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Copies with slight changes to extend drug life with new brand names- Clarinex for Claritin, Nexium for Prilosec, Paliperidone for Risperdal being the latest in this new marketing strategy of drug companies to extend the life and sales of a successful drug. The drug companies try to market the copy drug as a significant improvement, which is what J&J is doing with Paliperidone. Experts are skeptical. Pricing of the generic versions of Risperdal or its copy will be much less expensive. Cost is a sensitive issue. About 15% of Risperdal's $1.35 billion sales were from Medicaid, generic substitutions offer potentially large savings. Meantime J&J did not do clinical tests between Risperdal and Paliperidone, the tests with 1600 patients compared Risperdal with a sugar pill. A psychiatry Professor at Duke and another professor at NYU are skeptical of J&J claims for Paliperidone. United Health shows savings of $150 million by using generics instead of Nexium, so managed care payors will tread carefully....

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Russia and the West agree to a calming down of tensions in Ukraine and no increase in sanctions. Talks in Berlin lead to a decision for Ukraine to pay $2 billion for past purchases of natural gas and negotiations on price increases, according to European Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger.

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The lack of jobs is a major problem for Tieling New City in Liaoning province in China. Liaoning provincial leaders started the plan to build a new city in 2005 to help revive the local rust-belt economy. The new city was planned for 60,000 residents in 2010 and 180,000 by 2015. Today because of few job opportunities most of the new city is empty. The business park is also empty. The original plan was to create growth in the province by creating 7 such urban centers and building highways and high-speed rail lines to connect them to Shenyang, a 90 minute drive south of Tieling. Rural residents would take up homes in the new urban areas with affordable homes, and businesses would be attracted to these smaller cities because of lower labor and land costs, but this has not happened. Credit Suisse property analyst Du Jinsong, says there are better job opportunities in higher tier cities, so that lower tier cities are seeing a net outflow of population. He found that in two thirds of 287 mostly small urban centers there were fewer residents than people registered to live there. ...

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The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Program protects vaccine makers from much of the litigation risk faced by pharmaceutical manufacturers. It limits compensation for death to $250,000. This special vaccines court is called Office of Special Masters at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. This may be one reason for Pfizer's willingness to pay $68 billion for Wyeth which is amaker of childhood vaccines. Vaccines will generate $21.5 billion in sales by 2012, according to Sanofi-Aventis. Vaccines are biologic products that can't be copied. Wyeth's Prevnar is designed to protect children against 7 strains of pneumococcal disease. It has sales of $2.7 billion projected to grow to $5.5 billion in 2015 according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Vaccines have driven huge reductions in childhood diseases, and the Act is designed to potect makers of vaccines, who suffered from excessive litigation in the 1980's.

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Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's role along with CEO Prince at Citigroup in relaxing strict oversight and risk controls to pursue riskier investments and increase profits at Citigroup. This led to the $65 billion in losses on mortgage related investments that caused its share price to collapse to $3.77 by November 21, 2008. About 75,000 jobs are already lost from 375,000 worldwide and Citi is in talks with government officials in emergency meetings this weekend before the markets open on Monday November 24, 2008. This time Citi is in crisis mode and a lot can happen in the coming days.

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The costs benefits and savings in a patient focussed practice. The new models of thes practices that are emerging such as amonthly payment of $54-129 per patient to the doctor and insurance only to cover hospitalization and catastrophic illness. The satisfaction of patients who avoid crowded doctors waiting rooms and avoid having to limit their questions. and get in and out quickly. The satisfaction doctors derive fom not having to rush through the day's schedule. The reduction in emergency care visits as patients better m=nderstand and manage their medical conditions.

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In 2007 the number of businesses initiating liquidation increased by 50% totaling 18, 751 according to the Administrative office of US courts. And 5700 businesses sought Chapter 11 protection to reorganiza an increase of 24% over 2006. Look for more of this happening in 2008. In current credit and economic conditions its hard for some companies to pay off their lenders and the lenders do not want to go through a restructuring process, lenders preferring to get their hands on collateral and doing the liquidation. Its a sign of the times.

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The risks that China could be stuck in middle income status- plateauing similiar to countries like Mexico in middle income status- grow as China's remains stuck in a state enterprises driven model of growth at the expense of consumers and savers. Japan reached the level of development China is in today in 1970, Taiwan in 1980 and South Korea in 1990. Progress from now on depends on innovation and developing a more open society as shown in the experience of Japan and South Korea, which requires a shift away from most bank lending and funding investment going to state owned enterprises and towards private enterprises and tech startups. The resulting overbuilding has led to a vast misallocation of resources and starving new private enterprises of the large amounts of capital needed. Porter describes the lower level of rural education which has not kept up with the pace of improvement in urban schools, and which poses problems for the future, including a shortage of skilled workers.

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Jerome Fons rates the credit rating agencies F for failure, and says its time to leave out ratings language from financial contracts. Its time to rely on good judgement. He is former managing director of Moody's. The system is rife he says with conflicts of interest and the whole system has failed and is still in failing mode. The finacial system he says can function without letter ratings, regulators and investors should consider all the relevant information about an investment including market prices. And he says lets return to the tool we all used before we delegated responsibility to ratings agencis, and this tool is our better judgement of things.

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Greece's GDP will decline by 10% and unemployment go up from 16% to 26%, according to the IMF. Yet Greece is coming out of the crisis better having acted early in mid March 26 days after the first case on Feb 26 to impose a lockdown. The country had Day 50 with 2,192 cases and 102 deaths. Greece will reopen gradually on May 4.

Greece's long economic crisis actually helped as people realizing the weak condition of the public health system after cuts in spending, were keen on cooperating with government action. Some family members are elderly in every family and this also played a part with Greek culture placing importance on protecting the older members of society.

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This NYT account of what happened at Facebook as it faced privacy issues and issues related to its detrimental impact on societies here and abroad, is based on interviews with 50 people close to Facebook. Its social media presence slows and it shifts to a different strategy of focussing on its role as a messaging app following trends that show young people are turning away from publicly posting status and photos. Meantime its controversial role in information in the past is coming under heightened scrutiny. A realization that social media role in information was never appropriate  happened by accident, and is reversible. Other accounts say that the shift happens from trends of young users not from company management and values. 

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Jane Spencer interviews Lenovo CEO, Bill Amelio. Amelio throws light into how a company can best operate in China and reach out to a global market. Consider the way Amelio recruits Chinese talent working in the local language, and how he works with Chinese managers who tend to be more reticent on issues and opinion. Amelio is unique in his approach to hiring Chinese managers and building a bench with deep talent. He has abandoned what he calls the "colonial approach" of hiring with expat executives interviewing in English for managers in emerging markets. He says its a good idea to leave the English filter out to get more talent. Instead he has English language classes for the hired managers to help them improve language skills. Amelio talks about Lenovo's approach to the U.S. and other international markets as it competes with the likes of Acer and Dell. Amelio headed Dell's Asian operations prior to this position. Lenovo is testing ideas for giving low cost access at $100-$150 to people in India and China. The way this works is for Lenovo working with Intel and Microsoft to reduce the cost by 50%. For the bank to have half the ownership and the customer paying for the rest. Customers would buy cards for 10 hours of computing, and buy the computer back from the bank through regular use. Lenovo's strategy is to go after small and medium size businesses and consumers to increase market share in the U.S. and Europe. To do this it is using soccer star Ronaldinho and basketball stars to give Lenovo visibility as a brand. In other areas, Amelio has brought Dell managers to Lenovo to improve the supply chain management, an area Lenovo needed to improve....

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The Tax Plan of Jeb Bush, with the help of advisors Martin Feldstein and Kevin Warsh, lowers the top personal tax rate from 40% (including surcharges) to 28%, and reduces the corporate tax rate from 30% to 20%. The plan is designed to jumpstart the economy for higher growth by increasing business investment and incentives. Businesses are allowed to deduct 100% of new investment immediately. The idea is to increase capital investment so that benefits also go to workers in higher wages. The Bush economic advisors see 50% of the corporate tax burden as affecting workers wages- average compensation would go up by $2750 a year by 2020 and $6200 by 2025 in 2015 dollars. Companies can pay a one time 8.75% tax on money earned and held overseas, paid over 10 years- about $2.1 trillion of this income held overseas can be added to the pool available for business investment. As proposed earlier by Feldstein the itemized deductions including mortgage interest can be taken only upto 2% of adjusted gross income, suggestions during the reform effort not taken up by Obama. To reduce the excessive use of leverage in business decisions the field is levelled for use of debt and equity by removing the deduction for business interest expense. This editorial says that by putting in the details, which political leaders tend to leave vague on specific figures, Jeb Bush and his advisors have taken a crucial step forward. This it says, shifts the debate from current shallow posturing to how America can lay the groundwork for the kind of growth needed to help increase wages, increase economic growth to higher levels, and preserve America's position in the world....

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Witte, Booth and Adam of the Washington Post describe the situation Britain's prime minister Theresa May finds herself in after calling a snap election. A badly run campaign by May focusses on Brexit, and leads to election losses to Labor. Without the support of voters in Scotland who voted tactically to prevent Scotland from breaking away, the Conservatives would have no chance of forming a government. May now needs the 10 seats of the Democratic Unionist Party in Scotland to have a 3 seat majority. Labor leader Corbyn despite a barrage of negative publicity from British tabloids, maintained his cool and composure. His focus on the austerity politics of the Conservatives under Cameron and now May, enabled Labor to get 40% of the vote compared to the Conservatives 43%, with the Scottish National Party getting 3% and the Liberal Democrats 7.4%. Giving the parties that have never seen Brexit as a priority for Britain over 50% of the vote. The Democratic Unionist is a small party with less than 1% of the vote (0.9%), which in some countries makes it ineligible to take seats in the legislature. In the mixed up out of focus nature of British politics today this party is the kingmaker. The UK Independence party or UKIP party that started the whole affair of Brexit- that prime minister Cameron responded to to gain votes for the Conservatives by promising the referendum on Brexit- won just 1.8% of the votes cast, in a election where 69% of voters went to the polls, winning zero seats, down from 10.8% in the 2015 election. This is the state of British politics today  following the failure of political leaders, as Theresa May acts as if the election results are not sending a message about Brexit, say Witte, Booth and Adams.   ...

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Production delays, outsourcing issues and other problems are now hurting Boeing with cancellation of orders as airlines with lower profits in today's economic uncertainty are unable to take advantage of the new fuel efficient 787's in timely manner. Quantas first placed its order for upto 115 Dreamliners in 2005, and it hoped to reduce fuel costs with the 20% more fuel efficient Dreamliners than its 767 planes, which it hoped to retire. 28 Dreamliners were to be delivered by the end of 2011. This never happened as Boeing ran into production problems and only 17 were delivered to all airlines by September 2011. With the global economic uncertainty and slowdown Quantas is predicting a 90% drop in pretax profits for the fiscal year ending in June 2012 to A$50 million. With the situation changed Quantas decided to change the order by cancelling the orders for the larger 787-9 Dreamliner and keep the order for the 15 smaller 787-8 jets to save $8.5 billion. This follows a change made by China Eastern Airlines to cancel orders for 24 787s and buy smaller single aisle 737s for domestic flights. As a result Boeing's total orders stand at 824 in mid 2012, with only 7 new orders since 2007. Boeing says it needs to sell at least 1100 Dreamliners for the 787 program to be profitable. Its own forecast is for sales of an additional 2700 small twin aisle jets like the 787 between 2012 and 2031, with Boeing getting half of the market. The larger longer range 787-9 model will start delivery in 2014 and another version for more capacity on shorter routes the 787-10 is being discussed. Both programs Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and the competing Airbus A-350 program have suffered a series of production problems, outsourcing issues and delays in recent years. ...