These lazy answers always flourish during periods of deflation. Deflation, ladies and gentlemen, was always going to be the result of this particular… - Yanis Varoufakis

They [the Chinese] are far more humanistic than the United States ever was. [...] Of course they're trying... they are peddling for influence, but they are non-interventionists. Absolutely non-interventionists in a way that Europeans, the West, has never managed to fathom. The Chinese never asked Apple to go to Shenzhen and produce all the iPhones, it was Steve Jobs that decided that. It was not China that went to Washington DC and demanded that they buy a third of your national debt. If they hadn't bought it, you would be in serious trouble. [...] When it comes to the influence of China outside its borders, it's quite remarkable that they don't seem to have any military ambitions. Instead of going into Africa with troops, colonially destroying the country, killing people like the West has done for the last hundred years, what they did was they went to Addis Ababa and they said to the government: "We can see you have problems with your infrastructure, we would like to build some new airports and upgrade your railway system, create a telephone system, and rebuild your roads. And we will do this all for free." No strings attached. "We don't want anything from you". And they did. Why did they do it? Because this is soft power.

I would like to note that I have long considered myself a libertarian Marxist. This causes laughter and outrage from both Marxists and libertarians because they accuse me of being a hypocrite. If you are libertarian you cannot be a Marxist and if you are a Marxist you cannot be libertarian, they say. I see it differently.

Politics, I now understand, is at its best when it enlightens us via an opponent's insight.