Lambert Strether

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.

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.

A weekly commentary on war, weapons, and waste in an increasingly dangerous world Welcome to the Armed Madhouse coffee break. As the U.S. Congress considers adding another $100 billion to the U.S. defense budget, pushing the total past $1 trillion, I am launching a weekly Coffee Break feature on the weaponry, politics, economics, and consequences of armed conflict. I owe the title to a book by Greg Palast. True to the spirit of NC, the posts will be factual, rational, and non-ideological.