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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AC Flyer who wrote (20933)	7/9/2002 3:40:41 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 74559

AC Flyer, Any spike down in the stock will be an excellent buying opportunity. I disagree. The accounting issues notwithstanding, Merck's problems are with its current pharmaceutical offerings and its new drug pipeline. To start with, virtually all of Merck's former blockbuster drugs come off patent protection within the next 3 years. Merck will be forced to go head-to-head with generic competitors on its top-of-the-line products. If history is any guide at all (and in drugs it usually is), Merck will quickly lose more than 50% of their sales, drug by drug, as they come off protection. The second problem, and one that is much more difficult, is that Merck really has no blockbusters in the new drug pipeline. So, they either come up with one quickly from their research efforts (not highly probable) or they buy someone else's pipeline (very possible for either a merger or a buyout of another firm). With the stock price down, any buyout or merger may prove to be much more costly than Merck (or its shareholders) would find comfortable. So the bottom line on Merck is that although they're still a big company and a major force to be reckoned with in pharmaceuticals, they do have some immediate term problems that makes a current purchase of their stock risky, even for swing traders. Of course, everything depends on just how far the price of Merck stock falls. If it went way below book value (not likely) then even a schmuck like me would be running to my broker... <g> Seriously, if an investor wants a fairly decent drug stock for an investment, Pfizer (at least on paper) looks like a better buy than Merck. Time will tell, I guess... KJC

To: AC Flyer who wrote (20933)	7/9/2002 3:47:52 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 74559

NEW RIP-OFF BOMBSHELL!! A TRIFECTA OF SLEAZE! MERCK PHARMACEUTICALS INFLATED STATEMENTS BY $$$ BILLIONS MERCK CEO IS TOP BUSH ADVISOR: THE LATEST GOP KENNY BOY BUSH UP TO HIS NECK IN MERCK MUCK DUBYA'S ENRON ACID REFLUX mediawhoresonline.com In a thermonuclear revelation on the eve of George W. Bush's "corporate responsibility" speech, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and other sources are reporting yet another new and huge corporate rip-off scandal linked to Bush, this one involving the Merck pharmaceutical corporation, and its CEO Raymond Gilmartin. According to breaking coverage, Merck booked $12.4 billion in revenues in the past three years, which it never received. That's twelve BILLION four hundred MILLION dollars in phony receipts, over three years. On average, over four BILLION dollars per year. More to the point: Merck CEO Raymond Gilmartin, just like Enron's Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay, is a major Republican contributor with extremely close ties to George W. Bush and his administration. During the Bush transition, when energy policy was being dictated by Enron and the energy corporations, Bush appointed Merck's Gilmartin to his top advisory committee for formulating health policy, including pharmaceutical and Medicare policy, for the new administration. Thereafter, Gilmartin triggered tens of millions of dollars to support front groups to back a phony Republican prescription drug bill for seniors and to counter the Democrats' substantive plan. The money has gone to pay for, among other things, TV ad campaigns against Democrats. The Merck revelations have accelerated the political meltdown of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party, coming in the aftermath of jumbo scandals that have hit Enron and Trent Lott's WorldCom. The numbers tell part of the story: In the 1999-2000 and 2001-2002 (to date) election cycles, Merck's Political Action Committee donated, respectively, $319,578 and (again, to date) $259, 653 to federal political candidates. In 1999-2000, 72 percent of the total went to Republican candidates and PACs in 2001-2002, so far, 64 percent of the total has gone to Republican candidates and PACs. Merck's CEO, Raymond Gilmartin, is also a big individual G.O.P. donor. Since 1999, Gilmartin has contributed $74,000 of his own money to federal political campaigns. More than half of that amount -- $40,000 -- has gone directly to the Republican National Committee. Another $20,000 of it has gone to individual Republican candidates and their PACs. A total of $10,000 has gone to Merck's pro-G.O.P. PAC. Which leaves a whopping $4,000 -- about five percent of the total -- for Democrats. But it is the direct and close political clout that Merck and Ray Gilmartin received in dictating Bush policy that make this latest scandal look like Enron redux -- or, befitting the corporation involved, Bush's Enron acid reflux. It turns out that on two of the most pressing issues facing the nation, energy and prescription drugs, Dubya put his Administration's policy early on in the hands of two corporate mega-contributors -- who turn out also, it seems, to be corporate mega-crooks! Bush, Lay, and Gilmartin. A trifecta of corporate sleaze buddies. A bunch of crooks well schooled in the arts of corporate deception and stock pumping that Dubya apparently learned when he was on the audit board of Harken Energy. AND THESE ARE THE MEN RUNNING THE SHOW AT THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE!! Bush has managed so far successfully to stonewall over energy and Enron. Will he succeed with Merck and medicine as well? will Gilmartin become Bush's "Ray Boy*"? Or will the Media Whores finally, FINALLY, get real? The meltdown accelerates. Developing radioactively..... Sources: Financial Times news.ft.com. Scripps-Howard archive.nandotimes.com. Center for Responsive Politics openscrets.org """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" *I think it is safe to suggest it's more likely to be Gilmartin than me.....