B(anks) A(pple) D(rugs) - BAD Stuff...

According to a Bloomberg News Report, Consumer Confidence in U.S. Slumps to Record on Jobs,
"...The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence fell to 38, the lowest level since records began in 1967, from 44.7 in November, the New York-based private research group said today. Another report showed declines in property values accelerated. Rising unemployment, mounting foreclosures and declining household wealth have dimmed the outlook for consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy. This year’s holiday season, the most important for retailers, was probably the worst in at least four decades.."

The stories behind the stories..

GMAC - The government will invest $6 billion to prop up GMAC, the auto financing giant, the Treasury Department said last night, expanding its bailout of the troubled U.S. auto industry. The Treasury said it would use $5 billion from the $700 billion financial rescue fund it oversees to buy preferred stock from the company. It said it would also lend $1 billion to General Motors, which owns 49 percent of GMAC, to allow it to invest further in the firm. The Treasury giving free money to the people who ran us to the ground...

Apple: All sorts of rumors about Apple, and Jobs. Yes, the guy who backdated options and made off like a bandit. The new one is that Newton is resurfacing at Apple.

Drugs...A great article in the NYT..No Mug? Drug Makers Cut Out Goodies for Doctors .
Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies — Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs — that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs. No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned with rhinestones that spell out B-O-T-O-X. So are pens advertising the Sepracor sleep drug Lunesta, in whose barrel floats the brand’s mascot, a somnolent moth.Some skeptics deride the voluntary ban as a superficial measure that does nothing to curb the far larger amounts drug companies spend each year on various other efforts to influence physicians. But proponents welcome it as a step toward ending the barrage of drug brands and logos that surround, and may subliminally influence, doctors and patients. “It’s not just the pens — it’s the paper on the exam table, the tongue depressor, the stethoscope tags, medical calipers that might be used to interpret an EKG, penlights,” said Dr. RobertGoodman, a physician in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.