Reich on Shkreli

Following up on the last post, Robert Reich's FB post shows exactly what the tenets of Wall Street operates within:

"Martin Shkreli -- the 32-year-old former hedge-fund manager and CEO of Turning Pharmaceuticals, who bought and then jacked up the price of 62-year-old critical drug used for newborns and HIV patients by more than 4,000 percent -- was arrested this morning. Not because of this greedy deal but because he allegedly defrauded investors at his hedge fund.


"For such a young man, Shkreli has a long history of screwing other people. He lost all the money he managed at another hedge fund. He also owed Lehman Brothers $2.3 million related to his trading activities there. And just before he became CEO of Turning he was CEO of Retrophin Pharmaceuticals, whose board removed him because of misconduct and even filed suit against him, calling him “the paradigm faithless servant” by “using his control over Retrophin to enrich himself, and to pay off claims of hedge-fund investors (who he had defrauded).”

"Shkreli has always used the free market to justify himself. He defended his decision to raise the price of that old drug by saying “our shareholders expect us to make as much as money as possible.” But in reality he's always sought to make as much money as possible only for himself, no matter whom he harmed. Martin Shkreli is exactly where the new logic of greed and self-dealing leads."