Country Diary: Dalmigavie Guardian (hat tip Buzz Potamkin). Buzz is on a roll with animal stories.
Beloved Brooklyn Cow Dies of Natural Causes New York Times (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
TSA Agent Threatens Woman With Defamation, Demands $500k For Calling Intrusive Search ‘Rape’ TechDirt (hat tip Lambert Strether)
San Francisco May Make Nudists Cover Their Seats NPR (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
A Taste Of Their Own Medicine Org Prep Daily. Lambert Strether notes: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Germany’s Top Court Rejects Constitutional Challenges to Euro Rescue Fund Bloomberg
An End to Empire Andrew Bacevich, American Conservative (hat tip reader Externality)
Scrambling for cancer drugs Boston Globe (hat tip reader Chris M). I hate to sound paranoid, but this reminds me all too much of how power companies operate in Alabama. They are extremely slow to restore power after a storm, and then use that to argue that they need rate increases. Is this part of an effort to forestall pushback on BigPharma prices?
Top of Chinese wealthy’s wish list? To leave China Associated Press (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
China’s migrant workers expect more John Gapper, Financial Times
MA-Sen: Elizabeth Warren within nine of Brown Daily Kos
Audio: Chris Christie Lets Loose at Secret Koch Brothers Confab Mother Jones (hat tip reader Paul T)
WHEN IT COMES TO KOCH APOLOGISTS, SLATE’S DAVID WEIGEL IS “CHAIRMAN OF THE BORED” Mark Ames, Exiled
Let’s Just Raid Social Security Testosterone PIt (hat tip reader Carol B)
Businesses post most job openings in 3 years Associated Press
Translating the WaPo’s Bank-Talking-Point Editorial Abigail Field. A good takedown.
Moynihan Tries to Keep Bank of America Intact as Mortgage Loans Fall Apart Bloomberg. A PR plant.
How Moynihan Forced Sallie Krawcheck Out CNBC (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck).
FHFA Lawsuits: Price Tag Could Reach as High as $60 Billion Dave Dayen, FireDogLake
Analysis: Mortgage cases target people, not just banks Reuters (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
Suing Banks Is Next Best to Letting Them Fail Jonathan Weil. Bloomberg
Libor inquiry looks at criminal angle Financial Times. So the only activities that get prosecuted are crimes against other financial players?
NewPage files for Chapter 11 Escanaba Daily Press
Antidote du jour:
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Thanks for the link to the MoJo piece on Christie. It clarifies his positions for me. I think his avoidance of bible rhetoric, his cute obesity, and the way he wraps himself in the flag while hacking away at the constitution’s “material expression” (see Lofgren’s Truthout piece) will appeal to low-information voters. If someone respectable like Schneiderman runs as an independent and challenges Obama he’d get my vote and Christie, Bachmann or Perry would win. First thing on their desk in January 2013 would be a bill to raise the debt ceiling and let’s say they don’t sign it.
I wonder how Mish Shedlock is taking the news that yet another of his golden boy GOP governors has been caught in creepy old Mr Koch’s bed. It’s getting mighty crowded in there. He’ll probably tear into Trichet or bash Bernanke again rather than face up to the nature of the grifters and opportunists he supports. A wild guess. Perhaps that bed is where his sympathies truly lie. Don’t give up Mish, I hear there’s plenty of room.
Great timing with the NewPage story :) Does this mean that they’re going to shutter this mill, too?
No, just steal the pensions of the workers. And continue trying to break the unions.
The Guardian obviously likes this glen:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/nov/18/country-diary-dalmigavie
Re patent case “taste of own medicine”:
That was fun to read, an antidote indeed.
This highlights one of the three ways in which the current IP regime has nothing to do with productivity or morality and is in fact unconstitutional (article 1 section 8):
It doesn’t confer the benefit on the “Authors and Inventors”, but on corporate parasites.
The other two are: It’s not meant “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” (but instead is meant to suppress it), and IP monopolies don’t run for reasonable “limited Times”.
We need to reject the existing IP regime at the very least. (And indeed IP as such, but that’s another subject beyond the scope of this comment.)
Nonsense.
But, IF you do REALLY wish to help improve the internet in respect of its technical underpinnings, why do you not participate – if you are capable and sufficiently knowledgeable of it (as your call for the abolition of Internet protocol (IP) would seem to indicate – in the Request For Comments which the electrical engineers engage in to design and improve the system’s workings?
If by “IP” you meant to refer to “intellectual property”, then you should stop using meaningless phrases (such as “intellectual property”) which assumes its own conclusion and that non-substantial things ARE property (rather than such things being merely TREATED as property – such work itself is of the imagination!).
“Intellectual property’? That’s a misleading way of referring to the sundry Government grants to named individuals of certain defined-and-created-by-statute monopoly rights of production (and re-production) of physical goods and processes.
NOT “intellectual property”, but rather “trade, copyright and patent rights granted by the Government”, is the way to refer to it. To use the former instead of the latter to refer to it is intellectual laziness, that immediately adds to confusion.
This species of legal right, wrongly called “intellectual property”, has nothing to do with nature or property as we have known it in the previous thousands of years of human existence.
Instead, it’s all about how the powerful want things to be now.
In other words: pay up, and keep paying up.
It now appears that the only “works of the imagination” which become public domain in the USA do so by accident. I’m sure that Congress will close that “loophole” quickly enough!
Oh yeah, a link to the RFC’s I referred to above.
A little technical, perhaps, but of interest:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfcxx00.html
All about IP. The real IP, that is: internet protocols….
C’mon. Attempter was *clearly* referring to “intellectual property” when using the acronym “IP”. Before you shred a comment and claim its author was “lazy”, could you try a little harder to make sense of the comment?
Thanks. I think aet’s drivel speaks for itself. He just lives to use the sentence fragment “nonsense”. The quality of the allegation is really incidental.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with my many comments on the subject knows that my two-level attack is on
1. IP as such, invalid and abominable in principle.
2. The current IP regime as unconstitutional, and therefore illegitimate even according to the proclaimed premises of almost all who agree with IP in principle.
Also keep sarcasm at a healthy distance from him.
There is nothing wrong with US copyright, patent and trademark law that a Congressional Act could not fix with the stroke of a pen.
Yet you would burn the entire house down, because of your observation that a door doesn’t close properly without being forced. And apparently because you don’t approve of the way people attempt to enforce those rights that they argue have been given to them by the law as passed.
You should focus on getting a specific amendment addressing a specific problem with the law passed by the House – rather than simply rail against the entire scheme and structure of the law.
That might actually do some good, instead of simply seeking to engage people’s emotions, like the fascists do, and continue to do.
yeah, I’ve seen sarcasm used often to successfully convince people of the errors of their ways of thinking.
Especially by stormtroopers, cops, killers and ka jail guards.
The use of sarcasm in argument is simply trying to poison the spirit of your interlocutor with insult: try rational argument ,if you s really wish to convince others of your views: otherwise, the use of sarcasm is a marker of a person who would secretly rather you support the opposite of what they are claiming to support with their sarcasm.
For sarcasm is a species of cruelty; and operates only prescisely as cruelty operates.
Looking for a political circus? Then look for sarcasm used publicly, for that is its marker – a complete lack of respect for the opponent.
A sarcastic comment, before they put a bullet in your head.
Oh yeah, a wonderful thing in political debate, sarcasm is.
Sarcasm is simply cruelty mixed with a vocal contempt: if you can’t say something nice about others, say nothing at all.
Sarcasm has no place in serious policy debates: it is something suitable for the proscenium arch or peanut gallery – as entertainment only.
And IMHO politics presented as entertainment, as the US media has done for some time now, leads to rotten policies.
And when people who are affected badly by the law complain, they get met with – sarcasm.
You are right: keep sarcasm away from me – for I have seen how it is actually used on the street.
Cruelty and dis-respect for others, disguised by another name.
As knowledge production has become more and more central to the economy, everyone’s inability to handle it has become a major bottleneck for development. But this is so fundamental and so woven into everything that we do not see it.
Handling knowledge production requires doing two things at once: turning the knowledge loose completely and fairly motivating/rewarding those who create, distribute, and maintain knowledge. “Piracy” attempts the first, but neglects the second. “IP” attempts the second, but works against the first. Also, because most economies were dominated by monopolies even before knowledge production became so crucial, much of “IP” centers on the attempt to create opportunities for extracting rents.
Among the results of this unseen cul-de-sac are massive under-investment in education, over-investment in war and real estate, intense mis-direction of knowledge production, lack of jobs especially good ones, and lack of investment opportunities that contribute to society rather than harm it. This has been the core fact about the leading economies for decades and is the underlying source of the degeneration that has now become so obvious in our politics.
Good comment!
And without sarcasm, I notice.
From thelocal.se:
http://www.thelocal.se/36002/20110907/
No one dares call the inebriated quadruped’s plight by its true name: QE [Quantitative Eating].
Fighting a recession with monetary policy is like puhing on a string.
People need incomes, not low-interest loans or a break on their taxes.
Where’s the fiscal policies to complement the monetary policies? Well?
Pooing on a string, pushing on a string – same difference.
Never poo on a string without having this handy:
http://www.austinreport.com/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/money-toilet-paper.jpg
Hmmm…that would work well, until you run out.
Linked as a service for those readers who have forgotten, or who have never properly learned:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/13503
According to the UK Telegraph, the Bank of England’s decision to peg its benchmark interest rate at 0.5% has cost British savers “£43bn in interest since March 2008.” (£43bn is approximately 68.7 billion dollars)
“Savers miss out on £43bn in interest since March 2008”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/savings/8748791/Savers-miss-out-on-43bn-in-interest-since-March-2008.html
And how should the boomers who actually built up savings to pay for their retirements feel about this lack of paid interest?
If you make $50,000/yr before retirement and wish to have 60% of that after retirement, how much do you have to save in order to earn that much in your 0.5% bank account?
Let’s see, $50,000 x 0.6 = $30,000
@ 0.5% interest:
$30,000/0.005 = 6,000,000.
If you didn’t have to split it, throught out your working career, with the government and if you didn’t have to eat or support a family, it would only take you 120 years to save up $6,000,000.
Assuming you started working @ age 12, it would mean you can comfortably retire when you’re 132 yr. old.
Plan accordingly (for those without defined benefit plans)!
So you think interest rates will pay a real 0.5% for the next few decades?
That ever happened before? When?
I think people ought to keep saving, if they wish to retire from active life in the future and still have money to spend.
I also think that there is a good possibility that real interest payable will increase in the future, as it has in the past. Unlikely for it to go lower, as it is tough to go lower than .5%, and that’s why fiscal policy – spending by the State – is now needed.
Monetary policy has shot its bolt.
As an aside, I’ve always found it interestong that people say that the “the Fed keeps rates low”….could the Fed also “keep rates high” if they so wished?
Are the interest rates payable wholly within the command of the Fed?
If not, what limits the power to do so, up or down? (They can’t go below zero – confiscation is NOT interest -a a problem for economic guidance-or-control-by-monetarism-only theorists!)
In this – the power to set general rates of money interest – is the Fed limited by ideology, or by empirical fact? Or is its powers in this regard limited only by the fear of its own ignorance, as to what would happen in the productive economy, if they were to too aggressively use their power to set the rates, up or down?
And what is the effect of interest rates on the production of goods and services? Or is the effect of interest rates limited only to price levels, rather than the actual amounts of production of goods and services?
“Scrambling for cancer drugs”
It’s going to sound outrageous to those who haven’t followed the medical history in the USA over the years. But these guys want to make you sick and keep you sick. You can go to http://www.canaryparty.org/ or add Canaryparty to your facebook and find out how your health is being affected by these Big Pharma criminals.
Big Pharma controls everything related to your health. From the medical journals, the CDC/FDA, universities, the drugs, and to the research. They fund and control everybody and anything to do with it. They do this by controlling the money.
Big Pharma funds the polticians, funds the research, funds the universities, and funds the advertising? It is ALL controlled by big pharma.
The FDA has a rule that requires a $300,000,000 application fee for new drugs and certain supplements!! Who else but big pharma can afford that much money for an application? Forget Dr Burzynski’s life saving non-toxic cancer treatment coming to market. Dr Burzynski created an excellent movie about his battles with the FDA. He is the real deal.(contrary to the propaganda suggesting otherwise)
It gets much worse when you understand how much life saving research is simply buried by the FDA and CDC. Take Lyme disease for example. The CDC has known this has been an epidemic for decades, yet your doctor will never rule it out when you come in with symptoms. Your doctor is going to give you a antidepressant and something else, because that is what Big Pharma wants.
Think about the mercury in your dental fillings, the fluoride in your drinking water, the fluoride in your medications, the extra high levels of Acetominophen(liver damaging) in your Vicodin, the aspartame in your chewing gum. Those are highly toxic chemicals that can lead to chemical injury, especially if one is already genetically predisposed.
Big pharma is making you sick, and your highest level government officials have been helping them keep you sick for decades.
By the way, when some big pharma/government employee comes by this blog later, and pretends to disagree with my post, just ignore him! It’s just his job to surf the web and leave pseudoscience type comments. After all how else would senators and congressman know how to vote if there wasn’t abundant propaganda in the media to convince them otherwise?
Rotten to the core.
Jim,
Not just Big Pharma but also their garbed in goodness non profit front groups:
Prevention of cancer means zero profits for the cancer industry. All the focus on cures for cancer means big bucks. What if pesticide makers made money off chemotherapy chemicals? They do.
What if radiological machine makers caused cancer by x-ray exposure? They do.
What if these companies formed a front company to stress cures and not prevention? They do. It’s called the American Cancer Society and they have over a billion dollars in the bank and keep getting people to volunteer to raise even more cash for them.
The ACS was against banning DES, against any research into the link between cancer and pesticides, controls most research journals, bans researchers that do controlled studies on no-profit nutrition and in general is a front group for those that harvest profit from cancer.
“Cancer is an economic disease.”
The problem is that the shortages mostly affect older, so-called generic drugs, which are no longer made by the Big Pharma.They are generally made by generic companies (Teva, Milan, Barr, Watson, etc) working on a small margin. To increase the margin, actual production is outsourced to India and China. Being cheap, those Chindian manufacturers are not very reliable. So one has to blame outsourcing for the drug shortages. They have nothing to do with either FDA or Big Pharma. Easiest way to fix it would be to make the drugs in the US. They would become more expensive, but only slightly, because actual drug manufacturing is pretty cheap even with the US workforce.
“A Taste of their Own Medicine” should be retitled: “How Capitalism Really ‘Works.'”
If companies posted more jobs in July, I didn’t see the postings, and I’m always looking at jobs listings. I’ll take the story as another phony baloney attempt to make things seem better than they are. For a fact, September listings in my geo area are down, again.
Top Stories
New Jobless Claims Increase Unexpectedly- Reuters
New U.S. jobless claims rose unexpectedly last week, further evidence of a weak labor market just hours before President Barack Obama delivers a major address to Congress on the issue.
and
<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/job_data_won_tell_whole_story_m7JkPF46549SLYMwGhhC8L#ixzz1XNc2VA2m"New York Post -John Crudele
Choice words this morning on Bank of America from The Lex Column, FT
Bank of America: musical chairs but pay’s the thing
What doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway, is that this is typical for the entire multinational corporatocracy where two and two makes whatever they say it makes and the hell with clear communication. We’re not crooks, we’re innovators.
I really wish these people were not so contemptible.
Just In HuffPo -the link to the article doesn’t work
Bank Of America Splitting Into Two Units, Closing Up To 600 Branches
Shortage of cancer drugs.
Yet another reason why we
need Medicare For All. Socialism. National Health Care. Whatever you want to call it. How about Congress’
Health Care shall be available to every citizen?
The V.A. was able to quickly and inexpensively
create its own drugs for a rare
disease in its own laboratories when Big Pharma
refused to do it because there was too little
profit in it.
Cancer is an economic disease.
It is caused by activities that create profits and
there are huge profits to be made in its treatment.
There are many different kinds of cancer – it is NOT one disease, and your slogan sucks.
“Cancer is an economic disease.”
At the same time that David Koch has been casting himself as a champion in the fight against cancer, Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a “known carcinogen” in humans.
Scientists have long known that formaldehyde causes cancer in rats, and several major scientific studies have concluded that formaldehyde causes cancer in human beings—including one published last year by the National Cancer Institute, on whose advisory board Koch sits.
The study tracked twenty-five thousand patients for an average of forty years; subjects exposed to higher amounts of formaldehyde had significantly higher rates of leukemia. These results helped lead an expert panel within the National Institutes of Health to conclude that formaldehyde should be categorized as a known carcinogen, and be strictly controlled by the government. Corporations have resisted regulations on formaldehyde for decades, however, and Koch Industries has been a large funder of members of Congress who have stymied the E.P.A., requiring it to defer new regulations until more studies are completed. Koch Industries became a major producer of the chemical in 2005, after it bought Georgia-Pacific, the paper and wood-products company, for twenty-one billion dollars. Georgia-Pacific manufactures formaldehyde in its chemical division, and uses it to produce various wood products, such as plywood and laminates. Its annual production capacity for formaldehyde is 2.2 billion pounds. Last December, Traylor Champion, Georgia-Pacific’s vice-president of environmental affairs, sent a formal letter of protest to federal health authorities. He wrote that the company “strongly disagrees” with the N.I.H. panel’s conclusion that formaldehyde should be treated as a known human carcinogen.
David Koch did not recuse himself from the National Cancer Advisory Board, or divest himself of company stock, while his company was directly lobbying the government to keep formaldehyde on the market.
Bracevich is repeating common theme for Cold Warriors, whose job used to be threat analysis, military risk, global inter state power plays. Since the Cold War ended, there is only what the US is doing to pay much attention to. And it is clear that global military system of 700 bases around the world are little more than an expensive protection racket. Expensive for Americans who foot the bill and pay with their lives, their minds and their shredded humanity.
The War on Terror is ratcheting down, the winner of course is China, that spent the past decade building itself up while we have been bleeding ourselves dry. Fond hopes for invading Hugo Chavez are fading, even as he takes the petro dollars and begins the financialization of the emerging markets to ringfence the World Bank, the IMF and other predatory and now preoccupied multi national banks. South American nations are taking his money, on better terms than what the Davos crowd offers. And China offers bigger amounts for them and as well as African development.
Along with the military, the financial empire is going down with the ship.
George Bush on aggregate demand.
Good catch.
I’d like to ask: How come ‘austerity’ is the preachment for both those nations which did relatively well during the past three or four years, and those which have done badly?
Don’t differing situations call for differing responses?
If not, why not?
LIBOR: Fear meter or shock generator?
* * *
Prematurely correct post from 2008 when people like Krugman were treating the Ted spread as some sort of neutral reading.
Nobody could have predicted that a gaggle of sherry-drinking banksters serving on a completely opaque committee created by Maggie Thatcher would turn out to be market manipulating fraudsters. Let’s be reasonable, here.
The cancer drug shortage has little to do wtih Big Pharma. The drugs in shortage are generics and Big Pharma is rapidly exiting the generic field as the competitive landscape is all based on cost.
Unfortunately, the drugs in question are so cheap to make that the cost of regulatory compliance exceeds the cost of goods. As a result, these generics are supplied by overseas manfuacturers who have every incentive to cheat (on quality control, supply chain sourcing, etc.). At the same time, when a production interruption does occur (such as when the FDA finally gets around to inspecting these overseas facilities and determines there is a real quality issue), the wholesalers then have an incentive to hoard drug and jack up the price.
This is one more example of driving prices so low that US and other reputable manufacturers leave the market.
Fine, then they should be treated like a public good
and be manufactured by the National Institute of Health.
and distributed at cost.
OH yeah, it’s all those non-Americans at faultn for problems in America, it always is.
Oh wait, no it isn’t:
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/175/9/1046.2.full
US Pharma co fined an additional $425 MILLION dollars, making a total of $1.3 BILLION dollars in fines paid by that Company if a little over THREE YEARS.
From the article:
“Schering-Plough Corp., the US pharmaceutical manufacturer perhaps best known for its anti-allergy medication Claritin, has agreed to pay US$435 million in fines to settle criminal and civil charges that it illegally promoted several drugs. The agreement was reached in late summer with the US Justice Department, which also alleged the New Jersey–based company had defrauded Medicaid, the government health care program.
The case marks the third time in the last 5 years that the company, which has annual sales of approximately US$10 billion, has reached a multi-million settlement with the government. One of the largest health care fines ever meted out by the Justice Department, it brings to US$1.3 billion the total paid by Schering-Plough as a result of the settlements. ”
The sums from those fines alone could buy up a lot of “Chindian” drug manufacturing capacity, I’d bet!
Why weren’t they used so?
Nobody’s claiming US drug manufacturers are lilly white and pure, but the article you link to has nothing to do with drug shortages which was the focus of my comments.
the worst thing about the Christie speech, is that if you forced every resident of NJ to listen to it, he’d still get at least 40% of the votes.
most days I think Americans get what they deserve.
Not only Americans. That goes for everybody.
People pay for everything they get. And remember – people don’t only pay with money.
Prof. Bracevich’s article
Just finished Tamim Ansary’s Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes and took away lots of reality, but these two points seemed relevant. The British, along with the rest of the Europeans, tore down and took over the Islamic gunpowder empires in Turkey and Iran not by main force, but by subverting and corrupting the local elites through the use of “technical experts” in military technology and financial advice. Our own dependence on foreign technology and capital seems to point us toward the fate of the Ottomans, even if we tell ourselves fairy tales about “globalization.”
Second, none of the American Goliath ideological smoke and mirrors is going to change the way the way we’re received in the middle world. To them, we’re just the successors of the British & French imperialists of the last two centuries, who ruled by subverting, intimidating, and if need be, creating a ruling class from the local peoples. Indeed, most of the wealth and power transfers from Muslims to Europeans were accomplished though “legal” means rather than military. Nobody’s really interested in the multinationals’ window dressing, the people who live there can watch what happens to their nations and draw a reality-based conclusion.
In the hands of good people, ideology can work for the good. Not all Christian missionaries were racist petty dictators or stalking horses for multinational corporations. A lot of them were, not all. But viewing the rest of the world as a blank slate just waiting for your mark is stupid, dangerous, and as we see day by day, just doesn’t work.
“…Association of Mortgage Investors, Chris Katopis stated, “[M]ortgage investors face enormous challenges in the capital markets due to opacity, an asymmetry of information, poor underwriting, conflicts-of -interests by key parties in the securitization process, as well as, the inability to enforce rights arising under contracts, securities and other laws.”
”
http://www.linkedin.com/e/ufo4ns-gsbj0dax-4j/nab/757068794/0QejsUdz0TdjsIdjgMcj0UdjkTb3gSd3wOe3kRdOMMdzoUczkSdjsIc30TdzARdPkT/true/weekly/eml-tod-b-ttle-44/?hs=false&tok=15e4heDlHfyAU1
Re: Moynihan and his TBTF BAC – after a spate of rumourology
concerning a Fed-engineered takeover by JPM, I was wondering what indeed would be the outcome of the Buffett $5bil “investment” in BAC should it go the way of, e.g., Wachovia or WAMU. What happens to his 700mil warrants (at $7.14/share exercise price)? What of his 50K shares of (senior?) preferred shares? Buffett was given an apparent monster of a sweetheart deal, really Too Good To Fail…but, could it?
From Public Citizen:
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2011/09/wto-opens-door-to-teen-tobacco-addiction.html
Link to WTO opinion:
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds406_e.htm
Should be:
“The FSPTCA took a series of unprecedented and bold measures to combat teenage smoking, including the banning of many forms of flavored cigarettes.”
Interesting antidote, Yves. Hippos are one of the most dangerous mammals on earth, and will attack humans on sight without provocation.
Re:cancer drugs. Its more complicated than evil. I am a process chemist that looked into making the damn things because big companies have completely ditched manufacturing drugs that make a lower profit margin than the blockbusters. The problem is the Prescription Drug User Fee Act – little guys that could make the drug substance and formulate it into a pill have to pay BIG up front fees (~$1.25 million) to the FDA to make dosage forms. You can buy the actual active ingredient all day long – hell I can make you a few kilos – its the DOSAGE form that’s being killed by regulation. In Europe similar fees are waived down to 90% for small business. This is indeed partly the end result of big pharma greed – the fees are a minor expense for big companies after all, and they are a good way to keep small companies out of retail.
to clarify the fees in the EU for small business are 10% of the full amount. They are nearly all waived.
Not true. FDA charges PDUFA fee for the new drugs only, not for the generics.
Greece’s canoe heads over the edge of Niagara Falls:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-08/greek-credit-swaps-surge-to-record-signal-91-chance-nation-will-default.html
All well and good. But 40% recovery sounds optimistic to me. An Argentine-style 30 cents on the euro payout is probably what Greece will propose.
Meanwhile, the official eurozone stance in the stillborn Greek Bailout II assumes a 79% recovery on a 21% haircut. As the saying goes, events have overtaken this baby-step plan.
NYT gives good graph:
https://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html
hat tip John Robb’s Global Guerillas, a very smart site which sometimes links here. I liked this post of his the other day, on hollow states and how to get there via financial collapse. Robb’s thinking is original but incorporates Taleb and Tainter with a dash of John Boyd. Basically, too few decision-makers, too much complexity equals potentially lethal fragility:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/09/hollow-states-and-a-crisis-of-capitalism.html
“Obama Pushes Medicare Cuts In Jobs Speech”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/obama-medicare-cuts-jobs-speech_n_954840.html
In his speech, Obama claimed that we need to “We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it.”
Is this the 21st century version of “We had to destroy the village in order to save it?”