Business

Shameless Big Pharma companies have been caught supplying a Mexican drug cartel with bulk ingredients to produce meth. The Big Pharma companies are accused of supplying Mexican drug kingpin Ezio Figueroa Vazquez with tons of ephedrine, worth $360 million, knowing that it would be used in the production of methamphetamine – proving yet again that Big Pharma’s only motivation is profit, not the health and wellbeing of their customers.

With its credit impulse wearing off (and inflation spikes stalling any hopes of renewed stimulus anytime soon), it appears China's always-happy consumer is not so happy as 2017 begins.

Against expectations of a 10.6% year-over-year gain in year-to-date cumulative retail sales, February saw just a 9.5% rise - the weakest February since 2002.

What do you do when you're part of an industry that has levered up $100's of billions of dollars in investor capital and paid a handsome premium for pretty much every asset available all while "excess cash sits on the sidelines" because there are just no deals left to do at remotely attractive valuations?  Well, if you're Investindustrial, a European private equity fund founded by Italian dealmaker Andrea Bonomi, then you simply raise a new fund to buy all the investments of your old fund.

The St. Louis Fed's FRED Blog has released an interested piece showing the geographical distribution of America's subprime borrowers.

From Francesco Filia of Fasanara Capital

Oil: a weak present and no future

Oil correction (~10% from peak) is not necessarily the foretell of an imminent debacle. Oil corrected by approx. 20% twice in the past months (June-July 2016 and October-November 2016), without derailing the bull trend. Important supports were breached in both instances, and yet Oil managed to resurrect, powerfully.