Richard Wolff: U.S.-Israel Divorce as U.S. Economy is on the Brink of Collapse

I'm a little skeptical about the fascination with a very mechanical link that people will not be happy about paying extra for oil and diesel, and will therefore vote against Trump.

Diesel is important in three areas: farming, where it powers the tractor, and rising costs combined with fertilizer prices and buyer pressure threaten farmers.

the single most important vulnerability of American capitalism now is the uninterrupted fifty years, forty to fifty years, of a worsening inequality, which destroyed affordable housing construction.

we are only witnessing the particularities of the decline of the American Empire, and the U.S. enacts theatrical displays of power it doesn't have.

we need to work out an arrangement to stop the destruction, and that includes the removal of the United States from its positions in the Middle East.

the ability of the Iranians to damage Israel is now established, very well established, and he is very dubious that the Israelis have the ability to survive much further.

I am taken with the speed and the extent of the shift in American public opinion from pretty massively pro-Israel to now pretty massively pro-Palestinian.

The discussion now isn't that different from the discussion about Iran, which is what is the best way to extract ourselves from this mess. There has to be a way to arrange for Israel to either fundamentally change or disappear while the U.S. appears to be helping them.

they have persuaded Mr. Trump, or at least some of them around him, that those are their twin problems: how to appear to be supporting the people you're actually burying.

if there is one thing in the world that will unite the entire world against Israel, it would be its use of nuclear weapons.

their concept is to take the whole world down with us if we go down.

Europe hitches its wagon to the United States, but European politicians kept hold of that deal long after it didn't make much sense anymore. Claims that the Polish army would defeat Russia in a couple of weeks are junk, especially against Russia allied with China.

Estonia has a population of 1.3 million, and the Russian Federation next to them has 145 million, and they're the world's largest nuclear power, yet Estonian politicians talk about taking Kaliningrad.

The mentality is a mass psychosis where no one pushes back against crazy claims because pushback is seen as being an apologist for Russia.

everything hangs on the middle countries, which are trying to figure out how to maneuver between China/Russia and the U.S./West. India shifted from pro-American stances to signing a joint SCO statement that denounced the war and put blame on the U.S.

there's an explosion of investment in data centers and in electricity generation to service AI, and tech companies are borrowing heavily, competing with U.S. government debt. Trump's offer of $5,000 to every adult if Republicans win midterms would add 1.3 trillion dollars to the deficit, paid for by borrowing.

The level of debt keeps rising very quickly, and the economic strength and wealth of the United States is not growing comparably at all.

A politician will eventually suggest suspending debt repayment for a year to get the house in order, triggering an international conference to manage a default.

Mr. Trump did more buying and selling of stock than all 100 senators and 453 House members combined, making one or two billion dollars. The stock market is kept up by the Magnificent Seven tech companies, while average medium and small companies are having trouble.