Yanis Varoufakis read mathematics and economics at the Universities of Essex and Birmingham and subsequently taught economics at the Universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Sydney, Glasgow, Texas and Athens where he still holds a Chair in Political Economy and Economic Theory. He is the author of a number of books, including The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy. His next book, to be published in April 2016 by Penguin-Random House, is entitled: And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability. Varoufakis was, in his own words, “thrust onto the public scene by Europe’s inane handling of an inevitable crisis”. In January 2015 he was elected to Greece's Parliament with the largest majority in the country and served as Greece’s Finance Minister (January to July 2015). During his term he experienced first hand the authoritarian inefficiency of the European Union’s institutions and had to negotiate with the Eurogroup, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. His stint in government ended when he refused to sign a loan agreement that condemned Greece to yet another calamitous debt-deflationary cycle.