Natural Calamity in Haiti, Human disaster wreaked by J&J and Chase

The sad news on Haiti, from NYT: "Tensions rose among desperate Haitians awaiting international aid and food that began to trickle in three days after an earthquake that Haitian authorities say killed 200,000 people. Haiti's shell-shocked government gave the United States control over its main airport to bring order to aid flights from around the world and speed relief to the impoverished Caribbean nation. Trucks piled with corpses have been carrying bodies to hurriedly excavated mass graves outside the city but thousands of bodies still are believed buried under rubble. "We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies," Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime told Reuters. "We anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number."Some 40,000 bodies had been buried in mass graves, said Secretary of State for Public Safety Aramick Louis..."

On a separate note, WSJ reports, in a piece titled "J&J Is Accused of Kickbacks to Omnicare on Drug Sales" that "In the latest case in the government's campaign against abusive drug-marketing practices, the Justice Department charged Johnson & Johnson with paying "tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks" to a nursing-home pharmacy company to boost sales of J&J drugs to nursing-home patients.Prosecutors, in a complaint filed in federal court in Boston Friday, accused J&J of illegally paying Omnicare Inc. to buy J&J medicines and recommend their use to nursing homes. Under the arrangements, prosecutors alleged, Omnicare's annual purchases of J&J medicines nearly tripled to more than $280 million...." J&J is also alleged to have been slow in issuing a recall for Tylenol. "Johnson & Johnson's consumer division is recalling more than 53 million bottles of over-the-counter products including Tylenol, Motrin and Rolaids after reports of an unusual odor, expanding on an issue that led to a Tylenol recall last year. The latest voluntary recall, which drew a sharp rebuke from U.S. regulators on Friday, followed consumer reports of "an unusual moldy, musty, or mildew-like odor that, in a small number of cases, was associated with temporary and non-serious gastrointestinal events," the company said. Such events included nausea, stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea... McNeil should have acted faster," Deborah Autor, head of compliance in the FDA's drugs division, told reporters on a conference call."When something smells bad, literally or figuratively, companies must aggressively investigate and take all necessary actions to solve the problem," she said. The agency repeatedly urged McNeil to identify the source and scope of the problem, Autor said. The company ran more tests and expanded the recall at the FDA's urging, she said..." Separately on Friday, the U.S. Justice Department accused J&J of paying tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare Inc to buy and recommend J&J drugs.

Chase has reported its financial results. "JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s $3.28 billion profit report carried a sobering message: Consumers are still struggling to pay off their loans, posing a threat to a strong economic recovery. Even as the bank reported Friday its earnings more than quadrupled from $702 million during the final three months of 2009, JPMorgan said it's not finished setting aside money to cover failed loans. In other words, it expects many more consumers to default to default on mortgages and other loans. JPMorgan is the first of the big banks to announced fourth-quarter earnings. Its profits came from investment banking and asset management, businesses that have boomed as Wall Street remains far ahead of Main Street...JPMorgan said it's uncertain about the timing of a possible rebound, repeating a warning it has now issued for several quarters. CEO Jamie Dimon was blunt during a conference call with analysts, saying, "We don't know when the recovery is."...JPMorgan's biggest trouble spots were in consumer banking and credit card lending. The bank's retail financial services division, which includes its mortgage operations, lost $399 million...The company reported increases in mortgages that were charged off, or classified as uncollectible, including prime mortgages, the highest quality home loans. It also reported an increase in home equity loan charge-offs...The credit-card lending division lost $306 million during the final three months of 2009. Results would've been worse had the bank not had a payment holiday in the period... Cavanagh said losses could approach 10.5 percent by the middle of 2010, up from 8.64 percent in the fourth quarter. Credit-card losses historically have mirrored the unemployment rate, which was 10 percent last month..."