http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfize...x.html?hpt=Sbin

basically, pfizer commits fraud, but as its fall would exclude its products from medicare, a subsidiary falls on the sword for the mother corp with the acceptance of the US government.

Of course then it would be more of a free market. Can't have that; free markets are not controllable enough for progressives.

And if Pfizer gets shut out, how many patients worsen and/or die for lack of access to their products? Newsflash: "progressive" is not code for "giant communist conspiracy." Not everything is political.

Uhm, what we are seeing is the result of a free market: Private companies can become so big that the state can't function without them. But hey, at least we can rely on other companies to step on their toes

it is political when laws are different for people corporations and huge corporations. If big companies are not protected and fail there would be alot more small companies. And if progressives are not trying to have communism why are they pushing agendas reminiscent of Russia, and Mao's china among others? Yes I understand they are not saying lets go to communism all in one fell shot, but saying that small changes are ok in the direction of communism is like telling the cow just take a little step ok one more.. and slowly bringing the cow to the butcher shop instead of shooting the cow in the field. I don't want my freedoms shot in the field or in the butcher shop.

Progressives want to regulate and punish companies so they enact laws making what Pfizer did illegal, but then don't like what happens when they enforce their own laws. so who gets hurt? smaller companies. Its a regulatory mess. If the law isnt going to be enforced in the first place why have it? free market solutions like Underwriters Laboratories seems to work better than laws that will only be enforced willy nilly.

Life imitating art imitating life? Or is SR really more correct than people realize?

Too big to fail is a real problem. Is it not by failing that we learn the most? Preventing failure pretty much prevents people/corporations from having to learn anything. And more and bigger mistakes then get made.

It's more of the legal idiocy that produces "zero tolerance" laws that have 8 year olds tasered and dragged off to jail from school.

yes.

and the freedom to fail is a huge part of the free market. it puts those who are not good at running things out of business and eliminates their wealth. Those who can do well can chop up failed companies and sell em at a huge discount and make money by turning the around. when a company goes bankrupt its assets are not deleted. they just will change hands or at least be reorganized. too big to fail is a fallacy, it assumes change is bad and assets are deleted.

Daylen, I cannot agree with you more, that Pfizer and others like it should pay for their criminal behaviour and for their reliance on sheer mass rather than talent and efficiency. I abhor the 'too big to fail' umbrella, and would dearly like to see bright, young, small, ETHICAL groups gobble up corporations like Pfizer. That won't happen because...

...your contention that this is a result of a 'progressive conspiracy' is way off the mark. It is the very core of conservative, anti-democratic dogma to reward the large and powerful at the expense of the small and weak. Protections against such irresponsible and criminal behaviour are anathema to this way of thinking, and have been systematically eroded in your country and elsewhere around the world during the last few decades of dogmatic, blind subservience to a broken and self-defeating ideology.

The 'slippery slope to communism' is a false fear used to control us and reap profit for the few who control government just as 'weapons of mass destruction' was with the previous regime in your country. It is, however, a very effective tool and one that could very easily lead to a SR-type world in which corporations rule us all. Especially when a populace that has been idoctrinated with that philosophy espouses it at every opportunity, and cannot or will not see the consequences.

Laws did not make any company too big too fail. The companies themselves did that, by (as Sengir pointed out) growing and swallowing up their competitors until their failure would have lengthened and deepened the recession we're currently in into the Second Great Depression. How does that square with your free-market ethics? Should the freedom to fail necessarily entail the freedom to destroy the whole economy?

Yep, it's all a giant conspiracy, everybody who tries to regulate anything is Stalin's fifth column and secretly planning to take over the world. And if $bad_thing$ happens due to the mechanisms of the free, unregulated market, that's still a perfect example of the progressivist mindset because...uhm...well...I mean, Beck said they're responsible and he's got to be right.

Since this forum is not supposed to be the place for political discussions, I'll just leave you with a final question as food for thought: If you believe that everybody who supports $something$ supports a totalitarian dictatorship which takes that idea to the extreme, does that mean you think everybody who believes in God wants to turn the country into an Iran-style theocracy?

Oh my! Politics and religion in one thread?

To get back to the topic: this does look like a nice way for an AA+ to handle things. Toss the feds a bone to keep them satisfied, let them save some face.

SR is closer to the truth than many people believe.

The government allows big corps to get bigger by eating failing competion until they have no real competion and their failure would be a disaster for the nation. So politicians have to grant more favors and support to the corp for the national good. Until they have private police and prisons and etra teritoriality.

*slap* Thanks. I needed that.

the drugs industry in the USA is anything but free and unregulated.

Beck is just a new boisterous dude. If you want to loop me in with anyone I'd prefer Heinlein.

Name for me if you'd be so kind a religious group that has come into power and NOT legislated their holy doctrine into law. I can only think of a partial one.

no need to leave me with food for thought. I've mulled over the many ways humans loose freedom and are thrust under some sort of tyranny.

Where is any historical proof that a failing large company destroyed the economy? Economies change, production must change over time. Depressions didn't used to last long. Why might you ask? because no one tried to keep the economic inertia going. Businesses reorganize failing companies go through bankruptcy and if they are bad enough get chopped up and sold to those who did well enough to have money to buy them. A free market is the ultimate meritocracy. Those who can't hack it fail. Why support failures?

<joke>When I had open heart surgery, I took Tylenol 3. I was back at work 28 days after surgery. We don't need better pain killers- we need less whining.</joke>

Daylen- Get real. Pretty much every mega-corporation in the USA got that way (at least in part) through massive government contracts, cheap supplies of natural resources granted them by the government, government tolerated monopoly, violent supression of labor, and / or tax breaks. The "free market" of America's laisez faire past is a myth.

Ha-ha-ha, oh, wow.

People will, to paraphrase whoever write's Slamm-O!'s dialogue in Arsenal, stop making everything political about the time they stop insulting everyone's mothers, drinking and smoking. That is to say, never.

there have been ups and downs in market control. Every time the control goes down and the markets are more free we have boom times or at least a short depression (reorganization is really a better term) followed by boom times.

and every corporation that is big being a monopoly is total bs. Even the power companies have some (although very limited) competition. Namely in that people and businesses can vote (or could) with their feet and leave places with expensive energy prices. I will say though I am not pleased by any lack of competition. Violent suppression of labor? yes that happened but somehow tyranny didn't succeed there after a while. Although now it seems organized labor is the violent bunch.

did i ever open a can of worms...

Seems like a tactical error on the part of Pfizer. They worked out a deal with the F behind closed doors, paid a fat fine and used a shell company to avoid the far-reaching implications of what the law demanded. This latter suited both parties as neither party wanted to end their symbionism. But if Pfizer hadn't played ball and the FBI had to proceed, havoc would have followed, the public would have had their outcry and new laws would have been introduced and old ones rolled back so that Pfizer couldn't be subject to this sort of mandatory all-out destruction. It could have been their Shiawase decision: prosecute us - we dare you.

This is dumpshock. Leave a can of worms in your fridge and someone will break into your house, steal it, bring it here open the lid and shake it about wildly on your behalf. If you don't have a can of worms, someone will plant one for you.

It ought to be the Dumpshock tag-line: "The can is open - the worms are everywhere!"

Bwahahaha!

I only have one question for Daylen. If what you say is correct, why did the social democracies in scandinavia get out of the economic crisis before any other countries in the world (With a slight exeption towards Iceland)?
There are other ways to govern a country and its economy without it being communism. Socialism, Social Democracies, Social Conservatism, Social Liberalism, and so forth. The fear of socialy engaded forms of goverment is a fossil from the old days of the cold war.

Edit:
Forgot that Iceland is a part of the "Northern Countries" (known as Norden) and not Scandinavia. Sorry Iceland.

heh, even citizens of said nations cant really keep the terminology straight.

the sad thing is that most of said nations have political pressure to move towards a US model of economy. Mostly this seems backed by corporations, and people that is envious of the cheap fuel.

Well, fuel is a lot less cheap than it was and will continue to become less cheap as time goes on. It's only as cheap as it is because of the fact that we're OPEC's #1 customer, which puts us in a strong bargaining position. China's getting ready to pass us, though, and there's still peak oil to worry about (which may have already come and gone).

Heh, I do know that social consevatives and social liberals tend towards the right wing, my point was that it seems that people don't know the difference between communism and govermental forms that has the word socialism in it.

Iceland is an unusual case because it has a population of somewhat less than 500.000 people; less than a major city.

The town I live is thrice this big and "Hell"cife is not even top 5 in population.

I wonder, if it was ever true, whether this is still true after the recent banking debacle. I know here, the government and the national bank are very smug about how we rode out the worst of the storm better than most because of our system. They allege that many are coming here to see how we do things.