Wonderful idea having this discussion. Having it on KZfaq? Priceless, even now.

At 1:44 Dijsselbloem basically said: We hated the guy because he new he was right and made the greece pay for his arrogance. The question is: Was Y. Varoufakis analysis right? The last years showed that he was and that austerity and the EU medicine are killing the patient. Getting out of the D-Mark/Euro would have been the right thing to do.

Wow.... Listen to what he says at 1:35:38. "At the Euro group we are making major decisions behind closed doors" He is confirming what the Greek finance minister has said. "They meet without an agenda and they never publish the minutes of the meetings." They never keep any records. Now he wants to start publishing reports of the meetings. Not the minutes. Reports are edited and they are the opinions of the writer.... FURTHER MORE. He said at the Euro group they are making major decisions that effect life of millions... BUT the Eurogroup itself has not legal standing in any EU or Euro treaty... It is an arbitrary dictatorial group and its president is appointed by Germany's Finance minister. AAND THEY ARE MAKING DECISIONS THAT EFECT MILLIONS OF LIVES IN OTHER COUNTRIES???

At 1:25:39 Profesor Stieglitz is too generous with the characterization of the actions of the Troika ... IN fact the Troika collaborated with the Samaras Government to prevent the reforms that would had made the Greek oligarchs pay their fair share of taxes

1:29:03 listen to that Jerk ... Jeroen Dijsselbloem. ha ha ha . I enjoy the sarcastic smile of professor Stiglitz

Waar zijn de slides van mr Stiglitz?

At the end they ask the audience if they want to quit the doomed euro project, but I couldn't see how they responded. Was the audience in favor of going on with it or were most of them for quitting the project?

Comment to Markus K. Brunnermeier at 00:18:50

The Dutch minister and Leader of the Euro group made many untrue statements. Professor Stieglitz should called him on that instead of smiling. By doing so in effect he " ratified " Jeroen Dijsselbloem's lies ... It is regrettable

Very good last question. The Baltic countries that have recently joined the EU are also not doing well, they have budget deficit and are aided by financial institutions, they have pretty high and dangerous unemployment rate (check on wiki). But the biggest problem they're facing now after joining the EU is again the free labor move, which is, again a good idea for countries with strong economies but very dangerous for the weak. These countries are constantly being depopulated and unlike the stronger members of Europe they can't attract professional immigrants from countries outside Europe, so what's going to be with their future is unclear. ANd, I'm sorry, but they're not just states of a single country like in the USA so they shouldn't be compared with America. They are sovereign countries having long borders with Russia. You can't simply say, as The Netherland's financial minister is noting in the video, you also have labor move in America. Coming back to the last question it now makes a lot of sense that the political aspects of forming unions are not only not enough but as it turns out dangerous in many cases. And just like if they did know about the corrupt nature of the Greece economy and politics then they shouldn't have accepted the country into the EU. It could've been put in a queue, didn't have to be taken in just because there was some common sense of a need of a bigger, more unified Europe. What we're getting now is a radical nationalist party gaining so much support in Greece that they got 10% of Greece's national assembly representation. The EU is very complex, and the fact that many decisions are being done as here was said "behind the closed doors" only makes things worse. I'm seriously considering to join DiEM25.org.

Doijsselbloem doesn't see the wood for the trees. He is a micromanager who tries to optimize a system that is about to fail. He tunes small valves while big pipes are broken and need to be fixed. smh

A lot of useless questions asked by the audience.