Inlfation is great!
Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) Q3 sales were up 11% at $23.34Bn but earnings were only up 3% so IT'S TIME TO RAISE PRICES! That's right, why should JNJ suffer through inflation when they can make their custormers suffer instead? And, speaking of suffering, although they have been sued because their talc-based products seem to have been (allegedly) causing cancer all these years – it won't affect the company because they formed a new company that has no assets and assigned them all talc-related liabilities. Yes, you can do that when you are a corporation (and when the courts are packed with Conservative judges who are sympathic only to the Top 1%).
.Clever moves like that have taken JNJ to new all-time highs recently, topping out at almost $500Bn (now $421Bn at $160) last month on the heels of revenues that have been driven by their lesser-desired Covid shot (8% market share), which will still drive profits this year and next but then they will go back to being a consumer products company who also make medical devices that are featured in many lawsuits – so I'm not sure I think I'd want them for the long-term at these prices.
That's from 1973!
Fortunately, JNJ has discontinued their baby powder (rather than just take out the asbestos?) as of last year but Reuters claimed they knew way aback in 1972 that there were high levels of asbestos in lab tests. They were sued in 1999 but the plaintiffs couldn't seem to get access to the records they needed, so they were forced to drop the case but, 20 years later – the evidence turned up and the suit was back on. During those 20 years, the documents also depict successful efforts to influence U.S. regulators’ plans to limit asbestos in cosmetic talc products and scientific research on the health effects of talc.
The earliest mentions of tainted J&J talc that Reuters found come from 1957 and 1958 reports by a consulting lab. They describe contaminants in talc from J&J’s Italian supplier as fibrous and “acicular,” or needle-like, tremolite. That’s one of the six minerals that in their naturally occurring fibrous form are classified as asbestos. At various times from then into the early 2000s, reports by scientists…
