Author Archives: Yves Smith

How ‘Dupes’, Fast Fashion and China’s Economic Slowdown Spell Disaster for the Luxury Sector

The luxury goods market is in bad shape, an indicator of how the moderately well off and “aspirational” shoppers are under income stress.

Links 1/22/2025

Knowing Less About AI Makes People More Open to Having It in Their Lives – New Research

A study on receptivity to AI use sadly skips over some fundamental questions.

Close to 30 Million Americans Face Limited Water Supplies, Government Report Finds

Struggles over water use and cost are set to intensify as usage outstrips supplies.

How Los Angeles Can Fireproof Communities, Not Just Houses

Ideas about how to reduce fire risk in Los Angeles do not appear to go far enough.

Links 1/21/2025

Four Lawsuits Targeting DOGE Filed Immediately After Trump Swearing In Demand Compliance with FACA, Other Laws

DOGE is dodgy! Who’d have thunk it? Four fast-off-the-block filings seek to bring it to heel.

How Trump 2.0 Could Herald a New Age of Authoritarian Capitalism

To discuss: “Trump’s weaponisation of US power poses a threat to peace, prosperity and the planet.”

The Next Unwind of Social Guarantees: Home and Medical Insurance

A Wall Street Journal column suggests that elite conventional wisdom favors more gutting of medical and home insurance as unduly “socialized”

For Homeless Seniors, Getting Into Stable Housing Takes a Village — And a Lot of Luck

Another indictment of America’s claims of superiority: a coming tsunami of homeless elderly

Los Angeles Fires: A Guide for Making Sure Your Home Insurer Pays What It Owes

Links 1/18/2025

Was Biden Right to Warn about the Tech-Industrial Complex?

On Biden’s self-serving and lame warning about the evils of the tech-industrial complex, which to him amounts to social media disinformation.

Michael Hudson: Trump on Greenland, Panama and Canada

Michael Hudson on the method in Trump’s seeming madness in laying claim to Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal.