Do the low inflation rates mean that the purchasing power of Japanese and Swiss citizens has increased relative to other countries over time? The answer seems to be no.
Saudi Arabia could flee to gold or cryptocurrencies to escape the money-printing machine, but it won't replace the US dollar with an inferior fiat currency.
The United States is no longer in any position to remake the world in its image. It's not 1945 or even 1970. Yet the US seems to be gearing up to bully half the world into compliance with the US Russia sanctions.
Europe would have been immeasurably better off had its regimes chosen compromise instead of "countering aggression" in 1914. Sometimes this lesson is heeded, as when the US refused to intervene in 1956 and 1968.
Hitler recognized that his alliance with the bourgeois and right-wing forces—without which he would never have come to power—was irreconcilable with the radical revolutionary policies he had conceived.
Sanctions remain popular because they placate the voters who insist "we" must "do something," and government officials are more than happy to accept this invitation to grow state power.
