When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago I heard about some of the advantages of the current economic slump: the San Francisco freeways have less traffic, and when you walk into a fancy restaurant you can get both a table and immediate attention.
Investors have a choice: they can put money into a business or they can purchase houses cheaply, in blocks of twenty, and wait for their guaranteed appreciation. Since the Obama administration's latest initiative to help small business is to lend them money, apparently to pay their increased taxes, I don't find it surprising that businesses find it hard to get money from private investors.
Which brings us to biotech. A quick search shows that biotech firms are in trouble both in the US and in Europe. Of course I've run into many wonderful sentences, such as this one from the print edition of the Wall Street Journal:
Targanta Therapeutics... laid off about 75% of its staff in December... after the Food and Drug Administration asked for another clinical trial to prove its drug.
The vicious cycle of increased taxes, increased regulation, and the implicit government support for only the largest firms continues to kill off the smaller companies. I am looking for a non-obvious lesson all this but haven't quite found it yet.
Topics: · business · finance · technology
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