Hosed for the holidays

The confluence of the arrest of Martin Shkreli for fraud and the opening of the movie "The Big Short" once again exposes the greed and shortsightedness of the elite in this new gilded age.  Shkreli has become the poster child of the 21st century story of the utter disregard most on Wall St. and Big Pharma hold their fellow citizens.  His cartoonish villainy is of the Snidely Whiplash variety; namely stupid cruelty for the sake of deriding those of us who feel a little empathy for those less fortunate.  First, he jacked the price of a life saving drug by 5000% because he could.  Feeding on the public revulsion of this action, he next purchased the only copy of a Wu Tang Clan album in order to deprive everyone else of the possibility of hearing it (no problem for me).  His mocking of virtually everyone who is not Martin Shkreli is the story of his contempt for the "little people".   Now indicted, I doubt too many tears will be shed when his sentence is read. The Big Short, on the other hand is the meticulously told story of how many on Wall St. lost their moral compass in the quest to make astronomical amounts of money and how a few profited by betting against them when their proverbial chickens came home to roost.  Many of the country's opinion makers are horrified that the unwashed will see this movie and be educated as to the scam perpetrated on the public in the latter years of the Shrub's administration.  We can only hope that Shkreli gets his just desserts and the rest of us view the cautionary tale of The Big Short as a blueprint for a kinder, gentler financial system.