And It’s Not Obamacare’s Fault
By John Lawrence
You can blame lobbyists from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry in conjunction with Republican lawmakers who lobbied the Affordable Care Act to death making it in the long run unaffordable and probably untenable. Why? Because there are no cost containment features in the Act. None. Nada. Zippo.
What that means is that the drug companies can raise the prices of drugs 5000% like Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals did for Daraprim without breaking the law. Shkreli’s arrogance, the latest example of which is calling the Congressmen who interrogated him “imbeciles”, has gotten him into much trouble but not for raising the price of a life-saving drug 5000%.
You see in America, my friends, screwing unfortunates with heart disease and cancer is not a crime but defrauding investors out of their money is. Your Republican controlled government is not looking out for the little guy. Lobbyists are running the lawmakers. Oh, you don’t have a lobbyist working for you? Then you’re shit out of luck. With the exception of a few good Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, your interests are not only being ignored. You’re being considered as sheep to be led to slaughter.
Republican gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the filibuster have guaranteed that only Republican laws will be put into effect, and that means that corporations have the right to screw you but the investor class will be protected. In fact, after the 2008 Wall Street-caused financial meltdown, investors were paid back 100 cents on the dollar (there were no haircuts), and the only rule applying to the little guy was that he had to pay his debts 100 cents on the dollar (there were no writedowns for underwater mortgages).
But I digress. The company leading the pack in drug price increases is Canada-based Valeant, which lifted list prices by at least 20% some 122 times since the beginning of 2011. Isuprel and Nitropress, the heart drugs Valeant bought from another company, have been staples of medical care for decades. Doctors use Isuprel during procedures in treating heart-rhythm problems, and give Nitropress to emergency patients whose blood pressure has risen to life-threatening levels. Doctors say there are few good alternatives.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals Schemed Carefully
Valeant Pharmaceuticals has also been in the business of making life-saving drugs for heart disease, AIDS, and cancer unaffordable. Evidence has been brought to light that Valeant Pharmaceuticals carefully pondered how much it could raise the price of heart drugs Isuprel and Nitropress before buying them and then raised the prices overnight by 525% and 212% respectively.
Profit was the only consideration. Blame the lobbyists who cut cost containment out of Obamacare, not Obama.“Our duty is to our shareholders and to maximize the value” of the products that Valeant sells, said Laurie Little, a company spokeswoman.
Ascension health system, which operates 131 hospitals across the country, estimates the increases will triple its spending on the drugs this year to $8 million. Ever wonder why health care premiums are so high? Richard Fogel, a heart doctor at Ascension’s St. Vincent Heart Center in Indianapolis, said the lack of good alternatives in certain clinical situations leaves him little choice but to keep using the pair.
Cleveland Clinic says the price hikes for the two Valeant drugs is unexpectedly adding $8.6 million, or 7%, to this year’s budget of roughly $122 million for medicines administered at its hospitals. Like its peers, Cleveland Clinic generally pays for drugs it administers, then hopes the reimbursement it receives for patient care will cover the expense.
Companies are buying established drugs from other companies and then jacking up the prices. Early last year, Mallinckrodt PLC paid $1.4 billion for Cadence Pharmaceuticals, though the Ofirmev pain injections that were the crown jewel of the deal were projected to have just $110.5 million in revenue for 2013, according to a Mallinckrodt conference call with analysts discussing the deal. However, Mallinckrodt had a better idea with regard to pricing.
Three months later, the list price for a package of 24 Ofirmev vials jumped almost 2½ times to $1,019.52. “It seemed like highway robbery,” said Erin Fox, who directs the drug information service at University of Utah Health Care.
These price increases can be very lucrative; that, not patient care, is the whole idea. Horizon Pharma PLC upped the price of Vimovo pain tablets after buying the rights from AstraZeneca in late 2013. On Jan. 1, 2014, its first day selling Vimovo, Horizon raised the list price for 60 tablets to $959.04, a 597% increase. Horizon raised the price again onJan. 1 this year to $1,678.32 for the tablets.
Prices were hiked dramatically on a drug used for “swimmer’s ear” – Cortisporin-TC Otic Suspension. Cortisporin was originally developed by Glaxon Wellcome and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1975. Glaxo sold the rights to the drug to Monarch Pharmaceuticals in 1997. Ten years later it was sold to JHP Pharmaceuticals which was acquired by Par Pharmaceuticals in 2014 which was acquired by Endo International for $8 billion.
A vial used to cost $6. A few years ago Cortosporin was selling for $10. Last year it went for $100. and now it’s $200. This is a product that helps kids recover from ear infections. Heather Lubeski, Endo’s senior director of corporate affairs, said the company is “committed to providing top quality products to patients to improve lives.” She believes the product’s pricing is “rational and appropriate.”
After Price Gouging, Tax Avoidance
Endo moved to Ireland to avoid paying millions of dollars in US business taxes. Endo’s moving to Ireland is part of one of the biggest trends in global mergers and acquisitions. It’s called tax inversion. By moving their headquarters to another country, US companies are able to slash taxes.
Now Pfizer, maker of Viagra and Celebrex, wants to pull the same crap: first price gouge, then move to Ireland to avoid US taxes. Pfizer intends to save $35 billion in taxes by merging with Allergan. A group called Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) is urging the US government to block the merger which would let Pfizer do a “tax inversion” but keep its offices in New York City where they are now. The group also accuses Pfizer of gouging Americans with frequent and excessive price hikes while benefiting from multiple loopholes and deductions which effectively reduce its global tax rate to 6.4%.
“This is theft, what Pfizer is doing,” said Frank Clemente of ATF. “This is a company that is extremely profitable. It’s ripping us off in two ways. It’s dodging taxes and jacking up prices.”
Pfizer has raised prices on multiple drugs including Viagra, Celebrex, Lyrica and Zyvox by over 39% from 2013 to 2015 – 23 times the rate of inflation! This year it’s already raised prices on 60 drugs by more than 10%. Like Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer is pleasing its Wall Street overlords and masters by squeezing as much profit as possible out of its products. That’s their only consideration.
Shkreli gloated to investors about all the money he and they were going to make on Daraprim while any compassion for the unfortunate people, for whom Daraprim was a life-saving drug, went totally out the window. Here’s what he told his investors: “So 5000 paying bottles at the new price is $375,000,000 – almost all of it is profit, and I think we will get three years of that or more. Should be a very handsome investment for all of us. Let’s all cross our fingers that the estimates are accurate.” The unmitigated greed is appalling. Some patients were left with co-pays of $16,000!
Credit Democrat Elijah Cummings for using his position as head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to bring thousands of pages of documents to light that made it clear that Valeant’s and Turing’s only concerns were how much profit they could make by buying drugs and raising their prices exorbitantly.
Before buying Isuprel and Nitropress, Valeant hired a consultant to determine by how much the prices for the two drugs could be raised. It was determined that there was “ample room” to price gouge unfortunates because previous large increases had not “dampened use.” Lambs being led to slaughter? You bet.
Imagine the Powerpoint presentation as the pricing consultant presented to Valeant executives the information that thegoal for 2015 was for $279.3 million in revenue for Isuprel up from $54.5 million in 2014. Similarly, the goal for Nitropress was $245.5 million up from $98.7 million in 2014. The executives probably were immensely satisfied as they high fived each other over “aggressive pricing through consultant recommendation.” That quote was actually taken from one of the documents that Cummings was able to obtain.
The Truth About the Drug Companies
Way back in 2004 Dr. Marcia Angell published a book, The Truth About the Drug Companies – How they Deceive Us and What to Do About It. During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She watched drug companies stray from their original mission of discovering and manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes.
Instead of doing research like they say they need their vast profits for, they lobby Congress, produce drugs of dubious value and pay their executives obscene sums. They use TV advertising to convince the American people they need their drugs – even those that will ultimately cause them harm. They pay competitors not to produce cheap generic drugs. They pay doctors to prescribe their drugs.
It’s all about the free enterprise system, folks, conceived and dedicated to keeping Americans free to charge you outrageous prices especially if your life depends on their products. They have no mercy whatsoever or concern for their fellow human beings. It’s all about making as much money as possible. As one of the 1% class said, “You only have to make a fortune once.” Short term profits are what it’s all about, folks.
This is from the New England Journal of Medicine:
By Angell’s account, the current slide toward the commercialization and corruption of clinical research coincided with the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the passage of the Bayh–Dole Act, a new set of laws that permitted and encouraged universities and small businesses to patent discoveries from research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Research paid for by the public to serve the public instantly became a private, and salable, good, one that is producing drug sales of more than $200 billion a year. …
The same companies also spend heavily to lobby governments. According to Angell, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the pharmaceutical industry’s U.S. trade association, has “the largest lobby in Washington,” which in 2002 employed 675 lobbyists (including 26 former members of Congress) at a cost of more than $91 million. [In 2014 the pharmaceutical industry spent $229 million lobbying.] The result has been above-average growth in corporate profits during both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The most recent and (at least to observers outside the United States) perplexing lobbying effort caused Congress explicitly to prohibit Medicare from using its huge purchasing power to get lower prices for drugs, thus opening up a dollar pipeline, in the form of higher drug prices, directly from taxpayers to corporate coffers. These changes, along with the cave-in by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997 that permitted direct-to-consumer advertising to bypass mention in their ads of all but the most serious side effects, have further augmented profits. The overall effect has been a corruption not only of science but also of the dissemination of science.
That was in 2004. It’s even worse today. The bottom line is that the American public is being screwed by Big Pharma in conjunction with Republican lawmakers. It’s not Obama’s fault. He did the best he could. Unfortunately, Obamacare is flawed not due to Obama but due to the fact that he had to make concessions to lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry to get the ACA legislation passed at all. Bernie Sanders wants to take it to the next level – Medicare for all. Just the elimination of all the paperwork involved in today’s medical industry will save billions of dollars as will the proscription of the legislative provisions which disallow Medicare from negotiating drug prices.
Big Pharma Raised Prices Again in January
Drugmakers didn’t let up on price increases with the start of the new year, demonstrating the industry’s pricing power in the face of mounting criticisms of prescription costs in the U.S. Pfizer, Amgen, Allergan, Horizon Pharma and others have raised U.S. prices for dozens of branded drugs as of January 2016, with many of the increases between 9% and 10%. Some of the increases add thousands of dollars to the cost of already expensive drugs, and come on top of repeated price hikes in recent years.
Vanda Pharmaceuticals on Jan 1 raised the price of its new drug Hetlioz, which treats a sleep disorder in blind people, by 10%, to $148,000 a year, a spokeswoman said. Piper Jaffray analysts say the price of the once-daily capsule is now 76% higher than when it was introduced in 2014.
Since New Year’s Day, Pfizer has raised list prices an average of 10.6% for more than 60 branded products with annual U.S. sales of at least $10 million, according to Deutsche Bank. Prices for eight of the products went up at least 20%.
Amgen raised the price of the anti-inflammatory drug Enbrel by 8% in late December following an 8% increase in September and a 10% increase last May. Enbrel costs about $704 a week for the typical dosing for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis or more than $36,600 a year.
Acorda Therapeutics raised the price of its drug Ampyra, which is used to help multiple-sclerosis patients improve walking, by 11% on Jan. 1, to an annual cost of more than $23,650 a patient. The company has raised the price several times since the drug was approved in 2010. The drug’s new cost is about four times its cost at launch in the 1990s, said Raymond James analyst Christopher Raymond. The price hikes for Enbrel and other drugs “seem to have increased in magnitude and frequency,” he said.
Imagine having an insurance card where you can walk into any doctor’s office, show your card and never have to pay a bill. That’s the way it is in Canada and most other advanced countries. The cost savings resulting from simplification of paperwork alone makes Medicare for All worthwhile. Bernie Sanders’ message is very simple – Medicare for All will not only save money, it will provide superior health care for everybody the way it does in the rest of the world. But in America freedom implies that the owner of a life saving product can gouge its victims as much as possible in order to make profits for shareholders and investors. Wall Street frowns if the price gouging isn’t to the max. To paraphrase Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for the ability to price gouge.”
When Elijah Cummings was grilling a smirking Shkreli in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Cummings said to him, “It’s not funny Mr. Shkreli. People are dying.” But all that Shkreli and the others are interested in is maximizing growth potential and creating value for shareholders. I guess they are the only ones who count in this world. Money talks and shit walks. Then Shkreli called the lawmakers “imbeciles” for not knowing that in a capitalist economy that’s par for the course.
John Lawrence
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Thank you John, there is an awful lot of useful information in there. I assume you verified all of it as I will be quoting you.
Pat, check out the links. That’s where it comes from.
Hmmm. This is why most of us homeless could be out here and why many people are so sick. I know I can’t afford half of the medications I’m supposed to take. Affordable care act can’t be afforded when medicines go sky high
Mr. Lawrence scores another great expose. Any chance of this article getting national distribution? HuffPo, perhaps?
Irony of the Martin Shkreli situation is that he would have been committing crime if he had NOT raised the price to whatever the market could bear. Because by law a corporation MUST maximize its shareholders’ profits. And, of course, the congressionals who questioned him – especially the Reptiles — know that very well.
Thank you, Michael-Leonard. You said it all when you said: “…raised the price to whatever the market could bear.” because this reflects the economic pricing strategy that has been employed by Amerikan business since the 80s (Reagan’s Presidency) becaue it maximizes profit: charge whatever you think the traffic will bear (keep raising the price until you can hear them screaming, or until someone else charges just enough less than you to take your business away, as opposed to arriving at your price by calculating your cost and adding a reasonable profit. If you can’t make the connection between that pricing strategy and the state of income disparity 30 years later, then you are part of the problem.
Charging “what the market can bear” way pre-dates Reagan.
Also, it’s not basic capitalism but the corporate strain of capitalism that has caused the extreme shift in economic disparity that we see today. Every small business id built on the capitalist model.
I’m not so sure the prevalence of market-based pricing strategies (as opposed to cost-based pricing strategies) pre-dated Reagan by very much. The shift was not sudden and seemed to be driven by attitudes of the fed and the “de-regulaton” craze that Reagan spurred on during his presidency. I was in my 40s at that time. In my younger days in the 60s and 70s, I do not recall there being such a disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in this country. But perhaps there was a great disparity and I was simply unaware of it.
Thank you John for explaining the shift over the last 30 years in the way the capitalist business model is practiced. I’m not sure I understand the similarity you draw between Trump and Sanders, but your description of the shift in sources of GDP is very clear. The banking industry likely turned this way due to huge outsourcing of jobs oversees, resulting in shrinking investment opportunities here.
I have just re-read John’s article. And I reiterate my position that profit can no longer be the primary consideration in corporate decision-making.
This is SO outrageous! Thanks for so much good info, John. I have sent it out to many friends. Although I do not believe in “old time religion” maybe it did stop greedy people from going that route because the preachers said they would “go to hell”. It clearly fits into Kolberg’s schemata of Moral Development. On the lower levels of moral development one has to be frightened into the right behavior!
John, we just had a general election here in Ireland last Friday and the government of the last five years was thrown out largely because it was perceived by the electorate as being too accommodating to foreign companies’ tax management schemes such as the “double Irish”.
Against a background of austerity for Irish wage earners while allowing zero tax for American multi-nationals, it was an emotional election campaign. As a result we now have a divided Irish Parliament with no clear ruling party and a great deal of political uncertainty.
The days when a lobbyist for an American multi-national could hand a government minister a piece of paper with legislation written on it and have it enacted by Parliament the following day is gone forever. From now on everything will be thrashed out on the floor of the Irish Parliament, no more backroom ministerial deals.
The mood of the people here is that these companies will either pay taxes or leave. First out will probably be Apple followed by Allergen. Neither will not be missed by the Irish tax payer. The mood now is for indigenous industry and innovation, which I hope will be replicated around the world and that Ireland is the beginning of an international tax backlash.
Great piece of work, John. Maybe we are from the same mother.
No doubt!
Great article, John
Pat,
That’s truly great news about Ireland, Pat. Congratulations to the Irish people! Our democracy has been corporatized and undermined by the fabulously wealthy people at the top (e.g., the Kochs) who think they not only have a right to, but deserve everything they take from society.
John, you ended with, “Then Shkreli called the lawmakers “imbeciles” for not knowing that in a capitalist economy that’s par for the course.” (and as far as I know, he got away with it!) Isn’t Shkreli’s fate before Congress evidence enough of the fact that this country outgrew it’s capitalist business model long ago? Thank you for your last sentence.
Any reader of this story who cannot make the connection between Shkreli’s story and the core problem in this country, which is its capitalist business model, is part of the problem in my opinion. What I fear most is that enough people in this country have gained enough wealth under the capitalist economic system that they do no want to “rock the boat”.
Trump wants to strengthen the capitalist model (I suspect that’s what he means when he says, “I will make Amerika great again…”) while Hillary supporters just don’t want to “upset the apple cart. Change is OK, as long as it doesn’t affect me.”
Who is winning the election horse-race so far? Trump & Hillary. What does that tell you?
Paul, the capitalist business model has changed from a model in which banks provided money for investment in productive enterprises consisting of labor and productive capital like machinery and factories into a capitalist model consisting of the financialization of the economy in which short term profits from rents, dividends, interest, stock buybacks, derivatives, all of which used to be considered as unearned income, are now considered earned income and contributing to GNP.
At the same time young people have been overwhelmed with student loan and credit card debt, some with mortgage and car payment debt. Their debt represents income – and hence additive to GDP – for the banks. Hence GDP increases while a major segment of the population drowns in debt. That is why young people in particular are going for Bernie and Trump. They realize that cheering on Republicans who are totally in the pockets of Wall Street and Hillary who is also in their pocket is not representative of their interests.
When Republicans say that Trump is destroying the Republican Party, they are right. He and Bernie are destroying the cozy relationship between the traditional parties and Wall Street which has led to increasing debt, Wall Street’s increasing profits and a widening divide between the 99% and the 1%.
John Lawrence, can I ask you why you feel “young people have been overwhelmed with student loan and credit card debt…” that they are victims? Being a part-time student, full-time professional, a wife and a mother, I see the choices people around my age (32) make with their finances. Our society desires success no matter what party. I love that. However, student debt and credit card debt is a product of society wanting something instead of earning something. I believe the financial problem with individual debt, is that there is absolutely no education with personal finances in K-12 schools. I listen to radio talk regarding sex education and the debates if it is a school responsibility or a home responsibility. How about we focus on the problem with personal finance and teaching young people how to save money, spend money wisely and budget? I refuse to be a victim of financial stress. Credit card debt is certainly a personal choice to spend money you haven’t earned yet.
They are under the impression that there is no other way to gain access to the middle class and have a decent life than to get a college degree. They are so WRONG about that, but that’s what society, their parents and teachers teach them.
I agree with you that financial literacy is one of the most important subjects that should be taught in schools starting at an early age – equally important as sex education. Most people can get through life without ever working an algebra problem or a calculus problem or a geometry or a trigonometry problem, but you don’t get very far in life without financial literacy.
My 27-year old daughter with 2 undergraduate college degrees and as a result deep in student debt, came to me today (the day after the MA primaries) and asked, why wasn’t there a place on the ballot to vote AGAINST someone? She said she did not prefer any one candidate over another, but wished there was a place on the ballot to vote against someone (Trump, she said). She said she dislikes him so much that she wished there was a place to vote against him. Not sure how this fits into the conversation, but think it to be a relevant point to bring up.
As you point out, John, the core problem of gross income inequality is not so much linked to growth of the economy. GDP growth was significant during the 1991-2013 period … and has been reasonably strong since then. The problem is that the bulk of the income money is going to the elite corporate Top and billionaires, a large part to the tripling of incomes for CEOs of largest top 500 corporations 1991-2013.(TABLES 1,3)CEO pay has rise from 20 times the average worker in 1965, to 58 times in 1989, to 300 times today!
The flattening out of middle class and lower working class wages over last decades is also reflected in the flat real growth of income by educational level during 1991-2013 … and flat family income growth over similar period. We are trapped in an economy that is divided into a small pool of elite income earners and a bottom 90% pool of insecure employed workers struggling under stagnant wage growth in predominately low paying service jobs.(TABLE 2)
Making matters worse is fact that the rise of the knowledge society is not generating a lot of jobs, let alone decent paying jobs. Not only unskilled workers are losing their jobs to automation but also skilled workers in the knowledge service sector. That’s why going all out with investing in infrastructure, education and green energy is so incredibly important to generating a vast number of new good jobs for the Bottom 90% – thereby reversing the geometric increase in income/wealth inequality taking place past 35-40 years.
_______________________________________________________________________
TABLE 1: FLAT MEDIAN REAL GROWTH OF INCOME BY EDUCATIONAL LEVEL: 1991-2013 (2013 Dollars)
……………..1991…….2001……2013…1991-13 %+-…2001-13 %+-
High School…..$27,900….$29,000…$25,000….-7.5%…….-13.8%
College Grad….$48,000….$53,500…$48,500….+1.0%……..-9.3%
Postgraduate….$52,500….$58,000…$53,500….+1.9%……..-7.8% _______________________________________________________________________
CEOs………..$3.1 Mil..$8.3 Mil..$10.3 Mil…+232%…….+24.1% _______________________________________________________________________
TABLE 2: COMPOSITION OF U.S. WORKFORCE By SECTOR: 1900-2012
……………..1900……1950……1970……1990……2012
Agricultural……40%…….12%……..6%…….3%……..2%
Manufacturing…..21%…….24%…….27%……18%…….10%
Service………..28%…….47%…….59%……72%…….80%
High Tech…………………………………9%…….10% _______________________________________________________________________
Source: TABLES 1,2: Foreign Affairs,”Inequality and Modernization – Why Equality Is Likely to Make a Comeback,” by R. Inglehart, Jan.Feb. 2016 _______________________________________________________________________
TABLE 3: U.S. OVERALL AVERAGE FAMILY REAL INCOME GROWTH: 1993-2012
……………………………………………….% of Total ……………………………………………….Growth(Loss)
……………Average Family…Top 1%…Bottom 99%..Earned by Top 1%
Full Period……..17.9%………86.1%…….6.6%………68% 1993-2012
Clinton…………31.5%………98.7%……20.3%………45% Expansion 1993-2000
2001 Recession….-11.7%……..-30.8%……-6.5%………57% 2000-2002
Bush Expansion…..16.1%………61.6%…….6.8%……….65% 2002-2007
Great Recession…-17.4%…….-36.3%……-11.6%………49% 2007-2009
RECOVERY…………6.0%……..31.4%……..0.4%……….95% _______________________________________________________________________
Source: Piketty and Saez: 2003 data updated to 2012. Incomes inflation adjusted. _______________________________________________________________________
In TABLE 3, the 4th column shows the fraction of total real family (loss) captured by the Top 1%. For example, from 1993 to 2012, average family income grew 17.9%, but 68% of that growth went to the Top 1% while only 32% went to the Bottom 99%. During the 2009-2012 Recovery, income concentration for the Top 1% returned to its huge pre-recession level and then some. Average family income grew only 6%, but 95% of that growth was grabbed by the Top 1% while practically zero went to the Bottom 99%.
The Top 1% have more than fully recovered from their loss during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, but the Bottom 99% were still sitting with their loss as of 2012. This result hasn’t changed much since 2012 despite strong job growth. This is largely due to downgrading of jobs, expansion of precarious lower paying flexible work and part-time work.
Thanks, Frank. In this debt based society, the role of the 99% seems to be to pay interest to Wall Street. That holds for individual debtors like college graduates to individual countries like Greece and Cypress. When individuals and countries are forced into debt deflation and become insolvent, then instead of restructuring debt, creditors expect to take possession of assets whether it’s a house or a port or a water system or electric grid.
That’s why government based spending on infrastructure is a non starter. The banks want to privatize those assets so that they can extract rent from them. The role of the 99% is to pay rent and interest and work at whatever jobs that haven’t been taken over by robots, automation and poor countries.
The neoliberals/neocons don’t want government to provide any fiscal policy whatsoever. The economy must be controlled solely by monetary policy which means the likes of Goldman, JP MOrgan, Citibank and Wall Street hedge funds control it. The model reduces the 99% to debt servitude and menial jobs, while political clowns entertain us.
Amen!
You said it all. With these few paragraphs you succinctly expressed the consequences of Wall Street’s economic abuses of the past 40 years. Thank you. Now, what can we do to make our lives better?