Archives for August 2012

We recently received news from Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) about their clinical trials for what many hoped would become a knockout Alzheimer's drug.

The compound would have become the first to fully address the steady decline in memory the disease causes. But new tests showed the drug simply didn't work.

No doubt this was a setback for the firms, who sunk millions of dollars into developing the drug. And it's truly disappointing for millions of current Alzheimer's patients and their families.

But I don't think we should be worried.

As I see it, this is a setback, not a fatal flaw. Remember, no road to victory follows a straight path.

And this field is moving so quickly that a new drug – or novel therapy – could come along any day now to provide relief to the five million Americans who have this disease closely associated with aging.

After all, we are living in the Era of Radical Change, a period like none we've seen before. We see hundreds of important breakthroughs in high tech and biosciences every year. The pace of change comes so fast no one person on earth can begin to understand what it all means.

But I do know this.

America is slipping into darkness.

One by one the lights are being turned off in our "shining city on a hill."

And Wall Street's greedy hand prints are all over many of the darkened switchboxes.

Of course, politicians' grubby, filthy fingerprints are everywhere too; but there isn't enough cyberspace to launch into when discussing that black hole.

Today's indictment is about Wall Street.

This time my Wells Notice, titled "industry capture", is going out to the entire Wall Street enterprise.

You've heard about regulatory capture. I just wrote about its dark side earlier this week.

Regulatory capture is when regulators become captives of the individuals and firms they are supposed to be watching, regulating, and disciplining when they break the law.

"Industry capture" is beyond just regulatory capture. Here's what I mean…

Industry capture, which is unique to only a couple of American industries (hint: oil is the other one), is when the industry itself becomes so omnipotent, so all-consuming in our lives, so all-consuming of our money, so filthy rich that it buys and sells government officials, legislators, administrations, and presidents. So powerful that it has effectively captured the nation.

What isn't spoken about, what isn't generally seen (although most of you who read Money Morning see it), is that Wall Street holds our nation captive.