. My plan is to defy such advice. To continue blogging here even though it is normally considered irresponsible for a Finance Minister to indulge in such crass forms of communication. So, keep watching this space!" (credit:Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)
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