Cerberus – the private equity firm named after that three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hell, because Steve Feinberg thought it was “a good idea at the time” – arguably got the short end of the stick in the massive auto industry bailout, losing their equity stake in Chrysler and pretty much having to liquidate Chrysler Financial. (By “got the short end of the stick,” I mean “had happen what usually happens when you invest in a company that goes bankrupt,” of course.) Then they lost some more money by backing out of the United Rentals deal but since they’re still around I figured they had to be making some money somewhere these days.

I caught a Fox Biz headline out of the corner of my eye the other day that read CERBERUS INVESTS IN ALIEN BLOOD or something like that, which originally made me think that they had bought up GoldenPalace.com or something of that ilk and were bidding on curiosities on eBay, perhaps. That turned out not to be the case, alas – it was just your average sensationalist headline to go with the story that Cerberus Capital Management is taking a little bit of flak these days for setting up plasma outposts along the US/Mexico border. The difference between “vampire” and “vampire squid”:

[N]ow the blood profiteers of the pharmaceutical industry have moved their area of exploitation to near the Mexico-U.S. border, where workers are transported from Mexico to sell their plasma.

Esmeralda Delgado is one of these workers. She makes a mere $60 a week for having large amounts of her blood removed, then stripped of plasma and pumped back into her veins…As Delgado sits on a bed at a plasma collection facility in Eagle Pass, Texas, letting her blood slowly fill up a bag, she and her fellow workers/donors can look up at a banner that reads, “Save Lives. Earn Money. Feel Good.”

“Save Lives. Earn Money. Feel Good” sounds like a Wal-Mart slogan, though I think that organization is well aware that avoiding comparisons to bloodsuckers is in their best public-relations interest, and I doubt we’ll be seeing any “plasma for gift cards” donation clinics in their stores in the near future.

Cerberus’ expansion into border towns is postulated to have caused  a 25% decline in the compensation for plasma, which is what happens when you expand the pool of prospective donors to people who actually need money, instead of only hitting up only the already richly-tapped, college-student-in-need-of-pizza-money market:

The plasma center in Eagle Pass, near the Mexican border, owned by Talecris Biotherapeutics — a wing of Cerberus and employer of former Vice President Dan Quayle — recently cut the compensation for its worker/donors from $80 to $60. More working people are desperate for money, so, like “the reserve army of labor” that forces down wages, a reserve army of plasma donors is created as jobs fade away, homelessness soars and desperation becomes part of everyday life in the age of crumbling capitalism.

At least 15 plasma centers are located in border cities in Texas and Arizona. Talecris’ four newest plasma centers have also been built along the U.S./Mexico border, where workers are willing to sell their blood plasma at much lower costs.

Danny Q got his name thrown in, but I’m not going there, I’m just following the money. You’re wondering, what’s Cerberus’ bottom line on Talecris?

Talecris, a leader in the business, just raised $1.1 billion in an initial public stock offering. The transaction represented a handsome return for Cerberus, the private equity fund. Cerberus acquired what is now Talecris from Bayer in 2005.

NYT indicates that $30 in plasma can be turned into $300 or more in pharmaceutical products, possibly much more, when you consider treatments like intravenous immune globulin and clotting proteins where the retail cost of treatment is $100K-350K a year.

We’re really not socialists here, so I didn’t paste in much of the rhetoric surrounding this topic — and I’ll also readily admit the capitalist case that says this situation puts money in the pockets of people like Esmeralda Delgado and makes needed treatment available to sick individuals – but at the same time, I’m glad I’m not the person who has to prepare cost-benefit analyses or marketing plans for locating these clinics within reach of the maximum number of impoverished people, and even happier I have a cush office job that keeps food on my table.

Beyond the exploitation angle, the xenophobic-nationalist backlash could be interesting, too. I am anxiously awaiting the day I turn on C-SPAN and see Congress debating putting up a fence along the border to keep out the three-headed vampire Mexicans. (Quentin Tarantino movie premise, anyone?)

Thx to Jason for the Photoshop on this one.  I could only successfully vampire-ize Feinberg with sparkles and whatnot, and we hate that Twilight ish.