Theranos Withdraws Two Years of Blood Test Results (cnbc.com) 100
Reader Major Blud writes: Theranos, the company valued at $9 billion that promised to revolutionize the way blood testing is done, has just announced that it has withdrawn all of the test done using its Edison machine performed in 2014 and 2015. The company recently come under fire from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for the inaccuracy and unreliability of the machine, and threatened to revoke the company's license as well as ban CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes, and its president and COO, Sunny Balwani, from blood testing.
Only $9B valuation... (Score:2)
Re:Only $9B valuation... (Score:4, Insightful)
More evidence that the geniuses in silicon valley know exactly what they are doing and clearly have earned their vast wealth because they are so f-in smart
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Re:Only $9B valuation... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a saying from Dr. John Bridges [phrases.org.uk] in 1587. But the gist of it is consistent with the teachings of Proverbs, which primarily advocates for scrupulous and discerning use of both words and money.
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According to the Bible: "A fool and his money soon departs."
Citation, please. I don't think the Bible says this.
I think the actual text is "A fool and his money will soon party."
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That definitely sounds like something Jesus would say.
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According to the Bible: "A fool and his money soon departs."
Citation, please. I don't think the Bible says this.
I think the actual text is "A fool and his money will soon party."
Oh no... "A fool and his money *are* soon apartment"
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You're correct. It's not Biblical — and predates Shakespeare (the other bible).
http://www.knowyourphrase.com/phrase-meanings/fool-and-his-money-are-soon-parted.html [knowyourphrase.com]
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Citation, please. I don't think the Bible says this.
It is right after the verse that says "God helps those who help themselves", which was selected in a poll of Christians as their favorite quote from the Bible.
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I think the source is certainly from the Bible, namely from the Psalms. Certainly an English poet would turn the phrase at the end into something more elegant:
[Psalms 48:7f] They that trust in their own strength, and glory in the multitude of their riches, [8] No brother can redeem, nor shall man redeem: he shall not give to God his ransom, [9] Nor the price of the redemption of his soul: and shall labour for ever, [10] And shall still live unto the end.
[Psalms 48:11] He shall not see destruction, when he
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According to the Bible: "A fool and his money soon departs."
Is it not "A fool and his money are soon parted". Your way implies the fool and his money leave together.
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Your way implies the fool and his money leave together.
Well, duh. The fool and his money have to leave together before they can be parted later.
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According to the Bible: "A fool and his money soon departs."
Departs from where?
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Departs from where?
Wallet, of course.
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Re:Only $9B valuation...where are the indictments! (Score:2)
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Man! Wait till the derivatives markets start goin' belly up! We are in for a good show!
If Trump wins the election, expect the stock market to crash. If Clinton wins the election, expect the stock market to soar. Based on available information, I'm expecting the stock market to soar.
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Bill got lucky. After a couple of years, he threw up his hands and said, "I give up! Deficits as far as the eye can see!"
The Internet boom was completely unexpected, and brought in money so fast neither Congress nor the states could keep up.
But they eventually adjusted, like in 2 years.
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Just look at Obama. $10T to $19T sure doing a good job there.
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Just look at Obama. $10T to $19T sure doing a good job there
Should have been larger. The stimulus was way too small for a robust recovery.
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In hindsight, no.
The nations that spent like you suggest are currently having a much slower recoveries.
Granting the data is very noisy and cases are not equal. Not enough nations spent like the USA to draw a definitive conclusion. SOP for economics. Everybody sees the same data and comes to their usual conclusion.
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Granting the data is very noisy and cases are not equal.
The data is quite clear between the US (stimulus) versus Europe (austerity).
Why America's economy has recovered while Europe remains stuck near recession is largely a factor of two forces: Europe by and large chose the path of fiscal austerity while America chose stimulus, and America also has control over its own currency, while member states under the euro currency do not. Most economic analyses of the last four years begin and end there, concluding that the dual force of fiscal contraction and monetary skittishness has unreasonably slowed Europe's recovery and cost its economy dearly. Oxfam International estimates austerity across European governments could leave twenty-five million of its citizens in poverty by 2025.
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/two-speed-recovery-us-vs-eu [worldaffairsjournal.org]
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Europe's 'austerity' was more stimulus than America. Much more. Never trust words when used by a politician.
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Europe's 'austerity' was more stimulus than America. Much more.
Greece would disagree with you.
Never trust words when used by a politician.
I read The Wall Street Journal for my financial information.
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Yeah. And it's not like Obama inherited a multi-trillion dollar unwinnable war on terror and a housing market collapse from the ass monkey who held the office before him.
Oh wait, it's exactly like that.
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Oh you mean the "we gonna force you to loan anyone who shows up to get a mortgage or we'll remove your FDIC backing" that the democrats rammed through during the previous presidents time in office?
That was was winnable. The problem was that people didn't have the stomach to actually do what had to be done, and micromanaging from Washington does not help those in the field do their job. See Vietnam war, same BS. Learning a bit of history helps.
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There was so much cash looking for an investment, a bunch of crooks relaxed lending standards to capture more of that capital. It has nothing to do with the government, unless you count lack of action.
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You're that ignorant of how things went down, and believe it's crap? Well sure explains the state of American politics.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Wikipedia? The place where facts go to die is an educational place? If you say so.
Reminder: Wikipedia's motto is, "verifiability not facts."
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Clinton owned the first .com bubble and collapse. As much as politicians can own economics.
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Clinton owned the first .com bubble and collapse. As much as politicians can own economics.
I put the blame on Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, the common denominator for all the bubbles in recent times.
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We're in another two right now (.com 2 and chinese assets). Greenspan had nothing to do with ether.
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We're in another two right now (.com 2 and chinese assets).
So what if the Silicon Valley unicorns are shrinking from 20 per month to a few because venture capitalists are being more conservative in throwing their money around? That's not a dot com bust in the making.
As for Chinese assets, the Chinese and the rest of the world are suffering for that. The impact on the US has been minimal to date.
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What do you think the first .com was? Valuations are back to insanity. People don't even talk of PE ratios, they talk of P:Gross ratios or P:Burnrate ratios.
The Chinese are trying desperately to get money out of China. All the recent Chinese investment in US and CA real estate is because of the Chinese bubble. The American real estate bubble was felt internationally. So will the Chinese real estate/stock bubble.
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What do you think the first .com was? Valuations are back to insanity. People don't even talk of PE ratios, they talk of P:Gross ratios or P:Burnrate ratios.
A bubble is where ordinary people's money is flooding into the market after sophisticated investors have already made their money. Sophisticated investors are calling a halt on the unicorn bubble, affecting Wall Street more than Main Street. Ordinary investors have been sitting out of the stock market since the Great Recession.
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"And B Clinton was the only prez in the last ~40 years to lower the debt. "
deficit != debt
The "deficit" shrunk during Clinton's tenure, but the national debt kept piling up. There was never any "budget surplus". When you look at the government "historical tables", you will see data on "Receipts" and "Outlays" and there were a couple of years where Receipts > Outlays. If you subtract out the SS surplus however, there was still a deficit and hence the national debt was steadily increasing. Government
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Yes, but this is a moving target.
Bill Clinton co-opted the Republican playbook by adopting welfare reform, making it a Democratic issue. Barak Obama co-opted the Republican playbook on taxes, foreign policy and healthcare, making those Democratic issues. The Republican Party has nothing to run on in 2016.
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The economy generally does better under a Democratic administration than a Republican administration.
For many decades now, we elect fun Democrats in good times, and stern Republicans to fix things in bad times. Obama's second term was a huge departure from that, so maybe it's no longer predictive.
Nearly eight years of Obama has brought the country out of a very deep hole
Or, "despite Obama's best attempts to destroy the economy, after 7 long years we're finally struggling free". Whichever opinion you have, the president doesn't vote on the budget, and rarely has any real effect on the economy. Presidents sometimes have the influence to change the income tax rules, and sometimes
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Pick your poison.
Clinton. As a moderate conservative, I can't support Trump.
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Clinton. Holding my nose. But gridlock must continue.
Could change if it looked like they would also get the Senate. Then Vermin Supreme.
In the edge case that they would also get the house, It's Trump.
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True, but I think you may have things reversed. People tend to vote Republican when things are good and Democrat when things are bad. Given the cyclical nature of the market, you almost have to expect a down turn when a Republican is elected on a high note, and some progress made if a Democrat is elected while things are down. It's far more likely that the economy is the cause for the president than that the president is the cause of the economy.
Of course the economy isn't always on a 4-year schedule and I
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When you say "The economy", you probably mean GDP.
GDP = C + I + G + ( x - i)
Notice that GDP includes government spending(G) but does not take into account any government borrowing.
Government spending increased by a whopping 18% in a single year 2008-2009, more than doubling the federal deficit, and the deficits have remained enormous throughout Obama's tenure. Amassing a pile of government debt certainly inflates the GDP numbers, but it doesn't mean that the real economy(people & businesses engaged in
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Government spending increased by a whopping 18% in a single year 2008-2009, more than doubling the federal deficit, and the deficits have remained enormous throughout Obama's tenure.
If you think that's scary, check out 2030 when all the baby boomers are retired, retirees outnumbers workers, and two-thirds of the federal budget goes to Medicare/Social Security. Taxes and/or debt will have to go way up to pay for everything else.
Cranking up government borrowing to pad the GDP numbers and pretending it's a "recovery" is like running up the balance on all of your credit cards and pretending that you got a raise.
You're confusing personal debt with sovereign debt. They're not the same thing. If you treat government spending like a family budget, the economy will got into a depression. Something that happened periodically during the 19th century before the Fed came into ex
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I find it funny that you still point to Bush as if he caused the crash when the crash was caused by Clinton. I do believe I have even corrected you on this previously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I find it funny that that article has this little gem:
Commentators, including former President Clinton in 2008 and the American Bankers Association in January 2010, have also argued that the ability of commercial banking firms to acquire securities firms (and of securities firms to convert into bank holding companies) helped mitigate the financial crisis.[14]
since the whole crisis was caused in the first place by the banking deregulation he signed that allowed for speculation on mortgages that should never have been used as investment mechanisms in the first place.
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the crash was caused by Clinton
The crash was caused by Caesar. It's turtles all the way down, and the rest of us pretend to have no part in it.
Revolutionary (Score:2)
So, somebody will go to prison for fraud, right? (Score:5, Informative)
Ha ha. Just kidding. Rich people don't go to prison!
Re:So, somebody will go to prison for fraud, right (Score:4, Funny)
Leona Helmsley, is that you?
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Re: So, somebody will go to prison for fraud, righ (Score:2)
Sounds like a good deal. Commit fraud, get away with it, you're golden. Get caught, break even.
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For the most part, you're probably right. However, there may be some legal cases that turn on this data, and certainly someone who was potentially misdiagnosed in the past and is still alive, may want to make sure that all the data that they have on themselves is up to date. This may mean some people need to go back in and get re-tested for some things.
Agreed that most people don't really think about a blood test they did two years ago, but there are some important exceptions to that.
THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW!!! (Score:1)
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The FDA arguably kills more than it saves, by delaying cures. Those don't show up in front of the camera as well as 1 800 bad drug zomgggggg.
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Citation needed.
There may be treatments which could be saving people that are on the bench awaiting FDA approval. There are also many treatments which would harm more than they help which are being properly restricted by that same approval process.
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yeah, his comment was dithering to the extreme and you only agreed with his premise.
more people are alive today than would be if there were no FDA.
full stop.
i think only an idiot would imagine the number of lives saved by the FDA were in any way comparable to the number of deaths caused by delays in their process.
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you have no idea how close you are to reality, really oh so close
Re:THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting company, interesting CEO (Score:3)
Just was recently reading a great profile of her as the "healthcare industries steve jobs", becuase of her secrecy and wardrobe.
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz... [newyorker.com]
Shame that her company is not living up to the hype, but it does say that they were reluctant to reveal any trade secrets about their device all along. Worth the read for some background on theranos (the company she founded when she was 19)
Re:Interesting company, interesting CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
it does say that they were reluctant to reveal any trade secrets about their device all along.
No, that's what they claimed was the reason they didn't publish anything.
Normally companies let scientists publish results in refereed publications, and file patents to protect the money-making potential.
The lack of publications for a supposedly new technique was an enormous red flag.
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Gotta love disruption! (Score:3)
This second tech bubble is interesting, in that it's a bunch of mini-bubbles. Theranos is the result of investment in the "market disruptors" bubble. Uber is the king here, but there are a whole bunch of tech companies also (like the software-defined-everything vendors who are currently consolidating.)
I understand that sometimes startups need to bend the truth a little bit to get investors and therefore the time they need to perfect their product or service. However, the problem is that they promoted the fact that they had the answer and all the problems were solved...and look, we're doing it with real world testing!
Something like this actually happened during the past year in the big company I work for, so it's not just startups. A politically well-connected division of our company spent untold sums of money building out stuff for a product that they proclaimed was completely ready with all the problems solved. Turns out they weren't exactly telling the truth and it only started coming out when customers started buying and using said product. Looking from the outside in on that, I felt pretty bad that the money they were wasting could have easily paid salaries in divisions that were making useful products, but life's not a meritocracy unfortunately. When you have executive cover for your actions, like Theranos had big-name backers and unicorn status, results matter less.
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Sometimes you can't just throw more money at profitable divisions to increase profits or even maintain momentum.
In retrospect, that product was badly managed and failed, but it is likely that your company does need to create more products to have something to go to when the profitable products cannot carry the load anymore, whether that is sooner or later. While there are some companies who have products that will withstand the test of time, they are few and far between.
With Theranos, the idea is good, the
You're going down! (Score:2)
The chips keep falling. A few more and this whole charade will be over in a most gruesome, yet delightful, manner.
lottery (Score:2)
Timing will be interesting for SEC investigation (Score:5, Informative)