Republican hero. Lord help us.
This is what success looks like to a Republican. Right there, in all it's sleazy glory. Unbridled capitalism at its finest, total free market in all of it's unfettered magnificence. A Mitt Romney wanna be, but without the good hair and class. Pharma-Boy, now the most hated man in the world, and for very good reason. But if you think his hi-jinks screwing around with cancer and AIDS patients to stuff his pockets was bad, there's another little item in his past that just goes to show why this episode is not asymptomatic, just the way this little shit rolls. Follow me below the orange Shkreli morals mural for the history lesson.
Per Wikipedia's bio of Shkreli, he's been a busy little beaver;
In 2000, Shkreli was a college intern and then clerk at Jim Cramer's Cramer, Berkowitz, & Co. After four years at Cramer Berkowitz, he held jobs at UBS and Intrepid Capital Management before starting his first hedge fund, Elea Capital Management, in 2006. Shkreli launched MSMB Capital Management (named after the two founding Portfolio Managers, Martin Shkreli and Marek Biestek) in 2009.
So apparently, at this early stage or his larval development there were at elast some people who were still willing to be associated with him in public. Good on ya' mate!
To truly understand what a total acid douche this little weasel is, a short tutorial is needed. I will keep this quick and general. There is a sales strategy in investing called "selling short". In it's simplest terms it goes like this. You don't own a particular stock, but for whatever reason you think the price is going to go down. So, you borrow some shares, most likely from your broker, and sell them. Say you sold 10 shares at $100 each, you collect $1000. Say you're right, over the next couple of days the shares drop from $100 to $80. You swoop in and buy the 10 shares at $80, give the stock back to your broker and you just made $200 without putting a penny in.
The reason for that little peek at Wall Street shenanigans is contained in this next passage.
In 2011, Shkreli filed requests with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reject a new type of cancer diagnostic from the manufacturers Navidea Biopharmaceuticals and an inhalable insulin therapy for diabetes from MannKind Corporation, while publicly short-selling the companies' stocks. Both companies' stock values immediately dropped following Shkreli's interventions, and the companies had difficulty launching the products as a result. The FDA subsequently approved both therapies.
To be perfectly honest with you, I am not an investment banker, but I cannot for the life of me see how this little stunt doesn't violate SEC insider trading rules! He short sold that stock based on knowledge that nobody else had, and nobody else had it because HE was the one who was going top do it. He purposefully manipulated the price of the stock to make a profit off of it. That sure sounds like insider trading to me.
There you have it ladies and gentlemen. Full bore, flat out, free market unbridled Republican capitalism. Just to recap. Two pharmaceutical companies are looking for FDA approval for new drugs and delivery systems to improve patients lives. This little shit swoops in, sells a bunch of shares in the two stocks and pockets the money. Then, through his company he files a formal protest with the FDA to reject those applications outright. Both stocks go down the flusher, and he vultures in, buys the shares back on the cheap, return the stocks to wherever he got them from and pockets a killing. Both applications are approved, but the companies have suffered severe financial harm from the incident, release of the drugs is delayed, and they have to fight off the negative image from the approval process.
So, there you have it. The next time you hear a Republican spouting off about the "wonders of free market capitalism", this walking diaper stain is the living epitome of exactly what they're talking about.
Thanks as always for reading!