BusinessWeek

A PROMISING ISRAELI BIOTECH Little-known Protalix BioTherapeutics (PLX) has surprised the Street. The stock has hit 11.33 on NYSE Euronext, up from 4 in June. The Israeli company's lead drug, prGCDplus or minus--a treatment for Gaucher's disease, a genetic disorder that causes blood problems and enlargement of the liver and spleen--showed favorable results in phase III clinical trials. It also met efficacy and safety targets, says Brian Abrahams of Oppenheimer (it has done banking for Protalix), who rates it outperform. He figures a large U.S. drugmaker may partner with Protalix or offer to buy it. If prGCD gets FDA approval, the drug will compete ... Read Full Story

FERTILE GROUND FOR STARTUPS Who needs job security? In June 2008, as the recession was moving from bad to worse, Caterina Fake gave up a comfortable, executive-level job at Yahoo! to launch a company. She left California and set up shop in New York City to co-found Hunch, a Web site that uses the experiences of others to help people make decisions. The 40-year-old, who had co-founded the photo-sharing site Flickr before it was acquired by Yahoo, couldn't resist the idea of creating something new, whatever the economic headwinds. "The entrepreneurial spirit really thrives in situations of adversity," says Fake. "The world is full ... Read Full Story

THE SIGNS SAY: JOB GROWTH AHEAD In the face of the Labor Dept.'s October employment report, a forecast that job growth is just around the corner might seem downright foolhardy. After all, payrolls continued to shrink last month, and the jobless rate climbed into double digits. Plus, productivity is spiking as companies squeeze more output from fewer workers. Failing a surge in growth far greater than economists now expect, the recovery in the job markets will be painfully slow. Still, signs suggest the healing will at least begin in the next few months. The most important factor is the economy's return to growth. Economists ... Read Full Story

10 Ways to Cut Health-Care Costs Right Now Seven hundred billion dollars. That's a ballpark estimate of how much money is wasted in the U.S. medical system every single year, according to a new Thomson Reuters report. A sum equal to roughly one-third of the nation's total health-care spending is flushed away on unnecessary treatments, redundant tests, fraud, errors, and myriad other monetary sinkholes that do nothing to improve the nation's health. Cut that figure by half, and there would be more than enough money to offer top-notch care to every one of America's 46 million uninsured. None of the health-care reform bills on ... Read Full Story

CHINA'S END RUN AROUND THE U.S. President Barack Obama makes his first state visit to East Asia on Nov. 13-19. He'll start off in Tokyo, attend a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore, travel to Shanghai and Beijing, then finish up in Seoul. It's a cover-the-waterfront trip, but the focus is on China, America's key trading partner and rival. The Obama team will express its concern that Beijing aims to boost locally owned companies, from commercial aircraft makers to express delivery services, all at the expense of foreign competitors. Washington also wants China, which has more than $2 trillion in foreign ... Read Full Story

TAIWAN'S NEW DREAMS At the depth of the global economic crisis, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was in trouble. With factories operating at just a fraction of capacity, Morris Chang--TSMC's silver-haired founder--laid off hundreds of staffers, ordered the remaining workers to take unpaid leave, and took other cost-cutting steps such as dimming the lights in hallways. "It was terrible," Chang says in his office on the eighth floor of "Fab 12," a vast facility that serves as TSMC's headquarters. These days, things look far better. TSMC's plants are humming again, and its Taipei-listed shares are up 41% this year. But Chang is chastened. The era ... Read Full Story

PASTIMES INTO PROFITS For 15 years, Dorothy Atkins kept a diary during her long train rides back and forth to work as a project manager at a large San Francisco bank. "I always used commuting time to write out my hopes and desires," Atkins says. She also did a lot of drawing, illustrating "pearls of wisdom" imparted from friends and family, sometimes even making a card for a friend from the scribbles. When Atkins was offered a buyout in 2002 at age 60, she was caught off guard. "The package scared me to death. I had not planned for not working," she says. After ... Read Full Story

BYRON WIEN: WHAT THE SEER SEES IN THE SHORT TERM Every January since 1986, veteran investment strategist Byron Wien has issued his list of "surprises" for the year. With a little less than two months remaining in 2009, many of his prognostications have already come true. So what has Wien--who last August joined private equity powerhouse Blackstone Group as chairman of its advisory services--been right about this year? Well for starters, a rebounding S&P, the price of oil, the decline of the dollar, the growth rate of China, and the threat of a New York State bankruptcy. He predicted gold would hit $1,200 an ... Read Full Story

THE HIGH COST OF BLIND FAITH IN THE MARKET How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities By John Cassidy Farrar, Straus 390 pp.; $28 Economist John Maynard Keynes had a weakness for rhetorical flourishes. At the end of his classic The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, he wrote: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." To author John Cassidy, it's a quote that applies to the practical decision-makers of our own time--and that explains the roots of our own Great Recession. In his ambitious How Markets Fail: ... Read Full Story

IMAGINATIVE DESIGNS THAT CHANGE THE GAME The new Barbie Shanghai store is a bit far down the Huaihai Road shopping corridor, but it's hard to miss. An eight-story glass facade, printed with a lacy design of hearts and flowers, glows with pink lights at night. Opened in March, it's the first flagship shop devoted entirely to Mattel's iconic, 50-year-old doll. The goal: attracting Chinese consumers to help offset a worldwide decline in Barbie sales. In its showiness, Mattel's temple to Barbie might seem out of sync with these back-to-basics times. But it has a practical side that fits right in. Indeed, Barbie Shanghai and ... Read Full Story