Empire Salon | Jeff Sachs

Columbia Professor Jeff Sachs will address the Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestinian war, the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the nation’s burgeoning debt and the role the US military in the pandemic.

Sachs recently testified with Ray McGovern before the United Nations on the Ukraine War. He sees Russia’s fear of NATO expansion as rational and the principal factor in the outbreak of the war. What are the consequences of the US continuing to be NATO’s principal financier? Should the United States withdraw from NATO?

Sachs will explain the role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. How does our exorbitant privilege allow the United States to finance our militarized foreign policy to the tune of $1.5 trillion annually? Would the American people accept the tax increases needed to finance our imperial spending on a pay-as-you-go basis?

In 2023, we are seeing a massive long-term increase in government borrowing -- estimated at $2–3 trillion a year by the CBO for the next 10 years. Sachs will address whether massive money printing will likely be needed to finance that debt. Is that level of borrowing and printing sustainable and, if not, what will happen to the economy?

The US military played a larger role in the pandemic than is commonly known. Sachs headed a panel of physicians sponsored by the Lancet investigating the origins of the Covid 19 virus.

Jeffrey Sachs is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary General António Guterres. He spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. He has authored numerous bestseller books. His most recent book is The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (2020). Sachs was twice named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders and was ranked by The Economist among the top three most influential living economists.