Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. In today's program,

we'll be talking about a fundamental crisis in the relationships economic between the

United States and Western Europe, challenging that alliance in the profoundest way. We'll be

talking about public pensions for tens of millions of Americans

that are heading into an era of serious trouble. We'll look at the boast of the GM CEO about

electric cars that GM is planning for the next decade or so. We'll look at how thousands of elementary school kids below

the fifth grade have interactions with the police these days. And we'll talk about the passing

of American radical Staunton Lind. Okay, let's jump right in. I want to talk about a crisis building but below the

radar in the relationship between the United States and Western Europe. It's been coming for a long

time. It is about to explode. And one of the things bringing it to an exploding point is the

war in Ukraine. But let me go back a little bit and talk about it, because it's so important.

European countries understand exquisitely clearly that one empire of capitalism is going down and another one is rising.

They know the United States' empire is shrinking and the empire of the People's Republic of China

is emerging. They know that the United States is trying to block, slow, or maybe even in its fantasy, reverse this course of history. But the Europeans understand they better figure out where they're going to end up, or else they'll be sacrificed in the tensions between

the United States and the People's Republic of China. Keep that in your mind, because everything

you read about economics in Europe from now on is really about that. Ten years ago, the French acutely aware of this because of their efforts,

sometimes successful, to be a bit independent of the United States after World War II.

They're a bit more developed in France and in other parts of Europe. Twenty-five years ago, they therefore established,

and when I say they, I mean some of the biggest financial and economic interests in French

capitalism, established a school in Paris called the Ecole de Guerre Economique, the School of Economic Warfare.

Wow.

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