One drugmaker has figured out how to pull down $2.52 billion over the next six months off a single disease – here’s how to get your piece of the action.

It could easily have been a headline from the 19th century. “Plague Ship Docks at Marseille: The arrival of the Norwegian flagged “Voyager of the Seas” caused much concern today, as 60 of its crew were found to be suffering from the new influenza virus that is spreading rapidly in Europe, Asia and the Americas. An additional 60 crew members are thought to be showing nascent symptoms of the potentially fatal disease.”

Problem is, this is no historical episode. Last Friday afternoon, when the Royal Caribbean Lines cruise ship destined for Marseille arrived dockside at Villefranche, French officials in masks and gloves scurried aboard and quarantined the entire 1,500-member crew.

Currently, France has some 1,000 confirmed cases of the H1N1 “Swine Flu” virus, …

In an unprecedented move, the current administration unveiled a simple three page plan on Saturday that will provide the treasury with $700 billion to buy toxic assets off the balance sheets of financial institutions. Combining this bailout plan with the $85 billion loan to AIG and the $200 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie, we the taxpayers are eventually likely to incur a bill of $1,000,000,000,000. In case you did not have the time to count all those zeros and calculate what you might be liable for, that is $1 trillion and works out to a little over $3,250 for every man, woman and child living in the United States. We have come a long way in this crisis that has devoured most of the independent mortgage lenders and left just 3 out of the 6 investment banks that ...

This weekend, I had the privilege of driving around the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn't see one gas station that was selling regular gas for less that $4 a gallon. Even the so-called 'cheap' stations were selling gas for $4.29 a gallon. Diesel wasn't selling for less than $5 a gallon anywhere. It was only on May 1, only one month ago, that I thought that gas above $4 a gallon was shocking and may have just been an aberration. Now it seems that $4 a gallon gas, at least in California, is now ubiquitous. [This word is now becoming ubiquitous, so I will stop using it for a while.]