Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Crashing the Car of Pax Americana: Pax Americana is the Bretton Woods monetary system and the Plaza Accords and the SWIFT banking system and the unquestioned dominance of the USD as the world’s reserve currency. It is the NATO alliance and the Pacific Fleet and CENTCOM and the NSA and the unquestioned dominance of the US military as the world’s security arbiter.It’s American brands, American universities, American entrepreneurialism, and most of all the American stories that have dominated the hearts and minds of everyone on Earth for the past 50 years. The United States set the rules for every coordination game in the world: The rules of trade, the rules of intellectual property, the rules of money, the rules of culture, the rules of war … all of those rules were made by us. Only by us! And in return we gave the rest of the world two things: global peace (pretty much) enforced by a blue-water navy with force projection capabilities anywhere in the world, and unfettered access (pretty much) to the buying power of the American consumer. (Epsilon Theory)
• Your Weed Habit May Be Messing With Your Sperm: A growing body of evidence now shows that cannabis is destructive to male fertility. (New York Times)
• The world’s hot new trade is “sell America”. The U.S. dollar — which should strengthen in a tariff environment, all other things being equal — weakened steadily. “This suggests foreigners have been and are continuing to sell U.S. stocks and sending their money elsewhere,” write Howard Ward and John Belton, co-chief investment officers of value at Gabelli Funds. (Axios) see also The American Age Is Over: The United States commits imperial suicide. (The Bulwark) see also American Disruption: The proximate cause of all of this reflection is of course Trump’s disastrous “liberation day” tariffs. The secondary cause is what I wrote about Monday: the U.S. has a genuine problem on its hands thanks to its inability to make things pertinent to modern warfare and high tech. The root cause, however, is very much in Stratechery’s wheelhouse, and worthy of another Article: it’s disruption. (Stratechery)
• ‘I am not who you think I am’: how a deep-cover KGB spy recruited his own son: For the first time, the man the KGB codenamed ‘the Inheritor’ tells his story. (The Guardian)
• How Investing Will Change if the Dollar No Longer Rules the World: Should the U.S. currency and stocks no longer rise together, Americans will need to broaden their portfolios. (Wall Street Journal) see also America’s endangered ‘exorbitant privilege’ Et tu, Goldman? The stock market car crash is naturally dominating attention. After all, this is only the fourth two-day 10% decline since at least 1952. But the more alarming developments are happening in currency markets. (Financial Times)
• What Are Microplastics Doing to Our Bodies? This Lab Is Racing to Find Out. Inside a New Mexico lab, researchers estimate there is five bottle caps worth of plastic in human brains. Now they are trying to find out its effects. (New York Times)
• Washington Is Getting Economic Security Wrong: Competition with China is based on false premises. (Foreign Policy)
• Inside the Law Firm That Decided to Fight Back Against Trump’s Attack: Perkins Coie’s biggest clients—including Amazon and Boeing—staying despite executive order targeting firm (Wall Street Journal) but see Cowardice and Capitulation Stain the Legacy of Once-Esteemed Mega Law Firm: Paul, Weiss joins the list of institutions and individuals with ample resources to defend themselves, who nevertheless have refused to stand up for justice in the face of MAGA intimidation (The Contrarian)
• About 90% of Migrants Deported to El Salvador Had No US Criminal Record. Record (MSN)
• A Secret Baby and a Nazi Hospital: The Untold Mystery Upending an Artist’s Legacy: Nobody ever noticed the little girl haunting the paintings of Egon Schiele. The story of her disappearance could change how we think about the modern master. (Wall Street Journal)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Tony Yoseloff, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at the $35 billion Davidson Kempner. He is Chairman of the New York Public Library’s endowment, sits on the Board of Trustees of Princeton and the Board of Directors of its endowment, and is Vice Chair of the investment committee at New York-Presbyterian.
Mapping the Vertical Integration of Insurers, PBMs, Specialty Pharmacies, and Providers: DCI’s 2025 Update and Competitive Outlook
Source: Drug Channels Institute
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