Here's Some Poison for What Ails 'Ya

In the world of "I could not make this up" comes this little gem from The Los Angeles Times:

Big Pharma got bigger on Monday with Merck Co.'s announcement that it would acquire rival Schering-Plough Corp. in a cash-and-stock transaction worth $41.1 billion. And the deal is being made easier by U.S. taxpayers. ....

Banks that have received billions of federal dollars to encourage them to make loans -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. -- are lending money to Pfizer and Merck, who in turn are planning aggressive cost-cutting.

In the case of Pfizer, a takeover of vaccine specialist Wyeth would be expected to cost at least 19,000 jobs, including some in the companies' overseas operations. A Merck takeover of Schering-Plough should yield about 16,000 layoffs. Combined, the cuts represent about 15% of those companies' total workforces.

The deals would be virtually impossible to complete if the banks had not received money from the Treasury Department under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The bailout enabled them to lend the drug makers a combined $31 billion.

So there you go! Now the government is subsidizing job loss.

And this is called a "bailout." Nice.

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