Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Yesterday, I wrote a few words about where Valeant stands now. I'd like to follow up today by taking a look back. Valeant was a California company that merged with Canada's Biovail in 2010. The two companies were of about equal size, and some would say the resulting company had as much of Biovail's DNA in it as Valeant's, although of course calls itself by Dad's name. And at that time, Biovail was known as a product development company, (with some pushing-the-envelope bookkeeping tricks, but let's be charitable and forget about that.) Unfortunately some of its key products, including the neurological medicine Wellbutrin, were suffering from tough competition. Pearson, in 2010, set the company on quite another course. He was more interested in acquiring other companies than developing products. Let's skip ahead. Valeant spent much of 2014 trying to buy Allergan, which failed because Allergan found another suitor, and was acquired by Actavis for $66 bi...

Wikileaks is now saying that it is about to release more information about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It'll be a 30,000 word document. Okay, you're saying "be still my beating heart" wiseguys, aren't you? But this could be significant. A year ago, Wikileaks released its first satchel [e-satchel?] of TPP documents, the Intellectual Property agreement. The participating nations constitute about 40% of the gross net product of the planet. They include: the U.S., Canada, Japan, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Peru and Mexico. Critics of the TPP interpreted the materials disclosed in late 2013 as an effort to get higher prices for drugs, higher profits for Big Pharma.   So: what has Wikileaks got in store this year? ------------------ The above photo shows the leaders of all the TPP member states as a 2010 summit.