Major Portion of ObamaCare Ended

The CLASS, or Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, portion of the Affordable Care Act was scrapped Friday, as it was found that the program was simply unworkable from a financial standpoint. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's department tried for nineteen months to figure out how to make the numbers work, but couldn't (originally she said the program could be made to work, but now acknowledges it cannot). In order for the program to work, a second mandate would have been required: Read more here...

MGA Entertainment Seeks $2 Billion from Mattel

IT'S WAR! So first Mattel went after MGA for around $2 billion, now its the inverse.

Indebted Chinese Businessmen Flee

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Also:

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Patent Reform Legislation

LINK - I am a few weeks late on this one, but President Obama has signed legislation overhauling the nation's patent system.

Chinese Bubble Is Act III In the Global Economic Crisis

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I truly am wondering how this is all going to play out. How is this going to affect Europe, which is already on the brink? And then the United States? People have been hoping that the bad economy, the global economic crisis, is at the beginning of the end, but we may really only be at the end of the beginning.

As a sidenote (which I think I have mentioned before on this blog, but can't remember), I am wondering if China's economy has really surpassed Japan's in size, or if that is just paper GDP in the form of lousy-quality infrastructure (such as the Shanghai garbage bridge), which would mean that in reality, China's economy may not really have surpassed Japan's.

Three Additional Fragmented Industries

Three additional fragmented industries I have found are:

1) Clinical laboratory testing industry (LINK)

2) Medical device contract manufacturing industry (LINK)

3) Hospital supplies industry (LINK)

Another industry that seems to be fragmented, but consolidating rather quickly is the instrumentation industry.  A still fragmented (but consolidating) area of this industry is life sciences equipment (also called the life sciences tools (and services) market); here is an article listing some companies in it: LINK

Interesting Article With Regards to Building a Large Company Out of Smaller Companies

     So I have written before about how one way to go about entrepeneurship is to find industries that are fragmented and see if one could go about consolidatng the industry by building a large company via the process of combining smaller companies in the industry together. Some entrepreneurs have done this, it is also a strategy used by private equity firms. Here is an interesting article I found on this subject, albeit a little dated, from the year 2000: LINK