Of all the world’s billionaires, with the exception of those from China, it’s the French who have just enjoyed their most lucrative decade trib.al/VDVsgAM
LVMH boss Bernard Armault and his ilk saw their wealth balloon 439% to $443 billion between 2009 and mid-2020, fueled by Asian hunger for French luxury goods and a global real estate boom trib.al/VDVsgAM
While the pandemic looks like the start of a much dimmer decade, the rich won’t let this crisis go to waste.
@LionelRALaurent writes: “There are new Darwinist divides in the corporate world exposing a kind of gilded inequality at the top of society” trib.al/VDVsgAM
Soaring tech businesses can shrug off social distancing while old-school brick-and-mortar firms can’t:
💶 Arnault’s fortune has fallen by $19 billion this year
💶 Francoise Bettencourt Meyers faces competition for her title as the world’s richest woman trib.al/VDVsgAM
In France, the coronavirus crisis has prompted the ultra-wealthy to wake up to the need to pitch in more:
🧣Hermes donated $24 million to Paris’s hospital association
👜LVMH gave ventilators and made masks trib.al/VDVsgAM
In this dog-eat-dog world, every small corporate victory counts.
Arnauld’s most visible bout of Covid-19 opportunism has been to try and walk away from the mammoth LVMH takeover of Tiffany trib.al/VDVsgAM
The current climate is even offering tycoons the perfect chance to acquire more power and influence via Lagardare. These French billionaires all bought shares recently:
💰Vincent Bollore
💰Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere
💰Bernard Arnault trib.al/VDVsgAM
Now it’s clear Bollore and Arnauld are in a face-off for control for Lagardare’s asset which include:
📓Glossy magazine Paris Match
📚Book publisher Hachette
🗞Influential radio and newspaper brands trib.al/VDVsgAM
This all might seem rather quaint compared to the space ambitions of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
France’s increasingly old elites prefer radio brands to rockets. But that’s partly because globe-trotting across borders no longer looks like such a sure thing trib.al/VDVsgAM
This isn’t just a French phenomenon: Of all the business and investment strategies being pursued by the world’s billionaires, the least popular is to relocate to another country.
Still, in a crisis like this one, there’s no place like Paris trib.al/VDVsgAM
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Before he had Covid-19, Brendan Delaney, the 57-year-old chair of medical informatics and decision making at Imperial College, could cycle 150 miles in a day.
Covid changed that, but not because he had a severe case of the disease trib.al/nMhJr0P
Like many healthy people, he figured his symptoms, a mild fever and a cough, would pass soon enough. Instead, he experienced debilitating aftereffects, such as:
🥱Fatigue
🫁Breathlessness
🌡️Fevers
Seven months later, he is still not back to normal trib.al/nMhJr0P
He can’t imagine getting back on a bike and says that if he pushes himself too hard, he ends up in bed with a fever for a couple of days.
He considers himself lucky that he’s able to work. Many other long Covid sufferers cannot trib.al/nMhJr0P
In late June, @MaxNisen highlighted what he deemed a "horrifying" chart showing massive growth in new infections in the U.S. relative to the European Union.
Now, almost four months later, that chart remains terrifying, in a completely different way trib.al/hQxu8YS
For the first time since March, the EU is reporting more new Covid-19 cases on a per-capita basis than the U.S., reflecting a second wave of virus outbreaks.
That’s even as U.S. case rates climb from an alarmingly high post-summer plateau trib.al/hQxu8YS
Both regions are at a dangerous moment:
❄️The virus will be harder to control in winter as people congregate indoors
🙅🏻♀️Resistance to renewed restrictions may make them harder to impose and enforce trib.al/hQxu8YS
It’s possible 2020 will be remembered as a turning point in American history, a moment after which the nation becomes irretrievably different.
That’s right, it could be the year consumption of romaine and other leaf lettuce finally surpasses iceberg trib.al/4iwpnC2
It’s been quite the comedown over the past three decades for America’s iceberg lettuce, introduced by seed purveyor W. Atlee Burpee & Co in 1894.
So how did the so-called “polyester of greens” fall out of favor? trib.al/4iwpnC2
In 1961, Julia Child + Simone Beck’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” & Craig Claiborne’s “The New York Times Cookbook” led to the great American food awakening.
.@FSBarry is driving the Lincoln Highway to discover America.
This week, he finds tragedy, trauma and healing in the Keystone State trib.al/EyXok6f
📍Lancaster, PA
“It doesn't take one man, it takes all of us. So until we actually unite, that's when actual change can happen.”
@FSBarry speaks to protesters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania about police brutality trib.al/EyXok6f
📍York, PA
"We believe that our diversity is a strength, not a weakness. And even though there may be individuals who may not hold to that, I think the majority of Americans do," says Guy Dunham trib.al/EyXok6f
Since 1979, the left has only managed to install 4 people in the White House or Downing Street:
🇺🇸Bill Clinton
🇺🇸Barack Obama
🇬🇧Tony Blair
🇬🇧Gordon Brown
The right has established two advantages: competence & intellectual dynamism trib.al/mALxUdZ
The first is a traditional advantage of conservatism.
Both Republicans and the Tories have based their electoral appeal on the idea that they will do a better job of looking after your money and protecting your country than the other guys trib.al/mALxUdZ
However, the right has also been more dynamic.
Since 1979, modern conservatism has produced many important ideas that have changed the political universe, from privatization to welfare reform to “broken windows” crime policy trib.al/mALxUdZ