Lambert Strether

1 month ago | nakedcapitalism.com | Yves Smith |Lambert Strether |Conor Gallagher

While there’s clearly been a lot of infighting among the US ruling elite in recent years, there are at least a few unifying forces currently helping them to hold hands and sing “Kumbayah”: (1) US support for the Israeli genocide grows out of domestic pressures and imperial logics. But we should not underestimate the importance of this foreign policy as a venue for elite reconciliation, after eight years of unusually intense inter-elite conflict.

1 month ago | nakedcapitalism.com | Yves Smith |Lambert Strether

Yves here. A terse and important take of where ever-more-extractive capitalism is heading. Mind you, I am not sure it had to wind up this way. Michael Hudson has argued, such as in his paper From Marx to Goldman Sachs, that Marx recognized the competition between manufacturing and financial capitalism.

1 month ago | nakedcapitalism.com | Yves Smith |Lambert Strether

Yves here. One thing Federal officials (or Friends of the Administration who give hot takes on business TV) have taken far too often to doing is refraining from “Just the facts, ma’am” updates to trying to spin the latest set of releases so as to sound better than they are. Often you see Mr. Market make a fast move that takes up the positioning, only to pretty quickly retreat and recalibrate. Other times, the prettying-up sticks for longer than it ought to.

1 month ago | nakedcapitalism.com | Yves Smith |Lambert Strether

Scientists Just Discovered an RNA That Repairs DNA Damage – And It’s a Game-Changer SciTech Daily (Chuck L) Alzheimer’s May Develop Differently in Women MedPage. Note that HRT, started early enough, is neuroprotective. In general, HRT gets an unwarranted bad rap. Women who start HRT comparatively early have lower all cause mortality than women who don’t. See here for details.

1 month ago | nakedcapitalism.com | Yves Smith |Lambert Strether |Nick Corbishley

As the world’s largest soft drinks manufacturer faces a consumer boycott in its largest global market, Mexico, its marketers just came up with a cunning plan. But will it work? For a company whose sales depend so heavily on brand perception, Coca Cola has a serious image problem. In the Middle East, for example, its close ties to and support of Israel appear to be putting a drag on sales in many Arab countries.