The Drug Price Gouging CEO Martin Shkreli Says He Should Have Raised The Price Higher, Is Really Embracing The Whole Evil Thing

Forbes – In rapid succession, Shkreli explained why he’d abandoned his previous pledge to cut the price of Daraprim, claimed that companies were still “begging” for his business, and argued that he was being railroaded by politicians. Shkreli also reiterated that his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, was forced to hike the price of Daraprim because of the distribution model.

Shkreli was interviewed on stage by Forbes reporter Matthew Herper, who in September authored a fascinating piece that implied Shkreli wasn’t necessarily malevolent — but misunderstood. That Shkreli was a bright guy who had been caricatured by the media.

But at Thursday’s summit, Shkreli was painfully clear: His job isn’t making patients better. It’s making the most dollars.

“My shareholders expect me to make the most profit,” Shkreli said, a theme that he returned to again and again. “That’s the ugly, dirty truth.”

“I’m going to maximize profits,” Shkreli added later. “That’s what people [in healthcare] are afraid to say.”

Hilarious how Martin Shkreli went on a panel led by a guy who wrote a piece trying to say he wasn’t evil and then gave quotes that will sound like the very definition of evil to everyone who’s been criticizing him. And this also comes a few days after an interesting situation where Shkreli was accused of manipulating the stock markets and ultimately fucking traders shorting a stock out of hundreds of thousands of dollars:

Gawker – The company [KaleoBios] ’s stock price, which started 2015 near $15 per share, was already in a free fall, sinking as low as $0.90 per share on November 13—the stock had been cheap for a while, and now it was going in the tank. Investors who’d shorted KaloBios stock in the $2 to $3 range were just waiting for it to fade a bit so they could buy cheap and turn their profit.

Here comes evil-ass Martin Shkreli. Along with a team of investors, Shkreli quietly bought up an ownership stake in the company over November 16 and 17, at these low low prices—70 percent of all shares, according to reports. On November 19, after the close of trading, KaloBios dropped the bomb (via zerohedge.com):

“We have received communications from Mr. Shkreli informing us of his group’s ownership position, and a proposal to continue the company’s operations,” said Ronald Martell, Executive Chairman of KaloBios. “Our board of directors is prepared to entertain any constructive proposal, which we will act upon promptly. Addressing short-term cash needs is our first priority, and we continue to be open to further dialogue,” he concluded.

KaloBios stock rose 4,000 percent in six days. And, hey, look at that, your boy Martin Shkreli was holding 70 percent of the company’s stock. This looked to some like a bogus spike, if not outright market manipulation, and so there were investors looking to score by shorting KaloBios again, at its new, higher price.

However where this story gets abusrdly entertaining, or woefully tragic, depending on one’s perspective, is that one trader, Joe Campbell, was on the wrong side of last night’s massive surge. As the RutRho blog, which noticed it first explains, a “dummy” E-trader, Joe Campbell, decided to go $35,000 short KBIO “and now owes $ETFC a wonderful $106K.”

Investors shorting stocks have their critics so Shkreli doing that is not quite as evil as the whole “Fuck yeah I’d charge even more for the pill helping out sick people that I raised the price of 5500%” but still, pretty fucked up in a way most other CEOs would never even dream of.

At the same time though, Martin Shkreli is now officially someone doing the one thing I genuinely ask from everyone in society: Just be who you are and don’t pretend otherwise. It’s why I get annoyed when people get mad if they end up featured in the Tinder blog and ask for it to be taken down because they’re doing whatever shady or slutty things on the side but are worried “someone in their lives may find out.” If you’re who you are in all facets of life, no one should be surprised when you do certain things. He could apologize and play victim and it’s all disingenuous. You want to get rich, this is a very lucrative and relatively controlled means to that end, and you’re willing to be a shitty person to do it. Take ownership of it and do your own thing and if you’re making it work, well, who are people to judge in the first place when you didn’t break any laws?

So if Martin Shkreli wants to be this guy who says outrageous shit and not help people out despite working in the medical industry and makes money by fucking over everyone in his path, that sucks I guess. But now we know who he is and there’s no ambiguity, dealing with him from here on is entirely your own fault and you should have known better. I mean there’s still a decent chance Martin Shkreli is going to one day soon block out the sun in some misguided battle with a superhero because a girl laughed at his pecker, but at least we won’t be taken aback by it.