AS THE star of the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, memorably put it: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” But, then again, Gekko was a fictional character, unlike Martin Shkreli, who you would be hard-pressed to make up.

For those trapped on Mars with Matt Damon, Mr Shkreli is a US hedge fund manager, a species not held in — how shall we put it? — the highest esteem. To this he adds a further adornment. His chosen arena for leveraged combat involves drug companies and the health care system. It is an unhappy conjunction.

Born of Albanian and Croatian parents in Brooklyn, he was was only four when Oliver Stone unleashed the Gekko monster, who was rumoured to be based in part on his own father.

But the actual child of the eighties has become a proper charmer in the decade I suppose we must learn to call the teenies. At the age of 32 Schkreli has been dubbed “the world’s least popular entrepreneur” and accused on the internet of “behaving like a douchebag”.

Given the benchmark for such abuse on social media is infamously low, perhaps we should detail the charges here.

After his early hedge fund career he created Retrophin, a health sector company which bought the rights to Thiola, a drug used to treat cystinuria, an inherited disease which results in the production of kidney and bladder stones, which are among the most painful conditions recorded in medical history, a byword since Greek and Roman observations for inconsolable agony.

He increased the price of the drug 20-fold in spite of doing precisely nothing by way of research and development to improve the drug. You might say that this act represented profiteering at the expense of people facing agony. I would be hard-pressed to disagree. He parted company with Retrophin amid mutual acrimony and investigations into allegations of stock price manipulation.

An unpleasant operator, to be sure, although a penchant for either rapper-like poses or a chess grand master look make him even harder to like.

Then came his vehicle, Turing Pharmaceuticals which bought the rights for Daraprim, giving him exclusive marketing rights in the US in spite of it being out of patent. The pill is on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines as it combats toxoplasmosis — an immune-system disease affecting pregnant women, babies and the HIV-positive.

Previous trading of the company had driven the price of these pills from $13.50 each to $18 but the new owner hiked this to, wait for it, $750. It is an increase of more than 5000% from $13.50 which would shame a payday loan company and has seen him widely called out on social media, where he has responded by blocking critics and defending the price set for a pill that costs around a dollar to produce.

Various pressure groups in the US have intervened to condemn the price hike and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called it “outrageous” and amid the backlash the company’s share price has tanked, so there is some small cause for cheer.

Shkreli has now spoken of lowering the price and making the drug available more cheaply for those most in need, showing that even those displaying the most sociopathic tendencies can be reined in by public opinion, particularly when it is galvanised on social media.

The problem of hedge fund capitalism manifests at a number of levels. It is not just about the excesses of individual rogue traders, but is emblematic of the wider problem of the healthcare system in the US, where paramedics arriving at a scene are said to carry out a “wallet biopsy” — that is to say a scientific analysis of the patient’s insurance status and ability to pay the looming treatment bills, before checking the other vitals like temperature and blood pressure.

It also exemplifies the vulture culture of the hedge fund desperadoes, who can intervene in all walks of our lives, from high street stores to football clubs, in disruptive and potentially negative ways, the epitome of the maxim about those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

In New York Shkreli got a bit of on-line abuse. In Edinburgh RBS banker Fred “The Shred” Goodwin had to move out of his home when the public’s hackles rose. In Germany Martin Winterkorn has resigned as chief executive of Volkswagen after the emissions scandal, and in Reykjavik bankers have faced jail time. Who has got that right? I’m with the Icelanders, and I’m sure HIV-patients would feel the same way about Martin Shkreli. Most of us think greed is bad.