The Last Bluff: How Greece came face-to-face with financial catastrophe

The Last Bluff: How Greece came face-to-face with financial catastrophe

Monday, 4 November 2019 - 5:00pm
Venue: 
Seminar Room, European Studies Centre, 70 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HR
Speaker(s): 
Viktoria Dendrinou (Bloomberg)
Eleni Varvitsioti (Kathimerini)
Chair: 
Othon Anastasakis (St Antony's College, Oxford)
Convenor: 
Othon Anastasakis (St Antony's College, Oxford)
Discussant: 
Tim Vlandas (St Antony's College, Oxford)
Series: 
SEESOX

The Last Bluff: How Greece came face-to-face with financial catastrophe and the secret plan for its euro exit is a behind-the-scenes political thriller offering the definitive account of Europe’s 2015 dramatic showdown with Greece. The writers,  journalists Victoria Dendrinou and Eleni Varvitsioti, will be with us to present it and take us behind the closed doors were the future of Greece and of the euro would be decided. 

The book is a wide-ranging, exhaustively-investigated narrative of the most turbulent year in Europe’s recent financial history, revealing one of the continent's best kept secrets: the Plan B in case its weakest link crashed out of the euro. From the election of Europe’s first radical, anti-establishment government in Greece, to the country's dramatic referendum, this a nail-biting tale about power and money, a story about charismatic but often vain characters and politicians who failed to live up to expectations.

Viktoria Dendrinou is a reporter for Bloomberg News in Brussels. She covers EU affairs and specialises in economic issues and the eurozone. Previously she worked for the Wall Street Journal as an EU correspondent focusing on the economy, financial regulation and trade. Before moving to Brussels she spent two years at Reuters Breakingviews in London and was a Nico Colchester Fellow at the Economist. She holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Economics from University College London.
 
Eleni Varvitsioti is the Brussels correspondent for Greek daily Kathimerini and SKAI TV, a post she has held since 2014. She began her career a journalist in 2004, when she joined the reporting team of investigative TV program Folders. During her 10 years there, she covered a wide range of issues reporting from Greece, Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the U.S.. In 2016 she was awarded by the Botsis Foundation, Greece’s most prestigious journalism prize, for her work covering the financial crisis. She majored in Journalism and History at Boston University.

Tim Vlandas is Associate Professor of Comparative Social Policy and a governing body fellow of St Antony’s College at Oxford University. He is also a visiting fellow in the European Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE) and one of the convenors of the political economy and welfare state standing group of the European Consortium of Political Research. He is interested in the relationship between electoral politics, public policies and economic outcomes. Recent projects have focused on the determinants of labour market policies and inequality, the politics of macroeconomic policy, and the impact of welfare state policies on far-right party support. His research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, the Socio-Economic Review, the Journal of Common Market Studies, Politics&Society, the Journal of European Social Policy, French Politics, the European Journal of Industrial Relation, Political Science Research and Methods and Comparative European Politics. He was awarded a best doctoral research prize by the European Network for Social Policy Analysis, a best research output prize by the University of Reading and a best paper on European Politics award by the American Political Science Association. He is currently finishing a book on Sovereign Wealth Funds (joint with Mark Thatcher, under contract with Oxford University Press).