CHRISTINA SARICH – Pharma Companies Spend 19x More On Marketing Than Research, And Returns Are Dropping

The pharmaceutical industry swears the high cost of drugs is due to research and development costs, conveniently omitting the actual amount of money spent on the marketing of these drugs, which is exorbitantly more. A recent Deloitte report suggests that pharmaceutical companies are taking a hit because investments made in R&D on new drugs simply are not paying off anymore. [1] Read …

Pepe Escobar – Brave (miserable) new normal world

Shares in the Shanghai/Shenzhen soared a whopping 150 percent in the 12 months up to mid-June. Small investors – almost 80 percent of the market – believed in a never-ending party, and often borrowed heavily to be part of the “get rich is glorious” bonanza. There had to be a correction. Those shares – which had hit a 7-year peak …

Summarizing The “Black Monday” Carnage So Far

It’s officially Black Monday, if only in China for now. We warned on Friday, after last week’s China rout, that the market is getting ahead of itself with its expectation of a RRR-cut by China as large as 100 bps. “The risk is that there isn’t one.” We were spot on, because not only was there no RRR cut, but …

China’s struggle for water security – Giles HEWITT

Way back in 1999, before he became China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao warned that water scarcity posed one of the greatest threats to the “survival of the nation”. Sixteen years later, that threat looms ever larger, casting a forbidding shadow over China’s energy and food security and demanding urgent solutions with significant regional, and even global, consequences. The mounting pressure …