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.

I want to remind you before we plunge into today's topics that Charlie Fabian is a waiting word from you if you have suggestions or ideas for our programming.

We really do appreciate those of you that take the time and trouble to communicate those to us.

Easy to do, Charlie.

.info3.3.38 at gmail.com.

I also want to remind you that the kind of analysis you find on this program has now been

gathered together into a short but densely packed book just released called Understanding Capitalism.

It offers the kind of insights we present week after week, year after year, on this program,

but gathered together in one place so that you can look them up, you can get help in reconstructing

them if you want to use them yourself. In short, it's a guide to activists, teachers, students,

about how to develop whatever you think about capitalism positively to have it a little bit balanced with a critical

approach, which is what this book presents systematically. I urge you to take a look at it

if this kind of material is interesting to you. And you can find out about it at our website

easily enough. Okay, today's topics are

quite numerous, but I think you'll find them coming together into a remarkable program.

We'll begin by talking about how sanctions of the kind applied by the United States and Europe can provoke

retaliations of all kinds that can be quite consequential in terms of the damage

they do. And we present that not only as a general corrective to the notion

of sanctions being some powerful weapon, which

they have proven not to be, but to also understand that they have costs which the proponents

...