“News Items is the first thing I read every morning.” — Jack Leslie, former chairman of Weber Shandwick and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown Global Health Institute.
1. The New York Times:
Since the degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. was first scientifically linked to football about 20 years ago, and as hundreds of former professional football players have been diagnosed with the disease after their deaths, a haunting question has lingered:
Just how many N.F.L. players will end up with C.T.E.?
New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.
Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between.
The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E.
The actual prevalence could be far higher. The roughly 25 percent rate does not consider the 643 brains that were not examined. Some of those, maybe many of them, likely had C.T.E. too. (Source: bmj.com, nytimes.com)
2. The brains of people with depression seem to be worse at producing new neurons than are those of people without the disorder. That’s according to a study that includes the most comprehensive map of the cell types in the human adult hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning, memory and emotions. For more than 20 years, some researchers have suspected that a disruption in neurogenesis — the process of making new neurons — could be involved in depression. “This paper, excitingly, is the first to show at single-cell resolution exactly where in the process things appear to be awry and what molecular machinery is involved,” says Amelia Eisch, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who was not involved with the research. (Source: nature.com. Italics mine.)
3. Researchers have found a way to supercharge natural killer cells, powerful immune cells that can attack cancer, so they can penetrate solid tumors and keep fighting once inside. In mice, these specially prepared tissue-resident cells slowed the growth of several tumors, including melanoma and head and neck cancers, and worked even better when paired with the antibody drug cetuximab. (Source: sciencedaily.com, erbitux.lilly.com)
4. Eurointelligence:
The bond markets are finally starting to roar. They are beginning to realize that central banks have given up on the 2% inflation targets. The US fiscal deficit is 6% of GDP. A useful metric of fiscal stress is when debt servicing costs exceeds the size of the defence budget. In the US, that is now the case. We should not think of a yield on 30-year treasury bonds of 5.2% as particularly outlandish. For a country that produces 3-4% inflation, with no improvement in sight, this is a pretty low number.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Stanley Druckenmiller calls the bond markets a pushover that is finally clearing its throat. He is sharply critical of his former Soros colleague Scott Bessent over his recent support operations to contain the rise of long-term yields through the issuance of short-term treasury bills. The long-term yield, he writes, is the only instrument of fiscal discipline left. A yield-management operation won’t solve the problem. It just postpones its solution.
It is interesting to note that the causes behind the ballooning deficit are the same in the US that they are in France, the UK, and even in Germany. It is a phenomenon of the late phase of western capitalism that we now live in. The underlying issue is an uncontrolled explosion in welfare transfers and unfunded pension obligations that politicians are not willing to address. This is true of all parties, from the far-left to the far-right.
Druckenmiller calls what is happening right now generational theft. We believe it will end in default of some sort. The exorbitant privilege is exorbitant only to the extent that it is not maxed out. If the US defaulted, it would default in different ways to the way a country like Argentina once defaulted. It would not stop servicing its debt. Most likely it would resort to large scale money-printing, or there would be a political crisis, with Congress refusing to raise the debt ceiling, causing federal spending to stop abruptly. It is far too early to speculate on the precise mechanism on how this default will play out in detail. But it squarely falls into the category of things that end one way or the other because they are not sustainable. (Sources: allamericanspeakers.com, wsj.com, eurointelligence.com 8/26/26)
