ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the narrative and argument of The Global Minotaur. It then contrasts Varoufakis’s use of the Greek myth to analyse international trade with another, folk myth about national governments and economies, before arguing that Greek myth might even be helpful in developing a better public understanding of our collective economic experience. The chapter explains that an answer to the ineluctable fact of the American dollar as the single global ‘hard’ currency is the distinct possibility that ancient Greek myth might be the common currency for understanding the systemic implications of that one hard currency, especially as Varoufakis and some other economists have critically presented them. In an intellectual landscape of broken economic models and failed housekeeping myths, Greek myth might help us to find out what plot we might be in, by experimenting with familiar stories, until we find one, or more, that best fits our hobbling present and our desired future.
