Shkreli is the pharma CEO who famously raised the price of an AIDS drug over 5,000 percent and bought an one issue Wu-Tang record that no one else will hear if he doesn’t want them to.
Securities arrests don’t happen by accident, and they don’t happen just because someone has committed securities fraud. There is so much securities fraud that practically anyone involved the markets beyond the retail investor level could be charged with something. Many investigations are ongoing at any given time, and only a few can (or will) be prosecuted–and prosecuting someone as rich as Shkreli is always a political decision.
This is a message:
Rook the proles as much as you want, but don’t scream it to the world. We have a good thing going here, sonny, and we don’t tolerate people who might wreck it.
Despite his cartoon-villain behaviour, Shkreli is far from the worst CEO in America.
Billionaires may do as they please. There is only one rule: “Don’t destroy the game.”
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anonymous coward
Sure it only happens to the small fry, like Bernie Madoff and this Shrckli ogre. A nicer shitbag for it to happen to they couldn’t find, however.
Steeleweed
The only reason Madoff got nailed is because he bilked the wealthy. If he’d just bilked the middle class, he wouldn’t be behind bars today.
John
“Rook the proles as much as you want, but don’t scream it to the world. We have a good thing going here, sonny, and we don’t tolerate people who might wreck it.”
Surely this must be a foundational law of predatory capitalism. I searched to see if it was from Orwell or elsewhere, but the links lead back to you. Beautiful. But a bit scary. I hope the oligarch’s hubris and stupidity protects you for such truth telling.
In this season of darkness, thanks for some light!
And that term…rook the proles…what poetry….even if it describes despicable behavior.
ProNewerDeal
does this mean that the FBI is the new “owner” of the Wu-Tang “1-copy” album, via “Asset Forfeiture”?
ProNewerDeal
I wonder if 0bama, Attorney General Lynch, & the other 0bamabots will strain their arm, publicly/press-conferencing patting themselves on the back, for this 1 random “sacrificial” “minor league” criminals like Shkreli, while they stay protecting & d*riding “major league” criminals including 2B2F Bank$tas like HSBC, proven money launderers for the likes of Al-Qa3da & the Sin0loa Cart3l.
Tom
Well if it weren’t for the massive investor backlash at the bastard for hiking the price so outrageously he probably wouldn’t have been hit. But when the DOW went down the Big Cats made an example of him.
Virginia Simson
The new Conrad Black; lesson is “don’t mess with your own kind.”
And we want that Wu Tang album taken away in civil forfeiture!
zotter
Someone better get Trump on the phone ASAP…
pebird
Shkreli for me seemed to be the CEO equivalent of the “rogue trader”, where the big boys say “Sonny, you want to play the game, here have a go, show us what kind of sociopath you are, and if it goes south, you may need to take the fall.”
different clue
Martin Shkreli . . . . the “Martha Stewart” of a new generation.