Category Archives: Economy
Canadian Dynasty
Stephen Harper led Canada safely though the 2008-2009 financial crisis. He cut taxes, the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar, and the economy boomed with high commodity prices.
Now the price of oil is in the tank and there’s no Keystone pipeline to ship it anyway. On Monday Canadian voters decided they’ve had enough of Harper after nine years as prime minister. They dumped him for Justin Trudeau.
The charmed Trudeau was toasted by Richard Nixon as a future PM at the age of four months. He’s also the son of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, two time Canadian prime minister from 1968-1979 and 1980-1984.
The ruling dynasty lives.
Drug Prices
Hillary is making the drug business a campaign issue. A recent NYT story detailed how Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to a 62 year old drug called Daraprim. Turing jacked up the price from $13.50 a pill to $700 a pill.
My question was how can that happen? Why wouldn’t another company sell a generic version at a lower price? According to the WSJ the FDA sets high barriers to entry to the market. Turing already owns rights to market the drug but another firm would have to pay up to $20 million just to get approval to make a generic version.
Emissions from Volkswagen
Reuters reports that Volkswagen will “repair” up to 11 million cars rigged to give misleading emissions info to inspectors. The “fix” will cost $6.5 billion.
Emissions
The evil geniuses at VW figured out a way for its diesel emissions systems to recognize when they were being tested. During a test the system stifles emissions according to government standards. The rest of the time the system turns itself down or off, allowing for great mileage and more power but higher emissions.
Who but the greenest among us is going to want to bring his car in for that repair?
Denali
William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States. He’s from Ohio. The highest hill in Ohio is 1,500 feet. The Highest mountain in the U.S. is 20,000 feet. Never mind that it’s in Alaska, it’s named after McKinley.
Denali
At least it was until now. President Obama changed the name to “Denali”. That was kind of redundant since the people in Alaska have been calling it Denali for past 100 years.
Still, it didn’t sit well with Ohio politicians. Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio called it an insulting “political stunt”. The congressman complained that presidents can’t just go around renaming mountains.
After a enjoying few beers the president changed the name of “Mauna Kea” in Hawaii to “Mount Obama”. He also changed “global warming” to “climate change“.
Fed Up
The Fed has kept the stock market and, so it claims, the U.S. economy afloat with low interest rates. The Dow lost 1500 points in the past week. World economic growth is stuck in the mud.
And with interest rates near zero, the Fed is low on flotation devices.
If income inequality is your thing, cheer up. Jeff Bezos lost $2.6 billion on Monday. Bloomberg has the fat cat score card here.
