Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical CEO arrested on securities fraud charges this week, may have made drug price increases notorious in the U.S. But his strategy of finding an old drug, raising its price, and taking the profit is one that’s increasingly common among a new breed of drugmakers. Disdaining a business model dependent on expensive research and development, companies like …
Michael Krieger – A Majority of Americans Oppose “Assault Weapons Ban” – Highest Number on Record
The person who bothers me the most on this entire topic is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of my hometown NYC. You can tell when someone is disingenuous if they freak out over gun violence like it is the biggest issue in America today and at the same time protect the banksters and their “too big to fail” culture, which has and …
Maya Gold – Top Ten CEOs’ Pay Is an Annual Raise for Half a Million Workers
America, chief executive pay is now 300 times more than the average worker. That’s a high enough ratio that presidential candidates are taking note on both sides of the aisle. Senator Bernie Sanders listed the statistic in a statementsupporting mandated CEO disclosure of salaries, and CEO Trump himself declared that the numbers were “disgraceful.” However, even on a topic …
Tom Engelhardt – Four Score and Seven Years Ago… at Disney World
You may not know it, but you’re living in a futuristic science fiction novel. And that’s a fact. If you were to read about our American world in such a novel, you would be amazed by its strangeness. Since you exist right smack in the middle of it, it seems like normal life (Donald Trump and Ben Carson aside). But …
Goldman Strikes Again: Did A Probe Into “Global Warming” Fraud Cost A Prime Minister’s Job
When Tony Abbott became Australia’s prime minister in September 2013, the chain of events that would prematurely end his tenure may already have been in motion: just a few months later China would order its out of control shadow banking system to put on hold its debt issuance machinery, which as we reported a year ago, ground to a complete …
Economic Update – Capitalism’s Instability – 09.20.15
Updates on GM settlement, Census Bureau proves no recovery for 90%, GE moves jobs overseas; responses to listeners on FED agonies over interest rates and how capitalism mishandles unemployment. Major discussion of WSDEs and capitalist corporations.
Deirdre Fulton – As Europe’s One Percent Flourishes, Millions Sink into Poverty
On a continent that is home to some of the world’s richest people, most profitable businesses, and most valuable assets—including 342 billionaires—more than 120 million people are at risk of poverty, exemplifying the “unacceptable” levels of inequality sweeping Europe in 2015. That’s according to Oxfam, whose new report, A Europe for the Few, Not the Many (pdf), warns that the excessive …
Expat Files – 07.31.15
-A few words about those strange and sometimes wonderful middle-class Latin yard parties and celebrations because you’ll be invited to attend these events now and again(maybe way too often). -Prepare and get your earplugs ready for the rockets and fireworks when your neighbors have their weekend events and parties. Sometimes those things can get very loud and go well …
4 Things That Are Happening Today That Indicate That A Deflationary Financial Collapse Is Imminent By Michael Snyder
When financial markets crash, they do not do so in a vacuum. There are always patterns, signs and indicators that tell us that something is about to happen. In this article, I am going to share with you four patterns that are happening right now that also happened just prior to the great financial crisis of 2008. These four signs …
Biotech stock bubble set for massive implosion: Stocks rose 88% AFTER Fed chair admitted they were overvalued by J. D. Heyes
If you’re trying to understand today’s stock market and are having some degree of difficulty, you’re not alone. The markets are confusing enough sometimes for experts, so they can be particularly baffling for laypersons. Still, a few economic basics ought to be pretty simple to understand, right? Wrong – apparently. About a year ago, as documented by the Zero Hedge website, Federal Reserve …