[How Business Happens] War on Drugs

Folks,

The FDA is now going after small businesses who sell safe remedies, but
have not gotten FDA approval. Never mind that these companies have been
selling their products longer than there has even been an FDA. The FDA has
"reports" (not science, just anecdotes) of illness and death from these
products, some 600 in fact (out of how many doses given, over how much
time?) What is being sold by these small business that must be controlled?
Quinine. That's right, the stuff in your gin and tonic.

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01521.html

The news release further names an approved source of the product, which is
a new twist. As the FDA destroys your company for selling a safe product
which has been legal forever, they tell your customers where they can go
get it now.

Sounds like a protection racket.

John

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Posted By Editor, "How Business Happens" to How Business Happens at 10/21/2007 05:07:00 PM

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[How Business Happens] Wee bit o' Mkt Intel

Folks,

There have always been crews working on the fringes (let's call them bottom
fishers) picking up foreclosed homes at auction, and then flipping them.

They way it usually works is banks know these people well, trust them, and
let them know when an owner is so distressed a sale on the courthouse steps
of a given property is inevitable.

In one instance I know of, these bottom fishers actually meet weekly in
some restaurant backroom and go through the list of properties and work out
deals with the banks, giving the banks something better than the courthouse
steps would yield. The hapless "homeowner" is happy to be rid of his
burden. "Investors flip the property for a tidy sum.

These bottom fishers welcome asset-rich individuals to get in on the
purchases, and lend these asset-rich/cash poor people "hard-money."

Well the properties are not flipping. Things are backing up. People who
borrowed hard money at high interest are finding their debts compounding.
This pressure relief valve appears to be clogged. If so, the bank will have
to be more creative. It does give a borrower some more leverage, since
banks prefer income, any income, over a loss.

Remember, the bottom of the market is not low prices, but "no buyers".

John

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Posted By Editor, "How Business Happens" to How Business Happens at 10/21/2007 05:06:00 PM

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[How Business Happens] Flu Shots

Hmmm...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston33.html

John

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Posted By Editor, "How Business Happens" to How Business Happens at 10/21/2007 05:05:00 PM

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[How Business Happens] Farming in Africa

Folks,

Here is an article that presents the economic disaster of Zimbabwe as a
blacks vs. whites problem, when it is a system vs. system problem.

http://tinyurl.com/2aqdyd

In spite of being a rich agricultural country as Rhodesia, Zimbabwe now has
6600% inflation, crumbling infrastructure, and faces famine without outside
aid. Zimbabwe is ruled by a thug, whom even the USA and China have declined
to help. And you know we are not picky.

In Rhodesia, the whites had set up a money making system for themselves,
and the blacks who flocked to the cities for opportunity found themselves
relatively poor. Certainly whites set up subsidies and restrictions that
benefitted themselves, but the system at least fed everyone,

When the blacks gained power, they confiscated properties they had no idea
how to manage and destroyed a system that distributed the produce. (Farming
is harder than it looks).

So we have a unjust system replaced by a chaotic situation. It has nothing
to do with black and white, because the same problem arises everywhere in
the world, every time this kind of change is attempted.

A far better approach is to take power and merely eliminate the subsidies
and restrictions for the rich. In a free market, the protected class would
slowly, peacefully settle to a natural level of power as the "oppressed"
ever advanced as they learned how free markets worked. A peaceful
inexorable settling into a just polity.

Since neither side really knows how to operate in a free market, they start
on relatively level planes, and advance depending on how well they serve
the customers.

I am sitting by my phone waiting for Robert Mugabe to call.

John

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Posted By Editor, "How Business Happens" to How Business Happens at 10/21/2007 04:39:00 PM

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