Car companies are doing it, banks are doing it, and magazines may (ahem) soon be doing it—bailouts are all the rage these days. Which makes it less surprising that the biotech industry is getting in on the action. Lobbyists for the biotech industry are pushing Washington to pass a law granting biotech companies that are currently hemorrhaging money (a.k.a. nearly all of them) a chance to get cash now in exchange for not taking tax credits in the future should they become profitable.
According to the New York Times, the proposed bill:
could enable the industry to receive potentially hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, on the condition that the money would be used for research and development.
The effort comes as many smaller biotechnology companies, particularly those trying to develop drugs, are facing a severe cash shortage that is forcing them to dismiss workers, curtail research and even file for bankruptcy protection or liquidation.
In fact, it’s so bad that BIO, the main lobbyist for the industry, is saying that a quarter of the 370 publicly traded U.S. biotech companies have less than six months of cash on hand.
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When the fed is spending $7.4 trillion to clean up the wreckage, you know someone’s gotta take the blame. So who should shoulder it? Scientific American thinks at least some of the fault belongs with the physics and math whizzes who built the risk models that dug our grave.
In a byline-free editorial, the magazine traces our woes back to a 2004 meeting in which the SEC agreed to lift a rule specifying debt limits and capital reserves “needed for a rainy day.” This move provided the requisite billions that banks pumped into mortgage-backed securities and derivatives. And who created the structures for these impossibly complex schemes that caused the mass bank implosion? Wall Street’s band of “lapsed physicists and mathematical virtuosos,” also known as “quants,” who “both invented these oblique securities and created software models that supposedly measured the risk a firm would incur by holding them in its portfolio.”
Given that hindsight is 20-20, we now realize that all these models are really only accurate for a limited period of time, at a very narrow confidence level—meaning that whenever those conditions aren’t fantasy-scenario optimal, the actual risk can be enough to incite a global meltdown. Good to know!
So should we be tarring and feathering the brains who built the beam we used to hang ourselves? It’s hardly that simple, a fact that Sci Am acknowledges while still laying on the heavy guilt:
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So we’ve been driving a lot less, which is good. We’ve also been shifting attitudes about oil as a resource and adjusting our lives to consume less of it, which is even better. And we’ve been lavishing more time and attention (and money) on alternative energy, which is best of all.
But now oil prices are plummeting as fast as they rose, and analysts are worried that all those silver linings will be ripped out and tossed aside. As the economy grinds to a halt and the government doles out $700 billion checks, Time’s Bryan Walsh wonders if alternative fuel initiatives—and, for that matter, any climate change legislation—might be shoved to the back of the line behind our bubbling economic woes.
Even if the gas price dip is temporary and/or U.S. consumption habits remain changed, the credit and spending slashes that are already underway could put the kibosh on funding for many alt-energy projects, as Walsh points out. Plus there’s the matter of gas prices as a source of political leverage: The Warner-Lieberman bill, Congress’ first real attempt to pass cap-and-trade legislation, was defeated when Republicans throttled it with the charge that carbon caps would lead to even higher oil prices.
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