Friday Trivia -- From The Sublime, To The Ridiculous. . . .

Effectively permanently cementing his status as an out-of-touch (with ordinary mortals' reality) billionaire, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg drooled these pearls of wisdom, over the very-public airwaves, this morning (to be fair, His Honor retracted the first one, but not the second) -- per Elizabeth Benjamin's fine writing on the NY Daily News' political blog -- do go read it all:

. . . ."You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money, their executives don't make a lot of money -- not that they couldn't do better," the mayor [of New York City, Michael Bloomberg] told WOR host John Gambling as the duo discussed health care from during their weekly radio show.

Bloomberg went on to say he thinks it's "wrong" for companies to be selling drugs at a lower price in Canada than here in the US, adding: "We should stop that. . . ."

The fact that the companies are selling drugs in other companies countries [corrected from the original] for less than they cost here is wrong, but "that's not a reason to go and beat up on big Pharma," Bloomberg said. . . .

Some times, this blog. Just. Writes. Itself. With Schering-Plough common trading near $28 this morning on the NYSE, CEO Hassan's 2009 walk-away haul will likely be over $175 million. And that is in addition to about $30 million last year, alone -- a year of many management failures (on top of close to $15 million every year since 2004). "Not a lot of money", eh?

I need write almost nothing more, about either of the Mayor's remarks. I'll just point to the right margin. Click to enlarge. As if you'd need to.