, December 18, 2015
Daily Bafflements
Martin Shkreli has resigned his position as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals in order to become a freelance asshole. / NEPA Scene
• After being arrested for what the FBI is calling a “securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit and greed,” pharma-bro Martin Shkreli stepped down today from his role as CEO of Turing pharmaceuticals. The intelligence agency compared Shkreli’s business model to a Ponzi scheme, just days after Bloomberg Business Week lauded him as a brilliant short seller. The fate of his price-gouging pharmaceutical companies, and that of the rare Wu-Tang Clan album he recently purchased, remains uncertain, but as our own Chris Lehmann points out, the charges are unlikely to do lasting damage.
• In the wake of Chris Lehmann’s column on the mainstream media’s gun-saturated news coverage, we’re revisiting Alex Pareene’s Baffler no. 21 salvo on “D.C.-based access journalism and the highly toxic, incestuous variant of it that Politico has perfected.”
• Last but certainly not least, Wired ominously warns that the Federal Reserve is about to bring about “a unicorn reckoning.” Read it and weep.