{"id":21486,"date":"2012-03-21T23:05:05","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T03:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=21486"},"modified":"2012-03-22T04:22:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T08:22:10","slug":"when-to-get-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/21\/when-to-get-off\/","title":{"rendered":"when to get off&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"right\"><sup><em>Hat Tip to Jack Friday at <u><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/pharmagossip.blogspot.com\/2012\/03\/martha-rosenberg-big-pharma-bubble.html\">Pharmagossip<\/a><\/u>&nbsp;<\/em><\/sup> <img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" width=\"40\" align=\"absmiddle\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/hat-tip.gif\" \/><\/div>\n<p>   <\/p>\n<div>What&#8217;s an economic bubble?  <\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"4\" height=\"103\" border=\"1\" width=\"137\" vspace=\"4\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/tbn0.google.com\/images?q=tbn:7oCWJw7wP8RIkM:http:\/\/hobbyscience.com\/images\/bubble1.jpg\" \/>An <strong>economic bubble<\/strong> (sometimes referred to as a <strong>speculative bubble<\/strong>, a <strong>market bubble<\/strong>, a <strong>price bubble<\/strong>, a <strong>financial bubble<\/strong>, or a <strong>speculative mania<\/strong>)  is &ldquo;<strong><font color=\"#990000\">trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance  from intrinsic values<\/font><\/strong>&rdquo;. While some economists deny that bubbles  occur, the cause of bubbles remains a challenge to those who are  convinced that asset prices often deviate strongly from intrinsic  values. While many explanations have been suggested, it has been  recently shown that bubbles appear even without uncertainty,  speculation, or bounded rationality. Most recently, it has been  suggested that bubbles might ultimately be caused by processes of price  coordination, or emerging social norms. Because it is often difficult to  observe intrinsic values in real-life markets, bubbles are often  identified only in retrospect, when a sudden drop in prices appears.  Such a drop is known as a <em>crash<\/em> or a <em>bubble burst<\/em>. Both  the boom and the bust phases of the bubble are examples of a positive  feedback mechanism, in contrast to the negative feedback mechanism that  determines the equilibrium price under normal market circumstances.  Prices in an economic bubble can fluctuate erratically, and become  impossible to predict from supply and demand alone.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And Alan Greenspan&#8217;s great folly?<\/p>\n<table cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"3\" border=\"0\" width=\"90%\" align=\"center\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div align=\"justify\"> <strong><em><font color=\"#200020\">&ldquo;But  how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset  values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged  contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we  factor that assessment into monetary policy? We as central bankers need  not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not  threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs, and price  stability.&rdquo;<\/font><\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/BOARDDOCS\/SPEECHES\/19961205.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Alan Greenspan<\/a><\/strong> [1996]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p align=\"justify\">Alan Greenspan was wrong, and we&#8217;re now in the fourth year of living out the consequences of his irrational belief that such things were just part of the game. The series of financial bubbles [Internet, Housing, Oil] almost took our economy out, and we still don&#8217;t know the end of that story. While the Big Pharma Bubble was not limited to psychiatry, no other specialty based its essence on it like psychiatry. Big Pharma itself will simply downsize, and lots of pretty drug reps and scientists will be looking for work, but what about psychiatry now painted in the corner by Managed Care and the increasing outcry about psychopharmacology? That story remains to be told too&#8230; <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><u><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scoop.co.nz\/stories\/HL1203\/S00210\/martha-rosenberg-the-big-pharma-bubble.htm?\"><font color=\"#200000\">After the Housing Bubble, Get Ready for the Big Pharma Bubble<\/font><\/a><\/strong><\/u><br \/>      <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Scoop<\/font><\/strong><br \/>      By  Martha Rosenberg<br \/>       March 9, 2012<\/div>\n<p>      <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>It is no consolation to the roughly one out of 600 families who lost their homes in the U.S. but Wall Street made a lot of money slicing and dicing mortgages it knew would implode, while hiding risks. Financial giants, like AIG, are still buzzing along and neither penalties or new laws will prevent a future crash, say financial analysts, because the risky business models have not really changed. In fact, occlusive business models responsible for the <em>previous<\/em> Internet bubble in 2000  and for which CEOs are still in prison may soon be legal again under the U.S.&#8217; pending JOBS Act. Thanks for that.<\/p>\n<p>       A similar Big Pharma bubble, leavened with risky blockbuster drugs that also blew up, is now bursting. Almost 20,000 jobs have vanished at AstraZeneca, Novartis and Pfizer in the last 12 months alone. AstraZeneca has scrapped 21,600 more jobs since 2007.<\/p>\n<p>      Forbes calls Son of Vytorin. Vytorin (the father) was advertised to treat both food and family &quot;sources of cholesterol&quot; until results from a study that Merck and Schering-Plough appeared to withhold from regulators showed the drug had no effect on the buildup of plaque in the arteries (believed to correlate with heart attack and stroke). There was such a gap between marketing and science, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the General Accounting Office to investigate why the FDA was approving &quot;drugs that appear to have little to no effect in protecting lives and increasing health.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>      In Europe, governments are no longer willing to pay the bubble prices for drugs that they once did say published reports and some countries are drafting laws making drug makers &quot;prove their drugs are effective or risk having them dropped from the coverage list, or covered at a lower rate,&quot; says the <em>New York Times.<\/em> Imagine.<\/p>\n<p>       Germany has already saved 1.9 billion euros in 2011 by refusing to pay higher prices for drugs unless they are clearly superior to existing medicines, and Pharma worries that other countries will also get tough and want scientific proof for drug effectiveness instead of marketing and spin. In the U.S. and elsewhere, a drug only needs to be superior to no drug (placebo) to be approved by regulators&#8211;yet &quot;new&quot; is conveyed as &quot;better than any drug to date&quot; in advertising.  Some clinicians say Haldol, an inexpensive antipsychotic and lithium, a similarly affordable bipolar drug are <em>better<\/em> than blockbuster psychiatric drugs that created Pharma&#8217;s 2000&#8217;s bubble&#8230;<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Besides the obvious problems of the DSM-5 Revision that fill the blogs, most media outlets, and are becoming topics in the general patter overheard in coffee shops, the people in charge seem oblivious to the fact that they are barreling along a path that may have made sense when the started six or so years ago, but now borders on lunacy. This is no time to be pressing forward with their <em>all-is-biology<\/em>, <em>grieving is sickness, chemical imbalance<\/em>, <em>genomics\/proteonomics<\/em>, <em>clinical neuroscience<\/em> agenda &#8211; even if they believe in it. This is a time to look broadly at the needs of the <img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"4\" border=\"1\" width=\"150\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ratbehavior.org\/images\/WildratOnRope2.jpg\" \/>mental health community at large and create a nosology that&#8217;s widely useful and devoid of the kind of influences that have located psychiatry in a fading niche rather than as an overarching mental health discipline. Linking the fate of a medical specialty to an industry and\/or an ideology is unprecedented in my experience, but fighting to maintain that link at a time when that very industry is going into a hibernation mode defies understanding. Even rats know when to jump ship&#8230; <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hat Tip to Jack Friday at Pharmagossip&nbsp; What&#8217;s an economic bubble? An economic bubble (sometimes referred to as a speculative bubble, a market bubble, a price bubble, a financial bubble, or a speculative mania) is &ldquo;trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance from intrinsic values&rdquo;. While some economists deny that bubbles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21486"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21500,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21486\/revisions\/21500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}