http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/02/01/861911/growth-linked-sweete... Paul Volcker has defended proposed trading rules for US banks that are being criticised by foreign governments as likely to disrupt the operation of their national bond markets. Japanese, UK and Canadian regulators,
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/02/01/861901/volcker-says-bond-ma... The Chinese manufacturing sector has made a surprisingly strong start to the year, the FT says, with domestic orders cushioning the impact of Europe’s debt woes, according to an official survey. The purchasing managers’ index,
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/02/01/861981/chinas-official-pmis... France’s Dassault has been awarded frontrunner status in the hotly contested $20bn race to supply 126 fighter jets to India, reports the FT. The Indian government said the French Rafale fighter jet had beaten the four-nation Eurofighter Typhoon to become preferred bidder to equip India with the multi-role fighter jets in one of the world’s largest military contracts.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/02/01/861781/india-boost-for-dass... Bloomberg reports on staling housing markets in Asia that have been hit by government efforts to prevent the real estate bubbles that Western economies have seen burst over the last few years. Property prices in Hong Kong have decreased by 6 per cent since June and Barclays analysts estimate a drop of 25 per cent could be seen by 2013.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/01/31/861091/hong-kong-faces-prop... US stocks defied European trends for a second day running, falling sharply on poor US economic data, after global indices had rallied on enthusiasm for a eurozone fiscal discipline pact brokered by Germany,
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/01/31/861061/house-price-fall-tri... Unemployment figures have highlighted the widening gap between Germany and many fellow eurozone members, a day after Angela Merkel secured a new treaty enshrining Berlin’s vision for tough fiscal discipline,
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/01/31/861041/unemployment-rises-i... Russia’s economy grew by 4.3 per cent last year, benefiting from a surge in agricultural output and robust consumer spending, as well as record-low inflation. Yet the country is seeing signs of a slowdown in manufacturing,
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2012/01/31/861011/russian-agriculture-... US economic growth will slow dramatically if tax rises and spending cuts come into effect as planned in 2013, according to new figures from the Congressional Budget Office. The expiry of tax cuts originally passed by president George W. Bush, the end of a 2 per cent payroll tax holiday and automatic spending cuts agreed last August will reduce growth to just 1.1 per cent in 2013 unless changes are made.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1510a4dc-4c20-11e1-98dd-00144feabdc0.html... Wsj.com Most Asian stock markets were modestly higher Wednesday as encouraging China manufacturing data tempered concerns over a batch of downbeat U.S. economic reports, while earnings disappointments in Japan capped stocks there. Early trade was dominated by interest in China’s official manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index for January, which rose to 50.5 compared with 50.3 in December, and was higher than the median forecast of 49.5 in a Dow Jones Newswires poll of seven economists. The unexpected rise in the index is likely to assuage market concerns about a slowdown in Asia’s largest economy, although the result also meant that any near-term policy easing steps from Beijing may be delayed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719571252951537... Mitt Romney handily won Florida’s Republican primary Tuesday, riding a new, combative campaign style to a victory that returns him to his role as the favorite to win his party’s presidential nomination. Fueled by a nearly 5-to-1 spending advantage over his top rival, Mr. Romney outpaced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich among conservatives and tea-party supporters and drew nearly even with him among evangelical Christians, according to surveys of voters leaving polling sites. Those voters had gravitated to Mr. Romney’s opponents in some prior contests.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719504165678824... The dark knight of British banking has been ordered to hand in his sword. In what may be the ultimate clawback for a bank boss in the wake of the financial crisis, a U.K. government panel has stripped the knighthood of former Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC Chief Executive Fred Goodwin.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020465290457719503039482281... The European Central Bank, Greece’s biggest creditor, is finding it hard to stay on the sidelines as Greece negotiates a debt-restructuring deal with its private-sector bondholders. The ECB isn’t part of the talks, even though it holds around ˆ50 billion ($66 billion) in Greek government bonds, about one-seventh of Greece’s outstanding debt. Those holdings raise questions about the central bank’s appropriate role in keeping Greece afloat that will linger even if a deal with other investors is completed this week.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020392020457719499367745249... London looks likely to experience a drought of new housing over the next few years, as construction of homes in the capital slows amid fears of renewed recession and a dearth of mortgage finance, a report from property consultant Drivers Jonas Deloitte suggests. While many Londoners expect this year’s Olympic Games to boost the housing stock and hope that the slowdown in construction due to the recession is over, the new data suggest the housing shortage will persist. Together with international demand for property in the city—prompted by its safe-haven status outside the euro zone and the weakness of sterling—this will stop house prices from falling as they have in much of the rest of England, industry participants say.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020392020457719496109034348... The average housing price in 100 major Chinese cities fell for a fifth consecutive month in January as China’s property market continued to slow, a survey showed Wednesday. Still, the pace of decline slowed in January, which indicates that property prices are softening at a steady pace, abating some concerns of a sharp plunge in the market for now. The data were released a day after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated the government’s stance that it must continue with macroeconomic controls, consolidate its property-tightening campaign and bring about a “reasonable” correction in housing prices.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719595170657157... Marketwatch.com South Korea’s January trade data showed the country’s first drop in exports since 2009 and its first trade deficit since January 2010, according to data released Wednesday. Korean exports fell 6.6% in January compared to a year earlier, while imports rose 3.6%, sending the trade account to a deficit of $1.96 billion. In January 2011, South Korea posted a trade surplus of $2.9 billion. HSBC economist Ronald Man said the data, along with soft inflation numbers, meant the central bank would likely cut the policy interest rate by a quarter point by the end of March. “Sure, there may have been distortions from the Lunar New Year. However, this alone is difficult to justify the swing to an outright contraction,” said Man.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/korea-swings-to-first-trade-deficit-in-... Gold futures inched higher in electronic trading, in a mixed session for metals, with gains limited by a stronger dollar. Gold for April delivery added 80 cents, or 0.1%, $1,741.20 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange during Asian trading hours. The gains tracked mild rises for most Asian markets on Tuesday after data showed a mixed picture of manufacturing activity in China.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-edges-higher-in-electronic-trading... Hong Kong said Wednesday it’s on track for a budget surplus of 66.7 billion Hong Kong dollars ($8.6 billion) for the fiscal year ending March 31, compared to a HK$75.1 billion surplus in the prior fiscal year. The provisional budget figure was released Wednesday during an address to legislators by Financial Secretary John Tsang
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hong-kong-budget-surplus-narrowing-tsan... Reuters.com Facebook is expected to submit paperwork to regulators on Wednesday morning for a $5 billion initial public offering and has selected Morgan Stanley and four other bookrunners to handle the mega-IPO, sources close to the deal told IFR. The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 picked Morgan Stanley to take the coveted “lead left” role in what is expected to be the largest IPO ever to emerge from Silicon Valley.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/us-facebook-ipo-idUSTRE80U29V2... The United States is headed for a fourth straight year with a $1 trillion-plus budget deficit, congressional forecasters said on Tuesday, giving Republicans ammunition to hammer President Barack Obama’s spending record in November’s elections. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the fiscal 2012 deficit would rise to $1.079 trillion from its previous estimate of $973 billion made last August. If Congress extends payroll tax cuts through year-end, as expected, the deficit would likely rise by another $100 billion through ecember.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/us-usa-budget-idUSTRE80U288201... Bloomberg.com South Korea’s central bank is considering buying several hundred million dollars worth of Chinese equities and a greater amount of the nation’s bonds to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves. “The Chinese yuan has the potential to become a key reserve currency in the long term and thus we are building a channel to invest there,” Choo Heung Sik, 53, director general at the Bank of Korea’s Reserve Management Group, said in an interview in his office yesterday in Seoul. He said the bank may invest in Chinese shares in the second half of this year, after purchases of debt in the first six months.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-01/south-korea-central-bank-plans-... The Australian dollar is likely to stay “relatively high for years to come,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, challenging the nation’s businesses to work harder to overcome the drawbacks of a stronger currency. “Our success is driving the dollar,” she said in the text of a speech to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne. “In turn, the dollar is driving change and in doing so it’s making our economy leaner and stronger, forcing us to move more of our effort — more money, more equipment, more people — into the parts of our economy where we can create the greatest value.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-01/aussie-to-stay-relatively-high-... Cnbc.com California needs to come up with more than $3 billion to avoid burning through its cash by March, according to the state controller, who urged borrowing and delaying some payments. “Assuming no additional revenue loss, erosion of borrowable internal funds, or significant spikes in spending, $3.3 billion of cash solutions are needed to address California’s liquidity needs during this period,” State Controller John Chiang said in a letter to the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee released on Tuesday.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46212105 Amazon.com reported quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations, but its revenue fell short of forecasts on Tuesday, sending its shares lower in extended trading. The online retail giant posted fourth-quarter earnings excluding items of 38 cents per share, down from 91 cents in the year-earlier period. Revenue was $17.43 billion, a 35-percent increase from $12.95 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected the Seattle-based company to report earnings excluding items of 17 cents per share on $18.25 billion in revenue.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46191172 Concerns over the size of United States debt reared their head once again as ratings agency Standard & Poor’s warned that health care costs for a number of highly-rated Group of 20 countries, including the U.S., could hurt growth prospects and harm their sovereign creditworthiness from the middle of this decade. S&P downgraded the United Statescredit rating for the first time ever in August of last year.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46202656 The European Central Bank won’t solve the euro zone’s debt crisis as long as the European Union behaves like a “dysfunctional” family, Bill Gross, Pimco founder and co-chief investment officer, told CNBC on Tuesday. The main problem is the split between North and South Europe, Gross said: The northern countries have low debt and are export oriented, while the southern economies’ debt ratios are high and their economies are based more on domestic consumption.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46205597 Nytimes.com The European Central Bank may forgo future profits on its Greek bonds as efforts remain under way to fill a financial hole that has been obstructing a second bailout forGreece. Talks among senior Europe n officials in Brussels ended Tuesday without any commitment from the central bank but with hopes still alive that the bank would agree to the deal. Because the European Central Bank bought Greek bonds, with an estimated face value of 50 billion euros, ($65 billion) at a discount to their market price, it could enter into a deal that would cause it to give up future gains without taking a loss, said a European official, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/business/global/hopes-now-shift-to-ecb... Foxbusiness.com The Australian Industry Group – PwC Australian performance of manufacturing index rose 1.4 points to 51.6 in January, according to data out Wednesday. The increase was largely due to a rise in the delivery of inputs and a rise in inventories of finished goods, according to the survey. “The growth was underpinned by expansion in key sub-sectors such as food & beverages and transport equipment,” said Australian Industry Group Chief Executive, Heather Ridout. “Respondents cited ongoing global economic uncertainty and strong overseas competition as factors inhibiting growth in January,” she added.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2012/01/31/australian-january-manufac... USAtoday.com Eager to spend their growing disposable income, travelers from mainland China’s wealthy and rising middle classes are traversing the globe in search of iconic destinations they can cross off their bucket lists. That wanderlust has increasingly brought them to a dream destination, the USA, in recent years as travel restrictions on them eased. Despite occasional economic and political dust-ups between the two nations’ governments, a record number of Chinese visitors came to the U.S. in 2011.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/story/2012-01-31/Chinese... The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the nation’s homeownership rate fell to 66% in the fourth quarter, continuing a seven-year drop from a fourth-quarter peak of 69.2% in 2004. At the same time, U.S. home prices fell 1.3% in November from October and were 3.7% below 2010 levels, the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index indicates.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/story/2012-01-31/home-pric... BBC.co.uk Walt Disney’s expansion plans in India have received a big boost as it agreed to acquire a controlling stake in UTV, one of India’s biggest media companies. The move comes after India’s cabinet approved a proposal by Disney last month to buyout shares in UTV that it did not previously own. The companies did not disclose how much Disney was paying to acquire the stake.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16828451 Santander has revealed a 35% fall in annual profits after the group took extra provisions for deteriorating real estate assets in Spain. The bank announced a net profit of 5.35bn euros ($7.05bn; ?4.48bn) for 2011, down from 8.18bn euros in 2010. It said it had made a 1.8bn euro provision against property exposure in Spain and had written off 600m euros relating to its businesses in Portugal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16806206 Telegraph.co.uk Germany is enjoying the greatest jobs boom in 20 years even as unemployment rises to post-EMU highs across southern Europe, stretching the euro’s North-South divide ever closer to breaking point. The latest Eurostat data shows that the two halves of the currency bloc have diverged dramatically. Germany’s jobless rate dropped to 5.5pc in December, the lowest since reunification in 1990, with even lower rates of 4.9pc in Holland and 4.2pc in Austria.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9052931/German-jobs-m... Independent.co.uk More quantitative easing likely after fall in money supply. The prospects of fresh action by the Bank of England to boost growth increased on Tuesday after Threadneedle Street released figures showing a contraction in the money supply and weak borrowing by both companies and households. News of a drying up of credit left City analysts confident that a fresh round of quantitative easing would be announced by the Bank’s nine-strong monetary policy committee when it meets next week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/31/more-quantitative-easing-... Smh.com.au Australian house prices plunged by the most on record in 2011 as global economic uncertainty and concerns about its impact at home kept a lid on demand. An index measuring the weighted average of prices for established houses in eight major cities slid 4.8 per cent from a year earlier, according to the Australian B ureau of Statistics, the biggest calendar-year drop since the data began in March 2002. They fell 1 per cent in the three months to December from the previous quarter, when they retreated a revised 1.9 per cent. Economists had predicted a 0.6 per cent quarterly fall.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/record-slump-in-house-prices-in-... Crude fluctuated after confidence among US consumers unexpectedly dropped in January and Germany’s unemployment rate fell to a record low. Oil erased a 2.5 per cent gain as the Conference Board’s confidence index decreased to 61.1 from a revised 64.8 reading in December. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index also reversed an advance. Futures rose earlier as the Nuremberg-based Federal Labor Agency said Germany’s adjusted jobless rate slipped to 6.7 per cent, the lowest level since records began in 1991.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/oil-slides-on-weak-us-data-201202... Xinhuanet.com Tibet Airlines will launch three regular flights linking cities in the plateau region of Tibet with other Chinese cities this week in a move to meet growing market demand, a company spokesman said Tuesday. Of the new air routes, the Chengdu-Nyingchi flight will open Wednesday and be operated every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, the Lhasa-Nyingchi flight will open Thursday and be operated every every Monday and Thursday, and the Chongqing-Nyingchi flight will open Thursday and be operated every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the spokesman said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-01/31/c_131384610.htm The business outlook for the services and manufacturing sectors of Singapore in the first half remained weak, according to results of surveys released on Tuesday. The results of the latest business expectations survey by the Department of Statistics showed that all industries in the services sector were expecting a negative outlook for the first half of the year, except the recreation, community and personal services. The real estate sector fared the worst, with a net weighted 60 percent surveyed expecting less favourable business prospects.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2012-02/01/c_131385208.htm India’s economic growth has been revised down to 8.4 percent for 2010-11 fiscal year from the earlier estimate of 8.5 percent, said official data Tuesday. “The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at factor cost at constant prices in 2010-11 has registered a growth of 8.4 percent over the previous year,” said provisional data released by the Indian Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation. GDP at factor cost at constant (2004-05) prices in 2010-11 is estimated at 48.85954 trillion rupees (about 1 trillion U.S. dollars), which is 8.4 percent more than the previous year’s 45. 07637 trillion.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2012-01/31/c_131384505.htm Turkey’s exports saw a 18.5-percent year-on-year growth in 2011 to reach 134.9 billion U.S. dollars, Turkey’s statistics authority TurkStat said Tuesday. In an announcement posted on its official website, TurkStat said that Turkey’s imports in 2011 surged 29.8 percent year-on- year to reach 240.8 billion U.S. dollars. In 2010, Turkey’s exports stood at 113.8 billion U.S. dollars and its imports were 185.5 billion U.S. dollars. Moreover, in December 2011, Turkey’s exports were up 5.6 percent year-on-year to 12.4 billion U.S. dollars, while the imports rose 0.2 percent to 10.5 billion U.S. dollars.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2012-01/31/c_131384760.htm Cs.com.cn China is mulling a new round of efforts to regulate the sizzling property market after the moves it imposed about a year ago to limit purchases of residential apartments effectively brought down prices, analysts said Tuesday. Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Jiang Weixin revealed that the ministry would complete a project to link databases of personal housing information concerning 40 major cities by the end of June, a measure designed to further curb house speculation, the analysts said. Since 2010, China has imposed a raft of measures to cool the property market — including tighter credit supply, higher down payments and limiting the number of homes that people can own.
http://www.cs.com.cn/english/ei/201202/t20120201_3223813.html The State Council, or China’s Cabinet, announced Tuesday that it will send drafts of the annual government work report to local governments and some central departments in order to solicit opinions and get feedback. The decision was made at a work conference chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, as representatives gathered to discuss the draft of the government work report which is to be delivered at the opening of the fifth session of the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature. Wen said China’s economy is moving toward the direction that has been laid out by the country’s macro-control policies, and the past year has seen relatively fast growth, stabilizing prices and improving livelihood in China.
http://www.cs.com.cn/english/ei/201202/t20120201_3223796.html Chairman of Tehran Chamber of Commerce Yahya Ale-Eshagh on Tuesday dismissed fears of a shortage of foreign exchange reserves in Iran, saying the country has 120 billion U.S. dollars and 907 tons of gold in reserves, the semi- official Mehr news agency reported. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Ale-Eshagh said that Iran purchased the gold in recent years at an average price of 600 U.S. dollars per ounce and the current price of gold has almost tripled, said the report. “We don’t have any shortage of foreign currencies or gold in the face of local demand,” he was quoted as saying. The chairman’s remarks came as the recent turmoil in Iran’s gold and currency market led to a sudden increase of over 10 percent in commodity prices and caused panic among the citizens.
http://www.cs.com.cn/english/ei/201202/t20120201_3223657.html The Washington-based World Bank Group cautioned Tuesday that global food prices were high and volatile, and that the world needed to remain vigilant to the trend. Global food prices declined eight percent between September and December of 2011 due to increasing supplies and uncertainty about the global economy, but still remained volatile and high with the 2011 annual index 24 percent higher than its average
http://www.cs.com.cn/english/ei/201202/t20120201_3223655.html Thehindu.com Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday announced a massive investment of Rs.1.40-lakh crore by 17 blue chip government undertakings in the forthcoming financial year (2012-13) in a bid to cope with the adverse global economic environment. Giving away the SCOPE Excellence awards for 2009-10 here, Mr. Singh said “public investment was particularly needed at a time when the country was facing a difficult global environment and looking to domestic drivers of growth.” Union Minister of Heavy Industries Praful Patel presided over the function.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/article2848234.ece The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday hinted at the possibility of another cut in the CRR (cash reserve ratio) during its mid-quarter monetary policy in March in case pressure on the liquidity situation persists till then. Interacting with the media on the sidelines of a National Housing Board function here, RBI Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn said: “We are watching the liquidity situation … I think that decision [another cut in CRR] will be taken when we do our mid-quarter review … Having done one, I think the possibility of another is always on the table.”
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/article2848235.ece Economictimes.com India’s manufacturing sector grew at its fastest pace in eight months in January as factory output surged the most on record on increased domestic and foreign demand, a business survey showed on Wednesday. The HSBC manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) , compiled by Markit, jumped to 57.5 from 54.2 in December. “Activity in the manufacturing sector rebounded again in January led by higher demand from both domestic and foreign clients, suggesting some recovery in sentiment in recent months,” said Leif Eskesen, economist at HSBC.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/indias-facto... Fin24.com South Africa’s trade account recorded a surplus of R4.7bn in December compared with an R8bn deficit in November, the South African Revenue Service said on Tuesday. Exports fell by 8.0% month-on-month to R63.0bn in December while imports plunged by 23.8% to R58.3bn. Economists surveyed by Reuters expected a shortfall of R3bn for December but the data is volatile and thus hard to forecast.
http://www.fin24.com/Economy/SAs-trade-account-in-surplus-20120131 Tehrantimes.com The Iranian Oil Minister has said that international sanctions have not been effective on investments in Iran’s oil and gas industry, and that Iranian oil can not be excluded from international markets. Rostam Qasemi made the remarks in an interview with IRNA news agency in Tehran, saying that it is self-defeating for countries to impose oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic. A law to be debated in Iran’s parliament on Sunday could halt exports of oil to the European Union as early as next week.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/economy-and-business/94998-minister-sanctions... Thetrader.se This rather extreme prolonged Santa Rally has made people frustrated over the last weeks. The many conflicting themes of the Economy, the Euro mess, the collapse in volatility etc, is contributing to people’s frustration over where the market should be going. Currently we see great accumulation of a bigger move coming up due to “skewed” psychology of the market. Meanwhile some fundamentals from Hussman. Goat Rodeo – Appalachian slang for a chaotic, high-risk, or unmanageable scenario requiring countless things to go right in order to walk away unharmed.
http://www.thetrader.se/2012/01/31/are-we-up-for-a-goat-rodeo/
Earlier this month, celebrity chef Paula Deen announced that she has adult-onset or type 2 diabetes, then accepted a multimillion dollar deal to promote Novo Nordisk’s type 2 diabetes drug, Victoza. Before there was Paula Deen, there was figure skater
Dorothy Hamill and actor
Wilford Brimley. Indeed, there has been a long line of celebrity spokespeople for pharmaceutical companies, and their track record thus far has been quite poor in terms of honesty, openness, and promoting the public’s health.
Middle-aged arthritis sufferers flocked to their doctors demanding Vioxx for pain relief after watching Hamill figure skate in TV ads touting the drug shortly into the new millennium. We now have
evidence that Vioxx caused as many as 140,000 extra cases of serious heart disease in the United States during the years that its maker concealed evidence of its risks, and it was withdrawn from the US market in 2004.
All right, you say, Hamill was paid to shill for a dangerous drug. But what could be wrong with Brimley telling diabetics to check their blood sugar?
There is one group of patients with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, who need to check their sugar levels frequently and who really need those cute little machines. Those are also those (apparently including Brimley) who take insulin shots. But the majority of type 2 diabetes folks take only oral medicines or use diet and exercise to regulate their blood sugar. From those ubiquitous TV ads in the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, you’d guess that scientific studies show great health advantages to religiously using home glucose monitors.
Funny thing, though. The available research shows overwhelmingly that there’s no known health benefit to home glucose monitoring for people not on insulin. A number of
large studies on improving outcomes and death rates in diabetes show consistently that tight blood sugar control is not where the action is. Rather, type 2 diabetes tends to strike through severe complications like heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, and other diseases that basically are caused by diabetes’ effects on both large and small blood vessels. Doing things to protect yourself from those diseases—diet, exercise, stopping smoking, controlling blood pressure, and so on—improves and lengthens life in diabetics. Lowering blood sugar by itself hardly helps at all.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for highly-paid celebrity spokespersons to tell you these important medical facts on TV. And the reason they won’t is part of why the whole system of celebrities touting drugs and medical devices is unfortunate for public health. These ads don’t just sell us products. They sell us ways to think about disease. And the industry wants to be sure that the way we think about a disease is whatever way is best for pushing their sales and profits.
Physician and historian
Jeremy Greene wrote about this a few years ago. He showed how the pharmaceutical industry jumped onto the preventive medicine bandwagon to convince both doctors and the rest of us to “prescribe by the numbers”—not to ask what drugs actually lengthened life or improved quality, but simply to be happy when a lab test result, such as blood sugar or cholesterol, was high and a drug made it go lower. It turns out that it’s much easier to discover and market a drug that makes your lab values look prettier than it is to find drugs that really save lives and prevent heart attacks. But most of us simply assume that lower lab numbers mean less risk and a healthier future—a connection that medical research informs us is often missing. (A great book on this frequent lack of connection is
Overdiagnosed by W. Gilbert Welch.)
Now, at this point I have to add the usual disclaimer, and then a disclaimer on the disclaimer. The disclaimer is that you should treat your medical condition based on your doctor’s advice and not what you read on a blog or news outlet. If you have diabetes, for instance, find a physician that you trust and follow that physician’s advice, though you should also ask questions and feel free to do your own research.
But here’s disclaimer squared: when a drug or device company markets products to you with a celebrity spokesperson, you can be sure that the same marketing, probably on steroids, is going on behind the scenes in doctors’ offices and hospital corridors. When at least 84 percent of American doctors regularly rely on industry salespeople for critical information about drugs, the “prescribe by the numbers” message is
just as ingrained in their thinking as it is in the general public’s. (The celebrities that drug companies use to brainwash doctors are not the Wilford Brimleys of the world, but rather distinguished medical school faculty physicians who happily take company money to serve on their speakers’ bureaus and to push the company marketing message.)
So, bottom line: is there something especially bad about any single celebrity deciding to shill for a particular drug or medical device, like Paula Deen telling us to eat cheeseburgers and also take good care of our diabetes? Maybe yes, maybe no. Is there a problem with how these products are marketed in the United States today? Absolutely.
Howard Brody is a family physician and medical ethicist and directs the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He maintains
a blog on the ethics of the relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry.
The following letter to the president of Brown University requests that she writes to the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry supporting our request for retraction of a journal article that misrepresented the efficacy and safety of paroxetine for depressed adolescents. The letter was written by Healthy Skepticism members Jon Jureidini and Leemon McHenry and signed by additional Healthy Skepticism members and others. Jon and Leemon's campaign for retraction of the misleading article has been endorsed as a Healthy Skepticism campaign by the Healthy Skepticism international management group.
4 October 2011
President Ruth J. Simmons
Office of the President
Brown University
1 Prospect Street
Campus Box 1860
Providence, Rhode Island 02912
Dear President Simmons,
Study 329: A multi-center, double blind, placebo controlled study of paroxetine and imipramine in adolescents with unipolar major depression
We write to you about our ongoing concerns regarding a journal article that originated at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, under the leadership of Dr. Martin Keller.
Between 1993 and 1998, SmithKline Beecham (subsequently GlaxoSmithKline) provided $800,000 to Brown University for its participation in the above study.
[1] The results were published in 2001 by Keller et al. in a journal article, 'Efficacy of paroxetine in the treatment of adolescent major depression: a randomized, controlled trial',
[2] in the
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
.
The article was ghostwritten by agents of the manufacturer, and seriously misrepresented both the effectiveness and the safety of paroxetine in treating adolescent depression.
While problems with study 329 and the Keller et al paper have been thoroughly exposed in legal actions,
[3] the bioethical and medical literature,
[4] a book,
[5] and a BBC Panorama documentary
[6], the paper continues to be cited uncritically in the medical literature as evidence of the efficacy of paroxetine for treatment of adolescent depression.
[7],
[8] Our main concern is that adolescents are being harmed because well-intentioned physicians have been misled.
Moreover, the misrepresentation has been compounded by the following:
1) The
Journal
was asked by two of the undersigned, Drs. Jureidini and McHenry, to retract the article, but has refused to do so.
2) In a letter of May 13, 2008, from Pamela D. Ring to Dr. David Egilman, Brown University refused to release information about its internal investigation into Dr. Keller's conflicts of interest and scientific misconduct.
Study 329 reveals the pervasive influence of GlaxoSmithKline's marketing objectives on the preparation and publication of a 'scientific' manuscript and peer-reviewed journal article. GlaxoSmithKline's own internal documents disclosed in litigation show that company staff were aware that the study 329 did not support a claim of efficacy but decided that it would be "unacceptable commercially" to reveal that.
[9]
The data were therefore selectively reported in Keller
et al
.'s article, in order to "effectively manage the dissemination of these data in order to minimise any potential negative commercial impact".9 As it turns out, the Keller
et al
. article was used by GlaxoSmithKline's to ward off potential damage to the profile of paroxetine and it was used to promote off-label prescriptions of Paxil® and Seroxat® to children and adolescents, some of whom became suicidal and self-harmed as a result.
[10]
The unretracted article is a stain on Brown University's reputation for academic excellence. The University cannot claim to be a leader in scientific research and moral integrity while failing to act to redress this article that negligently misrepresents scientific findings.
In its accreditation document for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), Brown University claims in relation to 'Standard Eleven: Integrity' that 'The institution manages its academic, research and service programs, administrative operations, responsibilities for students and interactions with prospective students with honesty and integrity', that it 'expects that members of its community, including the board, administration, faculty, staff, and students, will act responsibly and with integrity', and that 'Truthfulness, clarity, and fairness characterize the institution's relations with all internal and external constituencies'.
[11] The University's inaction in relation to study 329 casts doubt on the validity of these claims.
We ask that you write to the editor, Dr. Andres Martin,
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
supporting our request for retraction of the journal article.
We are making this letter available to interested parties and it will be posted on the Healthy Skepticism website (
www.healthyskepticism.org).
Yours sincerely
Jon Jureidini
Child Psychiatrist
Clinical Professor, University of Adelaide
Leemon McHenry
Department of Philosophy, California State University, Northridge
Jerome Biollaz
Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne
Alain Braillon
Stephen Bezruchka
Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health, University of Washington
Ruud Coolen van Brakel, director
Sandra van Nuland, consultant
Martine van Eijk, MD PhD
Instituut voor Verantwoord Medicijngebruik (
Dutch Institute for Rational Use of Medicine)
Marc-Andre Gagnon,
Research Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
Ken Harvey
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne
David Healy
Professor in Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University School of Medicine
Andrew Herxheimer,
Emeritus Fellow, UK Cochrane Centre, Oxford
Jerome Hoffman
Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Southern California
Joel Lexchin
Professor, School of Health Policy and Management, York University, Toronto, Canada
Melissa Raven
Adjunct Lecturer, Discipline of Public Health, Flinders University, Australia
Dee Mangin
Associate Professor, Director Primary Care Research Unit, Christchurch School of Medicine
Peter Mansfield
Director, Healthy Skepticism
Dan Mayer
Professor of Emergency Medicine, Albany Medical College, New York
David Menkes
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Auckland
Robert Purssey
Senior Lecturer, University of Queensland
Nicholas Rosenlicht
Clinical Professor of Health Sciences, University of California, San Francisco
Jorg Schaaber
President, International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB)
Arthur Schafer
Director, Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba
Michael Wilkes
Professor of Medicine, University of California, Davis
Jim Wright
Co-Managing Director, Therapeutics Initiative
Liliya E. Ziganshina
Head, Professor, Department of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, Kazan Federal University, Russian Federation
[1] Keller M. (2011). Martin B. Keller, MD. Providence, RI: Brown University; 2011.
http://research.brown.edu/pdf/1100924449.pdf
[2] Keller MB, Ryan ND, Strober M, Klein RG, Kutcher SP, Birmaher B, Hagino OR, Koplewicz H, Carlson GA, Clarke GN, Emslie GJ, Feinberg D, Geller B, Kusumakar V, Papatheodorou G, Sack WH, Sweeney M, Wagner KD, Weller EB, Winters NC, Oakes R, McCafferty JP. Efficacy of paroxetine in the treatment of adolescent major depression: a randomized, controlled trial.
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
. 2001 Jul;40(7):762-72.
[3]
The People of the State of New York vs. SmithKline Beecham
Corp.
(Case No. 04-CV-5304 MGC),
Beverly Smith vs. SmithKline Beecham Corp.
(Case No. 04 CC 00590),
Engh vs. SmithKline Beecham
Corp
. (Case No. PI 04-012879),
Teri Hoormann vs. SmithKline Beecham
Corp.
(Case No. 04-L-715) and
Julie Goldenberg and
Universal Care vs. SmithKline Beecham Corp.
(Case No. 04 CC 00653)
[4] Jureidini JN, McHenry LB, Mansfield PR. Clinical trials and drug promotion: selective reporting of study 329.
Int J Risk Saf Med
2008;20:73-81.
http://www.pharmalot.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/329-study-paxil.pdf
[5] Bass A. Side effects: A prosecutor, a whistleblower, and a bestselling antidepressant on trial. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books; 2008.
[6] BBC. Seroxat – Secrets of the Drugs Trials. Panorama. BBC one; 2007 Jan 29.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/6291773.stm
[7]
http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=7589903240306694483
[8] Jureidini J, McHenry L. Conflicted medical journals and the failure of trust. Accountability in Research 18:45-54.
[9] SmithKline Beecham, Seroxat/Paxil adolescent depression position piece on the Phase III clinical studies, October 1998, PAR003019178;
http://www.healthyskepticism.org/documents/documents/19981014PositionPiece.pdf
[10] Hammad TA, Laughren T, Racoosin J. Suicidality in pediatric patients treated with antidepressant drugs. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006 Mar;63(3):332-9
[11] Brown University. Standard Eleven: Integrity. NEASC Accreditation; 2008.
http://www.brown.edu/Project/NEASC/Standards/integrity_11.php
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Speculation is rife that AstraZeneca will announce hefty job losses when the drugs giant posts its annual results on Thursday.
Analysts have estimated that up to 3,000 posts could be axed across the group, which employs about 7,000 staff at two sites in Cheshire and a total of 11,000 in the UK.
Two years ago, Astra said more than 10,000 roles would be lost globally by 2014 and reports suggest the figure could be extended.
A spokeswoman for Astra said the firm would not comment on speculation.
The UK’s second-biggest medicine maker is forecast to report flat revenues for 2011 of 33.5 billion US dollars (?21.3bn) and a 15 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to 12.65 billion US dollars (?8.1bn).
It is also reportedly mulling a ?2bn extension to its share buy-back programme, although it could hold back some cash for acquisitions.
Astra, led by chief executive David Brennan, has suffered setbacks over the past year in its efforts to produce new blockbuster treatments.
The company previously warned its profits would be at the low end of market expectations after an ovarian cancer drug called olaparib was held back for further development when tests revealed it was unlikely to prove effective.
Elsewhere, the results of tests on drugs for patients with major depressive disorders were disappointing although research is still ongoing.
The pharmaceuticals industry is facing a challenging period as it looks for new products and faces the loss of exclusivity on existing drugs.
AstraZeneca took impairment charges of around 381.5 million US dollars (?246m) in the final quarter of 2011 as a number of its potential new drugs fell through.
Shares are six per cent lower than their 2011 peak in May, amid fears that Astra has relatively few new drugs to replace its existing stable such as Nexium for heartburn and schizophrenia drug Seroquel, but have climbed back 20 per cent from their year-low in August.
Astra has in recent years been hampered by problems with its newest medicines after it discontinued its motavizumab drug, used to prevent serious lung disease, leading to a 445 million US dollar (?287.2m) accounting charge.
It also suffered delays in winning approval from US regulators for its heart medicine Brilinta. The US Food and Drug Administration requested further analysis into the blood-thinning pill before clearing the drug for sale.
statement. The Gates Foundation announced a five-year, $363 million commitment to support NTD product and operational research. Gates also announced last Thursday that the foundation would be donating $750 million to help fight AIDS through the Global Fund to Fight Aids program. The World Health Organization (WHO) unveiled a new strategy to fight NTDs, including a roadmap for implementation that sets targets for what can be achieved by the end of the decade. "The efforts of WHO, researchers, partners, and the contributions of industry have changed the face of NTDs. These ancient diseases are now being brought to their knees with stunning speed," Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO, said in a press release. "With the boost to this momentum being made today, I am confident almost all of these diseases can be eliminated or controlled by the end of this decade." In the largest coordinated effort yet to fight diseases like Guinea worm disease, leprosy and sleeping sickness, the group promised to give an average of 1.4 billion treatments each year to those in need. Experts say that a billion people are affected by NTDs around the world, including over 500 million children. The WHO said in a 2010 report on NTDs that while the diseases cost billions of dollars in lost productivity, they are often ignored because they affect mainly poor people and do not offer a profitable market for drug makers. Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, said speaking on behalf of the CEOs of the 13 pharmaceutical companies: "Many companies and organizations have worked for decades to fight these horrific diseases. But no one company or organization can do it alone." --- On the Net:
foodborne pathogens dead in their tracks. And sometimes that sort of news appears in unexpected places.
Take, for example, the January edition of Popular Mechanics. In a section about the
"Ten Tech Concepts You Need to Know," readers learn that "this year's big ideas in tech will make your food safer, make hybrid cars more energy efficient, and sentence overpriced texting plans to death."
Right out of the gate, at the top of the list, is a USDA-approved food-safety process that the magazine refers to as "Pascalization," commonly known in the food industry as HPP, or high pressure processing. And while it's only been used on the commercial level for the past 2 decades or so, the technology has been around far longer than that.
Turns out that none other than French scientist, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) conducted research on food preservation. What he came up with -- high pressure processing -- is what Popular Mechanics describes as "changing the way we think about food."
This process doesn't rely on heat, such as pasteurization; or chemicals, such as preservatives; or irradiation to kill the harmful bacteria on food. And while heat and cooking are good ways to kill bacteria, they can also impair the flavor, texture, color and nutrition of the food. For the most part, the same is true of irradiation.
Under high pressure processing, already packaged products such as fresh hamburger and turkey; processed fruit such as apple sauce; oysters; fish; guacamole; and ready-to-eat meats such as sliced turkey, pastrami and beef are put inside a pressure chamber. Water is then added to the chamber before it is sealed. From there, the pressure is increased to the maximum desirable level and sustained for a set period of time. The chamber is then decompressed and drained and the packaged products are removed.
We're talking about a lot of pressure. For example, at sea level, air pressure is 14.4 pounds per square inch. In the case of products put under HPP, the pressure ranges from 60,000 to 87,000 pounds per square inch.
And while that sounds like enough pressure to squash or damage the packaged food, that doesn't happen because the pressure is applied equally on all areas of the product.
The good news is that the pressure zaps foodborne pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7, Listeria and Salmonella, as well as "spoilage" microorganisms such as molds and yeasts -- without affecting the nutritional qualities or the taste of the food products. That's because while it has enough force to significantly disrupt cellular activity, it doesn't affect the structures of the food components that are responsible for nutrition and flavor.
Another plus is that because HPP is applied when the products are already packaged, it eliminates the possibility of cross-contamination. In other words, the products are free of pathogens when they get to the customers, whether they be grocery shoppers, restaurants, schools or other institutions. Even so, people preparing the food must follow basic food-safety procedures, such as washing their hands and preventing cross-contamination with other foods or cooking utensils to keep the food safe from foodborne pathogens.
But HPP isn't a one-step-and-it's-safe sort of approach to food safety. Companies that use it also follow standard food safety principles all the way down the line.
Last year when Food Safety News wrote about
HPP, the big news was that meat-processing giant Cargill had introduced a patent-pending process for a new line of fresh hamburger patties produced under high pressure processing. At the time, the company hailed it as a "natural option for food safety" and a "technological breakthrough." Until then, no one had figured out how to use high pressure processing on fresh hamburger meat without affecting its taste, texture or appearance.
The patties were slated for the food service industry, with customers such as restaurants saying that they were looking for a "fresh hamburger" option with good shelf life. According to a
news release from Cargill, the HPP burgers have double the shelf life of non-HPP burgers. Yet the fresh flavor stays intact and food safety is enhanced.
The company's name for these HPP burgers is "fressure." The idea is that the fressure logo could be used on restaurant menus so customers would know the burgers were fresh, not frozen. And while the label advised that the meat be cooked to 160 degrees, the "fressure" burgers gave cooks and chefs the option to cook them to lower temperatures and therefore satisfy customers who wanted medium-rare burgers, for example. Even so, restaurant menus are required to carry a warning that undercooked or uncooked meats and shellfish can pose a risk to human health.
At the time, long-time HPP researcher V.M. Balasubramaniam, Department of Food Science and Technology at Ohio State University, told Food Safety News that this new development on the part of Cargill was "the most promising food-safety innovation in recent years." And he predicted that the technology would become a key player in food safety.
Ten months later, he echoed similar thoughts in the comments he supplied to Popular Mechanics, pointing out that sauces, fruit juices, guacamole, lunch meats, and fish hold up well to HPP and and that treated versions of these foods can be found in stores today.
He also pointed to falling equipment costs for HPP and the demand for longer shelf life, coupled with a poor consumer acceptance of food irradiation, which he referred to as "HPP's competition" as reasons that HPP will enter into the mainstream.
Indeed, it's almost there, with the industry having grown into a multi-billion-dollar business in recent years, he said.
Two Heavy-Hitters
As 2011 came to an end, more news about HPP found its way into mainstream media, thanks to two heavy hitters in the food industry.
The first of these is Cargill, which once again turned to HPP, this time for some of its ground turkey. Michael Martin, spokesman for Cargill, told Food Safety News that in the wake of the company's August and September 2011 recalls of millions of pounds of ground turkey (triggered by the possible contamination of the product by multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella Heidelberg), the company explored all current food safety technologies to determine which could be effective at further reducing the potential for foodborne illness.
"One of those is high pressure processing (HPP), which we are using on some ground turkey products packaged in chubs," Martin said. Chubs are thin plastic packages containing ground meat or poultry, with the ends fastened together with a metal clasp.
Martin said the company continues to evaluate the food-safety value and consumer acceptance of the product undergoing HPP, which is being done by a third-party supplier.
The second heavy hitter to enter the HPP scene late in 2011 was none other than Starbucks. With its purchase of juice-maker Evolution Fresh in November, Starbucks cast its vote for HPP. In acquiring the company, Starbucks emphasized the competitiveness of high pressure processing since juices treated with HPP are never heated.
In the
Starbuck's news release about the purchase of the company, Jimmy Rosenberg, founder of Evolution Fresh and the newly named chief juice office of the company, said that using High Pressure Pasteurization (another term for HPP) to help ensure the inherent nutrients are kept intact during the juicing process is a key point of differentiation for a growing number of the company's juices.
Rosenberg founded Naked Juice, which is now owned by PepsiCo. Another juice contender, Odwalla, was bought by CocaCola. But companies pasteurize their juices. Starbucks plans to serve Evolution juices at juice and health bars, in stores, and also at its company-owned retail stores, thus bringing the HPP juices to the attention of about 60 million people worldwide each week. In an email to Food Safety News, a spokesperson for Starbucks said that juices processed with HPP will be noted as such on the bottle labels.
"As more information becomes available about HPP, we believe customers will seek out these juice products," said the spokesperson.
The news about Starbuck's plans for Evolution juices found its way into USA Today and the LA Times, among many other mainstream media outlets. "For us, this is exciting because Starbucks will be marketing the juice as HPP," Glenn Hewson, vice president of Global Marketing for
Avure, the global leader in HPP food processing equipment, told Food Safety News. Last year, Avure described HPP as "food safety's best kept secret" and pointed to $3 billion in food products worldwide created with HPP each year.
Among the companies using it for all or some of their products are Hormel, Fresherized Foods, Garden Fresh Gourmet, Perdue, Puro Fruits, SimplyFresco, Maple Lodge Farms, and Wholly Guacamole.
America is the leader in HPP, with Mexico coming in second. HPP products are also being produced in Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Korea.
And while there's an additional cost of using HPP, food companies are finding that consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about food safety and that many are willing to pay the extra cost.
Labels
When people learn about HPP, the first question they usually ask is how they can know which foods are processed with HPP.
Unfortunately, said Avure's Hewson, many companies don't include that information on their labels, although they do include it on their websites.
With that in mind, Hewson said that manufacturers of HPP products should consider joining the ranks of companies like
Fresherized Foods,
Maple Lodge Farms and
Ifantis in developing HPP branding that tells consumers about the benefits on the technology right on the package.
"Processors will find that branding cements consumer awareness and drives market demand for their products that stand out from the crowd," he said.
He predicts that before long, there will be an industry mark that signifies that HPP has been used to produce the food items that have undergone the process.
To watch some videos about HPP processing, go
here,
here, and
here.
Companies using HPP are invited to list the products they make with the technology in readers' comments at the end of the article.
Gloucester County College’s Center for People in Transition will offer an assortment of financial, healthy living and federal assistance workshops in February.
DEPTFORD TWP. — Gloucester County College’s Center for People in Transition will offer an assortment of financial, healthy living and federal assistance workshops in February.
All are free of charge unless otherwise noted. To register, please call
856-415-2222
or email
peopleintransition@gccnj.edu
.
* “Laws of Separation and Divorce”— Attorneys from the Gloucester County Bar Association’s Family Law Committee will discuss equitable distribution, custody, visitation, alimony and other issues associated with divorce. Additional topics include setting realistic goals, establishing timelines and grounds for divorce and selecting and assisting an attorney. Richard Rogers will present Feb. 1 from 7 to 9 p.m.
* "Building a Marketing Plan”— This seminar regards maximizing marketing efforts based on budget allocations. Choosing the right media mix, public relations tactics and low-cost marketing ideas will be explored through interactive discussions Feb. 7 from 6 to 9 p.m. To register, call
973-507-9700
or email
sscocchio@wcecnj.org
.
* “Intermediate Computers”—This 40-hour computer class covers additional skills required to become proficient in Microsoft Word and Excel. Workshops are offered with day or evening options, with 20 hours exclusively reserved for Word and 20 for Excel topics. The day class will meet on Wednesdays, beginning on Feb. 8 through March 28 from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The evening class will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays beginning March 5 through April 18 from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. The cost for displaced homemakers is $40. Non-displaced homemakers will pay a $100 fee.
* “Your Money Matters”— FDIC Instructor and Financial Consultant Wanda P. Hardy will relay five imperative principles of money management to achieve financial stability. A $10 refundable check made payable to the Financial Wellness Institute, Inc. is required to attend and will be returned during the session. The workshop meets Feb. 8 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
* “Financial Strategies for Divorcees”— This workshop, specifically designed for the divorced, demonstrates financial coping strategies for women upon ending a marriage. Topics include how to navigate financial paperwork and to create proactive, critical timelines for personal budgeting and saving. The seminar, scheduled for Feb. 9 from 7 to 9 p.m., is taught by Financial Advisor Monique Castillo.
* “Divorce Process”— Victoria M. Dalton, of family and elder law, will give an overview of the divorce process Feb. 13 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Additional topics range from grounds for divorce, how to select your attorney and a breakdown of paperwork involved.
* “LIEAP Utility Presentation”— A representative from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program will demonstrate how the federally-funded program helps low-income households pay for heating, electric, natural gas and oil commodities. The meeting is open to all Gloucester County residents, and applications for the service program will be accepted until April 30. LIHEAP Supervisor Thomas Bowen will present Feb. 14 from 2 to 3 p.m.
* “Financial Strategies for Widows”— This workshop, uniquely designed for widows, demonstrates financial coping strategies for women upon losing a significant other. Moreover, topics such as retitling assets, determining income and how to meet monetary deadlines will be covered. The seminar, scheduled for Feb. 15 from noon to 1:30 p.m., is taught by Financial Advisor Monique Castillo.
* “Feng Shui”— This beginner workshop spans the basics of Feng Shui to improve prosperity, relationships, health and career. Feng Shui — translated as wind and water —brings a balance of peace and harmony to life through the placement of furniture and objects in a home. By arranging furniture and using different colors and objects in certain parts of a household, tranquility and happiness can be achieved. Loretta Anthony will present on Feb. 16 from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
* “When Will I be Ready for a New Love Relationship”— Licensed Professional Counselor Jennie McQuaide will aid individuals in navigating their love lives following the loss of a spouse. Guidance on when to enter or avoid a relationship based on one’s behavioral health and wellness will be discussed Feb. 16 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.
The Washington Post, orphan drugs accounted for 11 of the 30 new drug approvals in 2011. This represents the highest percentage in the last thirty years. Specifically, last year saw new drug treatments for lupus and Hodgkin's lymphoma for the first time in 50 years and 30 years, respectively.
The
Orphan Drug Act defines a "rare disease or condition" as one that affects less than 200,000 people in the United States, or one that affects more than 200,000 people in the United States but there is no reasonable expectation that the costs of developing and making available the drug will be recovered from its sale in the US.
See
21 U.S.C. § 360bb. Applicants may petition FDA to give a particular drug orphan drug status. If FDA determines the drug meets the criteria required for orphan drug status, the applicant may enjoy the following benefits: (1) seven years of market exclusivity, (2) tax credits, (3) no user fees, (4) help on the costs of clinical testing, and (5) a shorter review period.
Another reason for the increase in orphan drug approvals appears to be the looming expiration of numerous patents covering more traditional ailments. EvaluatePharma Ltd., a London research firm, notes that the patents of drugs generating around $250 billion in annual sales are set to expire in 2016. With the expectation that generic versions of these drugs will flood the market, innovator drug companies are hoping the orphan drug market, where there are often fewer treatment options, can provide replacement revenue. Even with smaller numbers of patients taking these drugs, they often demand higher prices. Some drugs cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a year's worth of treatment.
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A new advanced kidney cancer treatment drug has been approved for use by patients in the US by the Food and Drug Administration.
To be marketed by manufacturer Pfizer as Inlyta, axitinib specialises in treating kidney cancer patients where other drugs have proved ineffective.
According to the US FDA, Inlyta now joins a group of six other drugs approved for kidney cancer treatment use by the regulatory body over the past six years. In a press release, the FDA lists these drugs, along with the years they were approved, as sorafenib (in 2005), sunitinib (in 2006), temsirolimus (in 2007), everolimus (in 2009), bevacizumab (in 2009) and pazopanib (also in 2009).
Approved Kidney Cancer Drugs
As FDA representative Richard Pazdur explained in a statement, it's been a busy period of late for new approved kidney cancer drugs and that, ultimately, is to patients' benefit. "Collectively, this unprecedented level of drug development within this time period has significantly altered the treatment paradigm of metastatic kidney cancer, and offers patients multiple treatment options", he said.
2011 saw over 60,000 US residents diagnosed with this condition and, says the American Cancer Society, approximately 20 per cent of them will likely die from it. Furthermore, at the point of diagnosis, up to 30 per cent of them have advanced kidney cancer.
Inlyta Kidney Cancer Treatment
Advanced kidney cancer begins in the organs' small tubes lining but Inlyta is designed to block specific receptors responsible for fuelling the cancer's spread.
Under trial conditions, it slowed down the condition's spread in patients by two months compared to another drug. A total of 723 patients were involved in this Inlyta kidney cancer treatment study and all had previously been prescribed with at least one other drug beforehand.
"Even with the advent of targeted therapies, the need remains for additional options for patients with advanced RCC whose disease has progressed following first-line medications", Pfizer's Doctor Mace Rothenberg commented. "Inlyta is the first targeted therapy to be approved in the U.S. for patients with advanced RCC [Renal Cell Carcinoma] after failure of one prior systemic therapy based on data demonstrating superior progression-free survival when compared to another FDA-approved, targeted agent."
Image copyright US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP)
Mitt Romney celebrates his win in the Florida primary. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
With his decisive victory in the Florida primary Tuesday night, Mitt Romney regained command of the Republican nomination battle, rebounding from a disappointing second-place finish in South Carolina 10 days earlier, and now enters February with a full head of steam.
With all of the Sunshine State's precincts reporting, here is the tally:
- Mitt Romney: 46 percent (771,842 votes)
- Newt Gingrich: 32 percent (531,294 votes)
- Rick Santorum: 13 percent (222,248 votes)
- Ron Paul: 7 percent (116,776 votes)
Check out the
full results here in our map center.
Just how decisive was Romney's victory Tuesday? He beat Gingrich and Santorum combined by 18,300 votes. That margin helped Romney undercut Gingrich's pre-election projection that the "conservative" candidates would "out-poll" Romney.
Addressing supporters at a primary night event in Tampa, a triumphant Romney commented on the negative tone of the Florida campaign, which saw millions of dollars poured into blistering television attack ads as well as repeated sharp exchanges between the two main GOP contenders both in debates and on the stump.
"A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us. And we will win," Romney declared. He added that the party will be "united" when it returns to Tampa in August for the convention.
Pivoting to the general election, Romney also took aim at President Obama. "Leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses," Romney said. "Mr. President, you were elected to lead, you chose to follow, and now it's time for you to get out of the way."
Gingrich spoke in Orlando and offered no words of congratulation to his rival. Instead, the former House speaker promised an unrelenting campaign.
"We're going to contest everyplace and we are going to win," Gingrich told supporters, many of whom held signs that read: "46 states to go." [It's worth noting that Gingrich
decided to skip Missouri's non-binding primary on Feb. 7 and failed to qualify for the ballot in Virginia, which holds its primary in March.]
"It is now clear that this will be a two-person race between the conservative leader, Newt Gingrich, and the Massachusetts moderate," Gingrich said.
Given the winner-take-all dynamic in Florida, Santorum had moved on to Nevada by Tuesday night, after spending most of the day in Colorado. He disputed Gingrich's statement that the GOP race was now a two-man contest between himself and the former Massachusetts governor.
"In Florida, Newt Gingrich had his opportunity. He came out of the state of South Carolina. He came out with a big win and a lot of money and he said, 'I'm going to be the conservative alternative. I'm going to be the anti-Mitt.' And it didn't work," Santorum charged. "He became the issue. We can't allow our nominee to be the issue in the campaign."
Santorum also lamented the negativity of the Romney-Gingrich feud. "The American public does not want to see two or three candidates get into a mud-wrestling match where everybody walks away dirty and not in a position to be able to represent our party proudly," Santorum said. "What we saw in the last few weeks in Florida is not something that's going to help us win this election."
After largely avoiding Florida, Texas Rep. Ron Paul also spent his primary night in Nevada, which holds its caucuses Saturday. "We will spend our time in the caucus states, because if you have an irate, tireless minority you do very well in the caucus states."
"People are beginning to realize that the problem is too much government," Paul said. "We need liberty."
While the Florida win puts Romney back in the driver's seat, he's still a long way from clinching the 1,144 delegates needed to claim the Republican presidential nomination. [The Washington Post has put together
an incredibly helpful delegate tracker.] With many states having switched to proportional allocation, the other contenders can point to the math as a reason to stay in the race.
In another signal of Romney's strength, he
will soon start receiving Secret Service protection, ABC News reported Tuesday night. In addition, the Boston Globe is reporting that Romney's campaign has been negotiating an endorsement with former candidate and Tea Party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann. Romney is, after all,
headed to her home state of Minnesota on Wednesday afternoon.
Miss any of the fun?
Watch our election special here. All of the candidate speeches
can be found here.
46 STATES TO GO?
Politico's Jonathan Martin writes about the anxiety among Republicans
about the nasty fight between Romney and Gingrich, with several top party members fretting about how it might harm the eventual nominee's general election chances against President Obama.
And the other guys don't seem to be going anywhere, but for now, Santorum is keeping his sights on Gingrich.
Santorum told CNN's Dana Bash on Tuesday night that the more affordable contests ahead in smaller states give his campaign an opportunity to rise. The former Pennsylvania senator said he raised $4.5 million in the month of January alone.
With the gambling mecca of Nevada is next up on the nominating calendar, Santorum is putting playing cards to political use. He released
a harsh new ad, taking 60 seconds to tell caucus-goers that Gingrich is just like President Obama and Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada politics, reminds the candidates
how to pronounce the state's name ahead of Saturday's caucuses:
Just because Steve Wynn can't say it right...pronounce the name correctly. Please. It is not, as Wynn says, Ne-vah-duh; it's Ne-vad-a. Practice it in front of the mirror. Put a phonetic pronouncer in the prompter. Or just memorize it. You can be sure we in the media will be listening.
The most recent polling in the Silver State, conducted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Dec. 12, found Romney leading Gingrich, 33 percent to 29 percent, with Paul getting 13 percent and Santorum 3 percent.
Polls of Colorado and Minnesota, which hold caucuses Tuesday, show a split result. An early December poll of Colorado voters from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling showed Gingrich at 37 percent to Romney's 18 percent. But a PPP Minnesota poll just a few weeks ago found Romney leading Gingrich, 36 percent to 18 percent.
There are no recent polls from Maine, which begins its week-long caucuses Jan. 4 and received a visit from Paul last weekend.
Arizona and Michigan vote in primaries on Feb. 28, and Romney leads polls conducted in both states.
TEAM OBAMA RESPONDS
Deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter wrote a memo Tuesday night arguing that Romney's victory in Florida "came at a very steep price," detailing that he spent five times more than Gingrich. Cutter pointed to polling that found Republicans dissatisfied with their candidates and said he has damaged himself among swing voters:
Team Romney wants voters and the national media to believe its victory reflects its candidate's positions. In reality, it is a product of the fact that Romney and his SuperPAC allies carpet-bombed Gingrich by spending five times as much money on Florida's airwaves, and running more than 60 television ads for every one Gingrich and his allies aired. Nearly all of the $15.3 million Romney's campaign and its allies' spent on advertising in Florida was focused not on their own candidate, but on the rest of a weak field of opponents, contributing to a campaign in which more than nine out of every 10 ads were negative - by far the most negative campaign in Florida's history.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
The campaigns, Super PACs and outside groups were required to file their fourth-quarter reports with the Federal Election Commission by midnight. Here's a look at some of the findings.
Ron Paul
raised $13 million in the fourth quarter.
The Karl Rove-backed Crossroads group hauled in $51 million.
Priorities USA, the pro-Obama Super PAC, raised just $1.24 million.
Politico's Ken Vogel
crunched the numbers on Gingrich and writes that his report "paints a picture of a campaign that is working to professionalize, but continues to be based in part around the candidate himself and the network of companies and non-profits that he built after leaving Congress." For example, the Gingrich campaign paid the candidate $47,000 for a list of supporters and paid one of Gingrich's companies $67,000 for web hosting, Vogel writes.
PayPal co-founders
donated to a pro-Paul Super PAC, Reuters reported.
President Obama's campaign voluntarily released its list of the big donors who bundle multiple donations for the president and called on the other candidates to do the same.
See the list here.
Roll Call's Kate Ackley found three former members of Congress, including one who works at a lobbying and law firm and one who has been plagued by a scandal,
were among the bundlers. Ackley writes:
Ex-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a former Senator who has been under fire for the collapse of his brokerage and commodities firm MF Global; former Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), who is not a registered lobbyist but is a member of the public policy and regulation group at Holland & Knight; and ex-Rep. Patrick Kennedy(D-R.I.) are listed as top bundlers for the president. The president returned Corzine's personal campaign contributions, according to numerous news reports.
We'll examine the disclosures on Wednesday's NewsHour. Tune in.
2012 LINE ITEMS
- Matt Strawn resigned as chairman of the Iowa Republican Party Tuesday morning, fallout from the messy counting of caucus votes and the party's delay in declaring Santorum the new winner.
From NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns:
According to the Associated Press, it was only after a late night conference call between 17 members of the Iowa Republican Central Committee weeks after the caucuses that Strawn finally made the decision to release an official statement awarding the victory to Santorum. Strawn will leave office Feb. 10, the day before the next committee meeting, which will be charged with selecting a new chairman.
Even though Strawn is leaving his job, he will have little time to rest. The Iowa Barnstormers, an Arena League Football team he co-owns, kicks off its season March 12 against the Spokane Shock.
-
Sen. Marco Rubio dodged the veepstakes question in an interview Tuesday night with Judy Woodruff. "I understand people have to speculate about somebody. Now, when they move on to other states, they will probably speculate about other people," he said.
Watch the full segment here.
-
Bachmann's campaign
was broke when she dropped out, with just $358,724 in cash on hand after the Iowa caucuses. She has more than $1 million in campaign debt, Talking Points Memo reported.
TOP TWEETS
src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">Big story in the WSJ about a new Obama push coming today to cure the ailing housing market:
— Gerald F Seib (@GeraldFSeib)
on.wsj.com/yhh6rA via @
WSJ
February 1, 2012
src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">A guide to Nevada for presidential candidates
— Jon Ralston (@RalstonFlash)
bit.ly/zL1SxQ
February 1, 2012
src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">Off camSen @
— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff)
MarcoRubio says college class he taught last week included role
#VP Vice President plays in senate
#flaprimary
January 31, 2012
OUTSIDE THE LINES
-
Democrat Suzanne Bonamici
decisively won a special House election Tuesday to replace Democrat David Wu, who resigned last year amid a sex scandal involving a young woman.
-
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
spent $1.3 million in independent expenditures, mostly on TV ads that painted GOP candidate Rob Cornilles as a Tea Party-affiliated Republican, not the moderate he portrayed himself to be on the campaign trail, Roll Call's Kyle Trygstad reports.
-
Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report notes that Democrats took nothing for granted and
"outspent Republicans on television about 4-to-1." Bonamici spent about a half-a-million dollars on television, the Democratic Congressional Committee almost a million, in addition to spending from a few other Democratic groups, Gonzales writes.
-
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.,
will not seek re-election, reports the Indianapolis Star's Mary Beth Schneider. The 73-year-old Republican lawmaker has served 15 terms.
-
Democrats think
they can win back the House in November.
-
First lady Michelle Obama
yukked it up with Jay Leno on Tuesday night, commenting on Romney's singing skills and pushing healthy eating.
-
The Virginia Supreme Court on Tuesday
allowed a redistricting lawsuit to proceed, prompting Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to ask that the state delay its congressional primaries by two months, the Washington Post's Ben Pershing reports.
ON THE TRAIL
All events are listed in Eastern Time.
-
Rick Santorum makes four Colorado campaign stops, addressing the Arapahoe Republican Men's Club breakfast in Denver at 10 a.m., holding a press conference in Lakewood at 12 p.m., delivering remarks on health care in Woodland Park at 3 p.m. and attending a rally in Colorado Springs at 9 p.m.
-
Ron Paul campaigns in Las Vegas, with events set for for 12 p.m. and 5 p.m., and press availabilities scheduled to follow both.
-
Mitt Romney holds a rally in Eagan, Minn., at 2:05 p.m. and another rally in Las Vegas at 9:30 p.m.
-
Newt Gingrich holds a campaign rally in Reno, Nev., at 4 p.m.
All future events can be found on our
Political Calendar:
For more political coverage, visit our
politics page.
Sign up here
to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.
Follow the politics team
on Twitter:
@cbellantoni,
@burlij,
@elizsummers,
@quinnbowman.
At least two promising vaccines for E. coli O157:H7 are awaiting licensing approval from the Center for Veterinary Biologics (CVB) at APHIS. CVB has a long history with animal vaccines, but has primarily focused on those that improve animal health -- not human health. The E. coli vaccines under consideration are not designed to prevent illness in the animal, but could significantly decrease the amount of the pathogen present in the pre-harvest environment, and presumably in the meat that winds up on consumers' plates. Vaccines focusing on public, rather than animal, health represent fairly new ground for the agency. Given the delays in their approval, CVB may be having trouble adjusting its vision. In a series of conversations with many of the players involved -- representatives from CVB and the pharmaceutical companies awaiting licensure -- CVB's approach has been striking. Far from being enthusiastic about the public health possibilities of pre-harvest vaccines for E. coli, the agency instead seems beleaguered and adrift on the issue, even admitting in one conversation that although there's no scientific downside to the vaccines, there are some economic and practical issues to consider. Perhaps there are economic and practical issues to consider -- but that's not CVB's mission. The fiscal implications and logistical applications to these vaccines are issues for the free market to deal with, and not reasons to delay licensing of promising new technologies that could make a significant public health impact. The key issue for CVB -- indeed, the only issue the agency has authority to consider -- is whether the vaccines are pure, safe, potent, and effective. In meetings with CVB officials, the agency acknowledges that the vaccines under consideration have cleared the first three hurdles. It's the efficacy that appears to be tripping them up. CVB says that the industry wants an expectation of efficacy that would decrease summer E. coli shedding rates in cattle to approximate winter shedding rates, an efficacy of between 55 and 65 percent. This is a laudable goal, and it's useful to know what the industry would like to see from a new pre-harvest tool to combat contamination. But surely the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the agency whose mission is to ensure the safety of meat for consumers, has an opinion on whether that expectation of efficacy is too high, too low, or just right? Unfortunately, CVB doesn't know it. From what we can tell, CVB has a bold new responsibility to consider vaccines with a possibly significant public health impact, but they haven't taken steps toward a meaningful collaboration with the relevant public health agency that sits in the same building to decide how best to exercise that power. How CVB came into its responsibility for vaccines that have a public health focus (rather than the traditional animal health focus) is somewhat mysterious. Perhaps it was simply that the agency was left without a chair when, in the early 2000s, the music stopped on a debate about where to house these types of animal vaccine approvals. True or not, the agency has entered a new era -- one where their focus on animal health must share the spotlight with a commensurate consideration for public health. It's time for CVB to embrace that new responsibility, first by re-focusing on its actual statutory mission and away from tangential issues of practicality and economy. Second, the agency must consult with FSIS and gather the relevant stakeholders to discuss how vaccines can make a contribution to public health. Third, CVB should streamline and make more transparent the entire process of vaccine approval, so that interested parties can follow the progress -- or lack thereof -- of promising technologies under consideration.
There's no guarantee about these vaccines, but even without a silver bullet, it is possible much progress can still be made. CVB has the authority and the responsibility to put yet another tool in the box to fight the scourge of E. coli. Now the agency must rise to meet its new public health role, by streamlining, prioritizing, and publicizing the vaccine approval process for those technologies that could have a significant impact on public health.
Here's a
letter written by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack about the delay in vaccine approvals.
--------------
Sarah A. Klein, J.D., M.A. is Staff Attorney, Food Safety Program, at theCenter for Science in the Public Interest
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Ed Miliband’s sortie against Stephen Hester and City bonuses is a sign of life in Labour. But Labour’s position on the benefit cap reveals a deep-seated weakness.
By taking the lead in rejecting the government’s “benefit cap” in the Lords, the bishops exposed a gaping vacuum in our politics. The Church of England, long derided for the wishy-washy character of its religious faith, turns out to possess a creed of compassion that is of sterner stuff when it comes to the politics of poverty and social justice than either the Social Liberal tendency among the Liberal Democrats and whatever remnants of Social Democracy remain in the Labour party.
By the same token, their action also shows how perilously narrow the current political system is, with the parties jockeying around the findings of focus groups to found and modulate policy on issues that are significant for economic or social well-being, but are pursued and exploited in terms of political advantage over their party rivals. The Labour Party has been drawn so close in this process to the coalition parties that it has vacated much of the political and social territory that used to give it meaning.
The benefit cap debate is a very good example of this form of politics at work. It is a largely symbolic issue for the coalition and it saves only a modest sum. But it is stand-out political ploy. As press reports have made clear, Cameron was gloating over Labour’s difficulties in framing a response; the policy is a spit on which to roast a Labour party that is torn between an anxious appreciation of public hostility towards welfare benefits and its own sense of responsibility towards people in need. The impression given is of a party that not only lost the last election spectacularly, but has also lost its core values and sense of direction.
The electoral defeat in 2010 was devastating - Labour's loss of 91 seats was worse than their previous greatest loss of seats, when they lost 77 seats in 1970 – and the last years of office under Brown were a humiliating disaster which still give coalition ministers ample opportunities to embarrass the Labour opposition, However, Cameron’s failure to gain an overall majority softened the blow; and thus Brownites and Blairites in Parliament, who broadly share the same ideas of how the party should campaign, have not felt the need to re-examine old truisms and political strategies, let alone to re-think the party’s relationship with the state, its public and society. It’s back to the “one more heave mentality”; playing it safe; and resorting to all manner of devices to achieve “credibility”. The trouble for them is that it is neo-liberal ideas, Conservative and Lib Dem ministers, a hostile press and the likes of John Humphrys who define “credibility”.
Miliband has signalled the end of Labour’s essential strategy since the 1950s, a very much diminished version of Anthony Crosland’s
The Future of Socialism
. For Crosland, who was arguing against the statist instincts of the Labour left, the defining goal of the left should be more social equality. He argued that,
'In Britain, equality of opportunity and social mobility... are not enough. They need to be combined with measures... to equalise the distribution of rewards and privileges so as to diminish the degree of class stratification, the injustices of large inequalities and the collective discontents.'
But the strategy which actually took root broadly adopted the position that a more equal society can be more or less painlessly achieved through spending some of the proceeds of growth on public services. The troika who took control of Labour in the 1990s came to power in a period of growth that allowed them to take this easy way out of real change and avoid hard choices. Spend on the NHS and schools, yes, these are services that the middle class value. But accept the destructive force of Thatcher’s “right to buy” social housing and don’t even seek to make up for the losses by building houses to rent in the public or semi-public sector; leave housing to a get-rich-quick market. There was even money for a degree of palliative social justice through Brown’s tax credits and other mechanisms, but that had to be concealed from the public gaze. No need then to challenge the status-quo, to adopt Crosland’s positive measures to “equalise the distribution of rewards and privileges.” Indeed, under New Labour it made sense to suck up to the City and reassure the banking and corporate class that the government was extremely relaxed about their wealth. It made sense to keep the trade unions at a distance for fear of contagion.
This strategy was too shallow to sustain a reforming party capable of responding to the demands of the time, let alone to the fearsome economic and social crisis that confronts the country – and which the incompetent and biased government is making worse. The benefit cap issue illustrates the weakness of Labour’s response to the government’s policies. The party’s tradition of social justice demands a whole-hearted rejection of the policy and the falsity of the coalition’s arguments for it. Instead, we get clever-arse Liam Byrne saying that the party agrees with the proposal “in principle”, but also finding a patently devious reason to oppose it that invites derision.
The government’s policy exploits a popular notion that benefits in the UK are too generous. But this is not the case. Allowances for children in the benefits structure are not sufficient fully to pay for their upkeep. A large family may therefore accumulate a sizeable but inadequate sum in benefits. High rental costs for private tenancies, especially in London and the south east, swells that sum to median income levels - but that money goes not to the family, but to their landlord.
Labour’s unwillingness to enter the debate leaves the government unchallenged where a more robust opposition could have exposed the falsity of its case. Even the simple idea that the median wage is an appropriate measure for a cap on a family’s benefit entitlement is flawed. As I understand the position, an equivalent family in work would be entitled to the very child benefit (and other work-related benefits) that the government intends to deny to a family receiving over ?26,000 in benefits.
But there is a greater cheat here. Cameron and his allies have skilfully made this an issue between the working poor and the poor on benefits. Of course, a shamefully large number of our people work for poverty wages. But the comparison that a social democratic opposition could have made – while condemning policies that are penalising the working poor - is not between median earnings of ?26,000 a year and benefit levels, but between median earnings and the rewards that the government tolerates in the financial and corporate world. In 2010, the pay of bosses of the UK’s top 100 companies jumped by an average of ?1.3 million to almost ?4.5 million. A report released during the debate on the benefits cap last week showed that the average pay for senior bankers in the City was ?1.8 million.
Moreover, an effective social democratic party ought to be thinking structurally about such injustices as the high rents that private landlords are able to charge. Given the damaging consequences of current high rent levels, the party ought surely to be advocating the re-introduction of rent controls. But the only Labour figure I know of who is advocating rent control is Ken Livingstone. In the 1970s the then Labour government did introduce a fair rent regime that protected tenants from unduly high rents while allowing landlords a return on their investments. Mrs Thatcher undid that protection in the late 1980s.
Ed Miliband has at last struck a blow over Stephen Hester’s bonus and the City bonus culture in general. But he must develop the argument against the high-pay culture at a systemic level. The government has very cleverly finessed the public debate on high earnings, at least at a rhetorical level, if not on City bonuses. Their basic message is that massive wages and rewards are legitimate if those who earn them head profit-making companies. It is a plausible message in the current atmosphere, but (once again) an effective social democratic party ought to challenge it fiercely, and not parrot it, as Chuka Umunna has been doing on behalf of the party, saying “it is right that those who work hard, generate wealth and create jobs are rewarded” and it is only “rewards for failure” that are wrong. Indeed, he disavows the argument from inequality, arguing instead that unearned high rewards ought to be opposed on the ground that they are “ bad for business”.
This is a long way from Crosland. The high and increasing level of rewards for corporate and financial bosses is creating a degree of inequality in the UK that is de-stabilising our society and condemning millions of people to hardship and penury. As the evidence of the Spirit Level has demonstrated, a more equal society is also a more harmonious and less divided society, you might even say, “a big society”.
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