Ulrike Herrmann: »Geld als Waffe«

Blood toll. The price of war. A metaphor, we thought. After reading Ulrike Herrmann's new book Money as a Weapon, we think differently. Isn't there something quasi-military about Trump's handling of customs? Herrmann, one of Germany's most important economic commentators(Das Ende des Kapitalismus), shows that and how wars quite literally demand something more like customs blood than blood tolls: Economics is both a cause of war and a weapon of war ("Weapons cost money - which makes money the real weapon. It is the weapon of all weapons."). What if weapons also create money and not just cost money? Is it in Russia's economic interest to continue waging war? Is it in China's interest to attack Taiwan to distract from economic problems - or even to solve them? What is a "war economy"? Salon host Joachim Otte asks about the arms industry and economic weapons.