Death penalty law plus opinion in the Guardian

I spoke with Sawsan Zaher about Israel’s death penalty law for Occupied Thoughts. She’s a Palestinian in Israel who practices law with a focus on human rights.

And for the Guardian, I wrote about the impact of the US-Israel war on Iran on the US dollar. From the article:

Now, Iran’s effort to decouple trade through Hormuz from the dollar has put new impetus behind efforts to shake off the dollar’s dominance. In the years ahead consumers in Asia, which is where most of the oil and gas is bound for, may choose to pay in Chinese currency which then can also be used to buy Chinese goods. In aggregate and over time that weakens the value – the real utility – of the dollar, thereby weakening global demand for dollars.

The upshot for Americans is that this country will be less powerful globally. The ability to apply financial sanctions only works if you control the levers of international finance and now there are alternatives. Our borrowing costs will also go up as demand for the dollar diminishes – which means higher prices across the board. In the longer term it may also mean austerity – if we can’t borrow to finance spending (which we can only do because we’re systemically indispensable), we’ll have to cut expenses to balance budgets. That may require some thinking and planning, neither of which successive American administrations seem to be good at doing.