10 Weekend Reads

June 6, 2015 7:00am by

Welcome to the weekend! Settle into your favorite easy chair, pour yourself some Komodo blend high octane go-juice, and jump into our longer form reads:

• PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi was right. Now what? An audacious strategy shift beyond unhealthy snacks and drinks was prescient, but the challenges are still daunting. (Fortune)
• The Science of Scarcity: A behavioral economist’s fresh perspectives on poverty (Harvard Magazine)
• Pharma Execs Don’t Know Why Anyone Is Upset by a $94,500 Miracle Cure (Bloomberg)
• After Water (Longreads) see also California Has No Idea How Much Water It Has Left. NASA Can Help. (New Republic)
• Iran’s ‘Generation Normal’: Iranian youth — curious, wired and desperate for normality — are forcing change that horrifies their rulers (FT)
• Cheap Wine Sucks: A Manifesto (Jezebel)
• Reining in the NSA (New York Review of Books)
• The Rise of Partisanship and Super-Cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives (PLOS One)
• This Is the Story of the Hamburger: Its rise from a lowly patty of chopped meat to the aristocracy of foods and Silicon Valley’s attempt to replace it with a meat that is not meat at all. (Grub Street)
• Big League Chew: An Oral History (Fox Sports)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Scott Galloway of NYU Stern and L2 digital.

 

 

U.S. Dividend Stocks Lose Luster

Source: WSJ

 

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
    • RW commented on Jun 6

      A classic piece of contemporary journamalism: ‘Balance’ above all and opinions on the shape of the Earth can differ. Oddly however the position favoring corporate interests is invariably in the lede and/or above the fold to make sure casual readers get the right message.

      NB: Unlike his putative opponents (Santorum and Monckton) in this case the Pope actually is a scientist — he has a Masters in Chemistry and worked in the field before entering ministry — and expert consensus on climate change overwhelmingly supports his position even before we get to the question of moral and ethical standing.

    • RW commented on Jun 6

      Just another case in point:

      Views Differ on Shape of Macroeconomics

      The doctrine of expansionary austerity …was immensely popular among policymakers in 2010, as the great turn toward austerity began. But the statistical underpinnings of the doctrine fell apart …So at this point research economists overwhelmingly believe that austerity is contractionary (and that stimulus is expansionary).

      … Yes, I suppose that “there is a debate” — there are debates about lots of things, from climate change to evolution to alien spaceships hidden in Area 51. But to suggest that this debate is at all symmetric is just wrong — and deeply misleading to one’s audience.

      …we’re not talking about the truth of how fiscal policy works so much as the state of professional opinion on that question, which is very one-sided. And it’s actually disturbing to see reporters unwilling to admit that simple reality.

  2. Mbuna commented on Jun 6

    Re: the rise of partisanship- It would be interesting to chart the rise of think tanks in terms of numbers, money, and ideological leanings as well as their output of ideological propaganda during the same time frame. If you consider how the mass media has changed during the same time frame it certainly has become more of a propaganda medium than anything else and all those so called “experts” bending facts to their wills on TV has contributed to partisanship of the electorate.

  3. cjb commented on Jun 6

    re; Pharma Execs Don’t Know Why Anyone Is Upset

    In an early 1970s Genesis concert, Peter Gabriel cued Phil Collins for a drum fill. Phil didn’t respond. Peter Gabriel turned back to Phil Collins and in an exasperated tone said “Phil! There’s people out there!” Phil responded, “I’m sorry everybody, I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry”

    I was in high end retail for a long time, selling men’s clothing. One day a customer, who was a doctor with a private practice, came into the shop to purchase a garment.

    While showing him a selection, out of nowhere he turned to me and said, “I don’t know how you people do it.” I thought he was speaking about our little clothing shop. He went on to tell me that he was suffering from an ear infection and prescribed himself eardrops to treat the infection. The drops were a three day course, one drop a day. There are only 3 or 4 drops in the bottle. He brought the script to a local pharmacy, because he did not want to drive to his office for the samples the pharma company had given him. The pharmacist handed him the medication and said it would be $250. He asked the pharmacist to put the medication back on the shelf. He drove the extra 20 minutes to his office where he got a free sample out of his refrigerator. Though in his early 70s, owning a practice with a long history, that was his “there’s people out there” moment. Having worked in the high-end retail business for a long time, (I am no longer in it), I knew a lot of very, very wealthy people. , including executives at all levels in the pharmaceutical industry. Regardless of your business, the wealthier you become, the more you are apt to be isolated from the general population and lose touch with how the majority of society lives.

    Much of the pharmaceutical industry needs to have its own, “Phil! There’s people out there!” moment.

  5. James Cameron commented on Jun 6

    Maybe the money would be better spent on improving the security of our government computer systems . . .

    “America’s next generation of nuclear submarines are supposed to have stealth capabilities. But at $5 billion a pop, they’re hard to hide in a budget.

    “That doesn’t mean Congress can’t try.”

    Inside the fight to take a $90 billion ship program off the Navy’s books.

    http://goo.gl/5YLjcz (Politico)

  6. hue commented on Jun 6

    The Underground Art of the Insult http://nyti.ms/1FF9sdv

    Laughing and crying my way through the new Google Photos (the verge http://bit.ly/1F1jkgY ) you’re nobody until you get an easy-to-ID bitly

    Ambidextrous pitcher Pat Venditte makes his debut for Athletics http://es.pn/1KTrKPR the real ac/dc, anyone remember or heard of the other in 95?

    Bill Simmons will go to work for Vox, and Vox will buy up all these sites like conFusion, the billionnaire Intercept yada yada yada and kungfu Pando and Taibbi will reunite with Ames & Yasha and other real journalists will comingle w/ all the fake ones and Koch sleepers all under one big etent

    Oh yeah, is there anyway I can run my jokes by VennData for approval first, i mean i’m perpetuating those rt-wings lies after all of those Kochsucking links lol

    • VennData commented on Jun 6

      You can find me standing alone against the bracing waves of the Right Wing Media. A lighthouse of a man, blinking monotonously. My horn, a dyspeptic blare.

  7. VennData commented on Jun 6

    Only GOP Supply Siders can get away with screaming that central banks have soaked the world in liquidity while Obama, Dodd-Frank, and Elizabeth Warren make trading impossible because of a lack of liquidity. Use which ever “philosophy” suits the moment’s talking point.

    You keep doing you viewers a service CNBCers and let them get away with it.

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