Take note, those on the left. Your small businesses could be burning all summer long and the "leaders" didn't care. But the minute the small guy fucks with Wall Street, they are immediately un-personed.
Winning the election wasn't the big victory you thought it was.
The time is ripe for another OWS/Tea Party movement against the banks.
We ought to be, but there's a huge chasm separating the cultural left and right. Politicians and corporate media use social issues related to race, gender, abortion, welfare benefits, etc. etc. to keep us divided. Their new trick is to shut down alternative communication networks that might enable us to bridge the divide.
I've been saying this very thing for the last couple of years. Trump and Sanders voters have more in common with each other than they'll ever know. As do Gabbard, AOC and some of the Ted Cruz voters. People would be well served to get past their ideas of who's on their side.
Review the local news interview with the black Portland cop who says that every time he tries to speak person to person to a black protestor, a white person whitesplains to them not to talk to him.
You might want to realize that the people falsely telling you that the left is all "woke cancel culture" are doing so to foster exactly that division that's being discussed here. While you're busy fretting about cancel culture, they're stealing all the money.
The people trying to accuse Bernie of racism are working for people well to his right. The centrists weaponize idpol against the left, so they don't have to argue with us.
Hopefully, most intelligent people (aside from CNN and MSNBC anchors, or politicians, oh wait bit I'm being redundant I already said intelligent) can see the "culture war" framings of so many things are simply a ruse.
My personal problem is that i'm interested in supporting something that doesn't result in an authoritarian system of government. I do not believe anyone has that on offer at this time.
I believe that a republican system of government presumes a set of common expectations from its population/voting base. I don't think we have that anymore, and can any system survive without that? I'm not saying exactly the same thing Jefferson did, but pretty close.
Same. I'm ready to fight for Revolution but not if it's doomed from the start with shitty leadership and by being peppered with catastrophic non-starters like any of the wokeshit and violent tactics.
I like how the left divides itself here just by itself. No need for anyone to come in from the outside. Just say racism or transphobism or anti-Inuitism, or any other cultural left bullshit and you all scatter into your houses. Economic lefties, as opposed to the worthless, donor-supported cultural left, will absolutely need to talk to people they don't like. You're going to have to talk to people who say "nigger" and watch NASCAR and pro wrestling. The cultural left is going to keep going with "Ooh, there's a tweet from so-and-so from 2016 where he didn't use someone's requested pronoun." Cut these people out of your lives.
With the help of the right. Once again, you can blame whichever fake "side" you wish but both are owned by the same crowd. Blaming one of these fake sides accomplishes nothing but further division.
We always were. But if you're too busy letting your personal prejudices be leveraged and manipulated by the ruling class to figure that out, then it's never to late to become enlightened on that fact. That goes both ways, politically.
Can't comment on your friends. Still, three possibilities spring to mind. 1) Liberals who conflate being "on the left" with being a "leftist." This is becoming a smaller and smaller group, though, as there are now several left voices not named Chomsky or West that can't be completely ignored in mainstream discourse. True liberals hate these people, as you should know. For them, this hate is as definitional as is seeing Biden's win as a "great victory." 2) People on the right who conflate "liberal" and "leftist" out of ignorance, laziness or convenience, i.e., most likely these friends of whom you speak aren't leftists or, if they identify as such, aren't very well informed. 3) Those suffering a reflexive need to evince optimism, which is a peculiarly American disease.
Is your comment supposed to be some kind of mind-blowing revelation? We KNOW they didn’t care. And said that those of us on the left thought winning the election was a “big victory”? It was inevitable, because trump sucked so bad, but anybody who thinks that Biden in the White House is a “big victory” obviously hasn’t been paying any attention at all. Or maybe they’ve just been paying attention to MSNBC.
The reason Biden winning is a catastrophe is that his administration will never be held accountable for anything, just as the Obama administration wasn't. While I didn't share Trump administration politics, I knew that administration would be held accountable. (Witness Trump admin. being held accountable for things that actually were holdover Obama administration policies). There are far worse things than someone sucking as a person; it's unaccountable power. So, to all my friends who were like "Oh, I know Biden isn't great, but we HAVE to get Trump out." I said - really? Because Biden will very LITERALLY be able to do anything at all and get away with it. And, now - not even a week in we not only have massive crack downs on free speech but now there will be crack downs on anyone who dares challenge hedge fund market manipulators. And, ZERO accountability.
"The reason Biden winning is a catastrophe is that his administration will never be held accountable for anything, just as the Obama administration wasn't."
JFC, run_dmc, please stop making me want to play Russian Roulette with 6 rounds chambered.
Who cares who delivers the final shot to the back of the head ? Either the "good" cop or the "bad" cop were always going to be the one who pulled the trigger.
Trump wasn't ever going to save anyone from anything. He never intended to win in the first place and on top of that has never gave a warm runny shit about anyone other than his own ego.
«those on the left. Your small businesses could be burning all summer long and the "leaders" didn't care. But the minute the small guy fucks with Wall Street, they are immediately un-personed.»
The "left" your refer to is the financialist/globalist neoliberal faction of the right, which happen to support identity politics in the name of property rights and free markets.
As a side note: "un-personed", "cancel culture", "deplatforming" are all novel and cool sounding euphemisms to actually mean "blacklisted".
Those guardsmen are not really combat troops. Also, their officers are afraid of ordering them to fire. Did time in Iraq and 20y working the Army, had this discussion repeatedly with officers, they have no idea what soldiers might do if ordered to fire on civilians and are not interested in finding out. The word "frag" comes to mind.
Another secret: they (99% of the time) don't even have any ammo. Protip.
Even if they had mags, you can almost guarantee they have nothing in them. A full combat load is 7 mags, usually in clip-on pockets that go into the molle loops of their body armor. The soldiers are responsible for loading them up themselves under normal circumstances and can choose how much tracer and how much ball ammo they want in each mag. But no officer or NCO is going to want guardsmen on police duty carrying live ammo. Think Kent State.
I used to drive onto base after 9/11 with a tripod mounted M240 pointed at my hood at the checkpoint. This was scary until I noticed the lack of a belt.
That all went out the window when the Bush Administration called them "first responders" and gave them funding and access to all the tactical gear they could handle. Dumbest move ever, but what did we expect from that tard. That I sadly voted for twice.
Exactly. The original TP was anti-bailout, but the focus got coopted quickly, IIRC. I remember being really surprised to hear from people claiming to be TP proponents, but the clap they were selling had nothing to do with the legit criticisms of the consequence free bailouts that had occurred.
I'm going to weigh in as a participant in the very nascent days of the Tea Party. #1) nobody even talked about the Koch Bros or really knew who they were #2) I guarantee you that the vast majority of participants/protesters were Ron Paul types (he was a big thing in 2008) #3) The TP was co-opted by I don't know who but most of us early participants dropped out after seeing that the TP somehow became something it was not.
I'm going to be honest here and say I was one of the people calling the (very loud) Paul supporters "paultards" back in the day. I'm sorry, and he was largely right.
What exactly is your point? Early honest and naïve Tea Partiers may have been dupes for the Koch Bros or something like that? So what? Please elaborate.
Thank you for pointing this out. The TO started out as a libertarian fiscal sanity movement and got him jacked by ultra-MAGA, pre-QAnon wingnut types in many locales. The msm refuses to acknowledge this truth, b/c it’s a lot harder to shill for the utility of corporate bailouts with a straight face than it is to Michael wack jobs in weird hats who sometimes say stuff that is kinda racist.
I was literally at the one of the first ones. It was a bunch of Ron Paulers hanging out in a tea house in downtown Portland. This is well documented by the actual people who were there.
Well perhaps my personal experience doesn't count but I was there at the beginning of the Tea Party (in California). And for good measure, I was also at the beginnings of OWS in Zuccotti Park. (I know, but I really was at both in the beginning days.) I will acknowledge that Rick Santelli did sort of kick of the Tea Party with his CNBC rant but the early Tea Party attendees (and there were many) were mostly Ron Paul Libertarian types who were anti-bailout, anti-Fed manipulation, and anti-TBTF. (And fyi, at the NYC OWS, it was mostly the same actors in the beginning.) There were very, very few right-wing Republicans at the Tea Party demonstration I attended and this was in Orange County, which if the right-wing was onboard with the Tea Party, they would have been there. Pretty much all of the rhetoric and signs were directed at the govt bailouts of the big banks. Both OWS and the Tea Party were quickly co-opted by the status quo; the Tea Party more obviously because the media love to play that up.
January 27th and 28th, 2021 saw the Washington Post at last totally divorce itself from what used to be called “the news”. I have the Post delivered to my door every day. On the morning of January 27, I eagerly opened my copy to see what the Post had reported on one of the biggest if not the biggest news stories of the week, the revolt of the small retail investor against the hedge fund giants. To wit the meteoric rise of shares in GameStop which cost several hedge funds who had shorted the stock billions of dollars. A rare, rare victory of the small guy against the titans of the financial world. I couldn’t find a single mention of the story in the paper! Not on the front page and even not in the “business” section. I assumed I had missed the story and went back through the paper page by page. Nope, it wasn’t there. Not one word! In the real world of journalism this would have led to the firing of the editor. But we work under different rules now.
I can imagine the editors not knowing how to play this news. Yes, they could have simply stated the plain facts; the stock moved how much, and hedge funds lost so much, but they didn’t. News is about so much more than facts these days. The dilemma was this; clearly it was at least a symbolic victory for the small guy and a demonstration of a fearsome new power in the financial world and the Post staff and management saw themselves as champions of the little guy. On the other hand, it was a near mortal blow to some of the captains of the industry who have now become (at least for public consumption) friends of the Democratic party and fierce enemies of the guy who used to be president. (Don’t blame me for bringing him into the story, the Post did that on their own) And besides the Post is a business that has had its ups and downs in recent years, and it doesn’t pay to make enemies of these guys, not to mention the owner of the Post, Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest men and has much more in common, if not outright friendship with said titans. So the Post decided to punt and skip the story altogether. Perhaps it took them a day to consult with Mr. Bezos and others in the industry and in the world of politics to see how to spin the story. Oh, how I would like to be a fly on the wall of the editor’s office! I am sure there was some real debate going on! I am sure the Post’s woke staff had plenty to say about this story.
Move to Thursday the 28th. The story framing is complete, and it comes down on the side of the elites. Now it’s a front-page story. In a very long two-page article the Post plays the role of the hedge fund toady and defender. The small investor is now “a flash mob with money”. And we know what sinister connotations the word “mob” has taken on in the past few weeks. As crazy as it seems the article doesn’t mention the role of short sellers (who smell bad) until the twentieth paragraph on an inside page and doesn’t mention the specific hedge fund until the twenty-ninth paragraph when this information was all over the news. Unbelievable! The Post preferred to call the hedge funds “big Wall Street firms, “wealthy institutions”, and “big institutions”.
By late Thursday the political/financial industry dealt the small investor a savage blow in a naked show of force. Halting the purchase of GameStop shares but not their sale meant the market could go only one way, down, saving hedge funds from losing billions more if not saving some from total destruction. If this isn’t the definition of market manipulation, the word has no meaning. It will be interesting to see how the liberal mainstream media plays this story in coming days. They can’t support both sides. At least we know where the Post stands. The story is not over.
This made me curious and the other commenters on this thread seemed to accept Robert's accusation that Washington Post wasn't adequately covering the gamestop story early on. A quick google search turns up two substantial stories. One on the 25th another on the 27th. I just wanted to link them here for posterity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/25/gamestop-stock-short-squeeze/
The Washington Post has been highly biased for quite some time. They published probably 2000 stories and opinion pieces on the "Russia collusion" thing, all of which were wrong. They covered many topics very poorly. Their opinion writers (and cartoonists) are heavily biased toward the Democrats, and they have made no effort to correct this.
For example, Salena Zito wrote the best articles about the 2016 Presidential Campaign for The Atlantic after taking a buyout from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review that summer. She could have been hired by the Washington Post, but instead is with the New York Post. Here is her article that is the most quoted of all articles in 2016: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-makes-his-case-in-pittsburgh/501335/
Likewise, Michael Ramirez, the best American political cartoonist, moved to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2018. The cartoonists at the Post are very poor, and Ramirez would have been a great improvement.
Who would want to work for Jeff Bezos? i know people from my employer that have gone over to AMZN and ultimately came back because of the terrible climate there.
Amazon, as a company, can be summed up by reference to their response to a bad situation in one of their fulfillment centers (in Ohio, I believe). Turns out it was, in addition to being non-air conditioned, poorly ventilated. To the point that employees were passing out during their work hours. The response? Put a rental ambulance at the front door. This was either a sign that they really cared about the employees or an attempt to ensure that lawsuits over the working conditions did not have a newsworthy and possibly expensive FATALITY in them.
NOTE: The huge warehousing structure had previously been used for storage and distribution of forklift-accessed, pallet-based quantities of product, as opposed to the Amazon model of thousands of desperate people grabbing individual items and tossing them into shopping carts. Thus, heat stroke in one operation that was not a concern in the previous ones.
"Halting the purchase of GameStop shares but not their sale meant the market could go only one way, down, saving hedge funds from losing billions more if not saving some from total destruction. "
Not true. What the move did was cut off buying from retail investors, not the big guys. The price was down as much as 65% today, but closed down 44% and now after hours is UP 61% HIGHER THAN THE OPEN.
There are many ways, for example there are different rules for "qualified" (rich) investors and for retail investors, or for members of exchanges and the public.
Note also that it is impossible though to stop the "purchase of GameStop shares but not their sale", because every sale implies someone is purchasing.
It wasn't the government, it was Citadel-connected Robin Hood "protecting" its customers from, in a very small blow against the Empire, slowing the transfer of wealth to the top 00.1%ers.
In other "official" news, wealth inequality is because of "systemic racism".
To me it's still less bizarre that we've been living in an age now where we can have multiple wars still going on and not have daily front page coverage of it. Seems like it would be unthinkable 80 years ago to think we've reached this point.
I guess we'll get used to Postwashing the breakdown of the economy and government pretty soon.
This might be the moment when 90% of the population realizes 10% of the population is purposely crushing them while keeping them occupied with race and lockdowns and focused on who is wearing a D or R on their jersey. Cmon , forget the “team” you think you’re on and wake up and understand Politicians , MSM , and the elite financial class want to Hoover up all your money and then stub you out like a cigarette and have a good chuckle when they’re done.
There are people defending Pelosi's purchase of Tesla stock. That's how dumbed down and genuinely stupid some of our fellow Americans are. Or if you want to be more charitable, that's how deep the manipulation of the American mind has gone..... people defending bought government because it's 'their team' doing it.
This is a clear conflict of interest, as the House will be taking up lots of legislation that would send money to Tesla, directly or indirectly. Electric cars, solar, batteries, ...
That said, attacking that machine is suicidal. So many people's livelihood and future depend on it that they'll support any atrocity to avoid not being able to fund junior's college.
It's been interesting watching Democrats (except for AOC - I actually agree with her on something, partially) line up to demand "something be done" about all these day traders, and Republicans defend the day traders. Methinks we may be in the midst of a political realignment in this country like we've not seen since FDR ...
Not sure what to think about her slapping away the hand of bipartisanship from Ted Cruz on this issue. Would rather not turn this into another left-right thing, since it seems to be one of the few issues the common people agree on. (Not that I have any particular love for Ted Cruz, but still.)
She's (histrionically) accused him of trying to have her killed. In doing so she's painted herself into the corner. That hissy fit combined with an inability to admit when you're actually wrong (as opposed to apologizing for the approved mistake narrative) and AOC has made her own bed here.
This is all theoretical anyhow. She's not going to do what it takes to get anything done if it means risking her position at this point, and Finance are some of the most powerful enemies to have. She's not going to risk them astroturfing her brand as hard as they do with Bernie. I think Greenwald said it took about 6 months before AOC shifted from Class to IdPol and rendered herself completely worthless.
With you on AOC. I had pegged her as a phony, but she's stepping up to the plate here.
I do not know the details (and never will), but I speculate that many of the day-traders are on the internet trading all day because decent jobs have largely vanished from the American landscape. I speculate further that many of these people are nostalgic for the time when they worked at GameStop for minimum wage.
AOC is definitely not a phony, she sees the future (ie, the politics of young people) as clearly as any of us and is gonna ride it all the way to the top.
You mean phony she doesn't believe what she says? She is one of the most articulate people I've ever heard, it's hard to believe she's not speaking honestly. I dunno, you could be right and at the end of the day it doesn't matter as long as she stays the course AFAIC. I can be really naive, but I'm also really sensitive and cynicism to that degree is hard to live with.
Thank you Grisha, I do know that (said without snark). Having trouble saying what I mean... I think I mean - I don't follow her closely. Virtually everything I hear her say sounds smart (if not no-brainer) and exactly right to me. Same with Matt, for example, that's why I love him. In both cases I have trouble believing that dishonesty is the underlying foundation of what they are saying. And, in the immortal words of Warren Beatty, "There's nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is there existing?" ;)
That's fair. I know nothing about her voting record, but I also try to be a realist and not hold the Bernies and AOCs of the world to a standard of purity that prevents them from engaging in politics (ie horsetrading, picking battles) and gaining power over the long term. But again, I'm basically talking out of my ass here.
OK, but the guy that started it is named Keith Gill, a former registered rep and general securities principal at a FINRA member firm, and prior to that worked at a small investment adviser. The only person I know that was talking to me about this trade in December is a retired (in his 40s) KCG trader that is a member of Winged Foot. Just, you know, something to consider.
RomCom where Cruz and AOC realize they have more in common than they thought when they run into each other at the store where they both buy their fainting couches.
Cut to the floor of congress later on when they're sending each other clips of overdramatic soccer flops that they admire.
I don't think this is anything new. Politicians have been getting re-elected by maintaining the status quo for as long as history has been written. Fricking Pericles would be nodding emphatically if he were here.
I doubt it, seeing as how AOC accused Cruz of trying to have her killed in the Capitol riot when she was informed of his agreement with her on the RH issue.
True, but they've still claimed the moral high ground in terms of supposedly defending the interests of the "little people." On this issue, however, they've stopped even pretending that they're interested in what the rest of us think - the Democrats are now officially the part of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the country club set.
It will be interesting to see how long AOC, Bernie, etc., stay in the party before trying something new. Warren, bless her greedy little soul, absolutely sold out today, demanding the SEC "do something" about all these day traders.
Yep. I say it all the time. Main Street Democrats don't yet realize they are the party of Wall Street, endless war, Big Media, "lockdown" corporations like Walmart and Amazon, and the literal formation of the Ministry of Truth.
Great observation. Let's see; more lockdowns after the vaccine, wear 7 masks at a time, use big tech to de-platform everyone we disagree with, use big finance to lock out the same people, possibly send our political opponents to reeducation camps. But at least we voted out the "fascist"!
My overall point is that a segment of the left LARPs opposing fascism while being in favor of massive censorship, corporate power, and zero checks on government power (when they are in charge). I don't actually think reeducation camps are on the horizon. I only threw it in there because it was mentioned by that PBS lawyer and a few Bernie staffers.
I sometimes wonder if Trump got in the way of that understanding. Maybe MT is right- with DTrump gone, the air clears, Dems realize they have been mind-fucking themselves and the real fight can then be waged. Guess we'll see.
I was inspired in 1960 by JFK to become a liberal Democrat. I was inspired in 2009 by Nancy Pelosi to become a liberal independent. I had finally realized that the Democratic Party was authoritarian in nature. Just how authoritarian wasn't clear until GameStop. The mask is off. The alliance between Wall Street, Big Tech, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party wants control and has now successfully overthrown the government.
The government is we, the people. We don't matter any more. It's not even necessary to pretend to hold political campaigns and elections, although I expect they'll go on for quite a while yet. The outcome is foreordained. More power and money for the Nomenklatura of the Authoritarians, less power and money for the plebs of the Libertarians. Something akin to rational debate will be allowed for a short while, but the game is over.
Left-right, Red-Blue, R-D, it's an illusion. The Authoritarians have been running an asset-stripping vulture game on the US for about thirty years now. The common people are left holding the bag. We allowed it to happen.
Well put. The key is the media and its corruption. If you can keep the people mesmerized, distracted and generally fed a steady line of bullshit, then you can control any narrative. Trump- for all his flaws- threatened that control. With him gone, the push is on to consolidate and prevent any further threats. Your point that they will give it some time still allowing simulated elections and rational debates is spot on. Eventually, those will be total frauds as well.
Matt T's single flaw in his thinking is that he wanted Trump gone- almost at any cost. Not unlike the wokest resister. By his thinking he will now be able to fight the fight he wants to engage in. But I think he will be ultimately disappointed as he is increasingly marginalized. Only too late will he realize Trump may well have been his only hope.
Their long-game strategy is winning in the short-term. But look at how Congress and the new administration are behaving - not like confident adults who believe the future is theirs. They are panicking, as if they realize that once Heartland moderates realize the Democratic Party is in thrall to coastal elites, the re-alignment we saw in Congressional races in November is only going to accelerate.
lol ... the flurry of executive orders, the commission to justify packing the Court, now the blowback against the day traders. These are the actions of people who believe they are on a short clock and have a rapidly closing window in which to act before they lose power.
I also agreed with AOC on this, too, then I recalled her braying for a vote on M4A, then pulling back on this and voting Pelosi in for another term as speaker. I get dizzy from all of AOC's antics. It's like AOC serves her purpose for the Democratic elites by rebelling just enough, then coming back inside for family dinner time. What will she do when the Dems act on behalf of their Wall Street masters and vote on new regulations restricting the unwashed from spoiling the party? I guess she'll be allowed a dissenting vote, unless it's a close one, then Nancy will pull on that leash again...
Her district is so safe, she actually could realistically defy her party's leadership without repercussion. If she's serious about wanting to be a power broker, she'll create an alliance with libertarian-leaning Republicans to block any expansion of the surveillance state as well as blocking any attempts to criminalize the squeezing of the short-sellers like we saw last week.
What's incredible is that the media - and popular focus as result - hone in on "manipulation" by the /r/Wallstreetbets forum, and decry that, interspersed with moralizing about ordinary people gambling not knowing what they are doing.
What is more galling - should be more galling - is this: Gamespot is just part of the story. This morning (January 28, 2021) several retail brokers blocked the Buy button on a number of stocks with high short interest: this included BB, AMC and others. During this blackout of these stocks (for purchase and not for selling, you could still sell), hedge funds were able to unwind their short positions.
It's being said that Citadel, which bailed out Melvin Capital (the GME loser), owns a stake in Robinhood and also works with TDA and Schwab.
So the story here is that hedge funds called up their business partners in the retail brokerages and said, don't let people buy this for a period of time. So they could protect themselves, at the expense of retail. CNBC dutifully reminds us that retail are imbeciles, and CNN mentioned that the subreddit has white supremacists on it.
It's a mad world, but through all of this insanity there's a breadcrumb that should be followed.
Here's the question for Taibbi and whoever reads this: should we expect the general public to further lose faith in Wall St., the media and government (the SEC) after this?
Strange we don't see the House Speaker demand we investigate THIS. No, we need to investigate ordinary Americans who finally got sick and tired of being taken advantage of.
"So the story here is that hedge funds called up their business partners in the retail brokerages and said, don't let people buy this for a period of time."
hahaha. "Free Market," my Byelorussian ass.
[appears as Boris Badenov, drops trou, moons all and sundry]
"In Capitalist Russia, you buy stock. In Soviet America, stock sells YOU!"
Behind the scene, pulling all the strings on the hedge fund side, was, of course, that avatar of moral authority and financial responsibility, Steve Cohen (of SAC notoriety).
For those unfamiliar with Big Stevie (who just bought the frickin Mets 😳):
“In 2013, the Cohen-founded S.A.C. Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading and agreed to pay $1.8 billion in fines ($900 million in forfeiture and $900 million in fines) in one of the biggest criminal cases against a hedge fund. Cohen was prohibited from managing outside money for two years as part of the settlement reached in the civil case over his accountability for the scandal. The hedge fund agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud and to close to outside investors.”
«During this blackout of these stocks (for purchase and not for selling, you could still sell)»
Every sale implies a purchase. What has happened is rather different: that different types of market participants have been given different rules. Also the redditors have not been buying GME stock, they have been buying call options. The technicalities matter a fair bit.
The real story isn't who makes money or whether the hedgies took a mortal blow (they didn't), but rather what this incident exposes. It shows the corporate media as the sleazy little satraps to money they are. It shows the Wall Streeters exposed as bullshit artists, as they hilariously try to justify their position in society. But most of all, the joy being experienced by millions of Americans right now shows just how powerful the anti-neoliberal movement really is. Or at least could be, if it was harnessed properly. People know they're being screwed, and the reactions to this story show they know who is screwing them.
True colors are appearing everywhere. Twitter and Facebook used free speech and assembly as a ruse to control the commons. Robinhood and the other discount brokers lured retail traders with the promise of being able to trade like the bog boys and ignited a blow off top on top of a blow off top.
As soon as their true purpose was fulfilled their total mendacity is exposed. Free speech, free markets, and circuit breakers for me but not for thee. The users of these systems are not customers, they’re lambs to the slaughter, and all roads eventually lead back to the real customers.
All of this is out in the open now and they can no longer hide it. Now that the schadenfreude around the election is starting to fade and the new authoritarians realize that they are the real targets there is a real chance that these lying, fake companies will get the reckoning they deserve.
Aaron Swartz was a man who was a part of a whole lot of incredibly and visionary things, including:
- He created Reddit
- He helped make a thing called "RSS" which helps people learn all the stuff they want to without going to all the different websites that that takes (for that Obama government maximally persecuted him)
He was brutally prosecuted by Obama’s attack dog, Wall Street layer and Obama’s Attorney General, despicable Eric Holder, whose MO was to pile a mountain of charges on his many victims to push them in prolonged ultra-expensive trials.
The noble genius, Aaron Swartz, has been driven to suicide by Obama’s administration.
Thank you for bringing this up. The Aaron Swartz story is one of the tragedies of our time yet so few know about it. I believe he would have been pleased to see that his creation provided the platform for wsb and the incredible events of this week. Sadly, like Aaron, wsb will eventually be defeated by the elite powers that rule this country and drove him to suicide. Bring out the fucking pitchforks already!
I think Boris makes a good point Grisha. The origins of Reddit and its history often get scrubbed from our consciousness in the neoliberal diet of social and traditional media.
It is interesting that this occurred on Reddit. No?
Now, we agree there are many young who needlessly died under US imperial domination - but not that many like him who were to be leaders in tech with a sound ethical base (sharing research, making it public etc.)
That was cheap -- I am not at all of Russian origin (although that should be entirely irrelevant).
But I am convinced since day one, like Matt, Glenn, Aaron, many others) that the Russia-gate hoax has been and still is (see recent Brennan, Hillary, Pelosi, etc.) -- that is a scam of the century.
No "unity and healing" until there is accounting for this fraud. By far the highest interest of new government and the DNC cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax will NO Tbe / will NEVER be exposed -- hence many IOU's to primary propagandists, including despicable Kamala Harris, Neera Tanden, Pete Buttigieg, etc.
The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
The Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
"Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism."
Let me unpack this Boris. You recognize and rightly resent the fraudulent attack on a duly elected President - A deep state assault from day one - {I believe lee Smith's THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT - does for Trump what Wodward & Bernboy did for Watergate - and you're itemization covers about the 1st one third of his}
Yet - despite all the attempts to destroy this Man, his Family and his presidency - he was the most effective 1st term president of my lifetime.
An economy on fire - record growth - Lowest unemployment of minorities and first real bottom up wage increases since the pre-Great Society 60's - NO NEW WARS AND ACTUAL PUSH BACK TO THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND THEIR MINIONS - who resisted winding down those still there...
A president who did more for Veterans than McNasty or any other Commander In Chief since Truman. In a weekend! Decoupled health care for vets from a decrepit health care system that would make Bulgaria under Nicolae Ceaușescu blush.
All of which began to unravel once the Chinese Communist Party did what they NOT TRUMP did - we have yet to determine if the release was accidental or deliberate - but what was deliberate was their allowing thousands infected to head west - and - they - being the gangsters they are - locked down their own CCP populations while simultaneously vacumming up all the vital support PPP which they had become the worlds biggest export of.
Democrats exploited every opportunity - including a faux impeachment over nonsense - and it is TRUMPS FAULT - and he is a racist. To destroy this economy - what has been a devastating economic DEPRESSION FOR MOST AMERICANS.
He has always been an asshole. But his policies were working. Yes there are many things I wish he would have done differently - but how do you grade this particular pandemic? -
As opposed to Hoover's response to helping to feed starving Europe in 1919 and the follow up attempts - which by any standard were failures since the 1918 Pandemic killed until it spent itself - not via human agency thwarting it- but -au natural?
"he brought into government religious extremism and racism."
Trump switched from life-long Presbyterian to non-denominational Christian - the 1st president to switch denominations while in office since Eisenhower to do that.
So where is the 'religious extremism?' I have heard the racist charges before and reject them as well but the religious accusation - this is a new one.
Thanks -- your "unpacking" has not been very successful... ;-))
Hatred of China -- after decades of US corporations exported jobs to China to lower labor costs and (well documented) opposed regulations to better protect and pay workers there... BTW, China was written of as global basket case -- tens of millions would die of starvations every couple of years. The "godless" socialist China lifted 800M of its population out of abject poverty in merely 40 years -- an unprecedented success in history of mankind...
For months, instead of implementing well understood measures for combating virus (strict testing, contact tracing, lockdown of entire cities, paying monthly citizens to stay at home and/or unemployed) Trump "leadership" fought against even masks, fabricated transparent lies about "virus escaping", giving trillions of "aid" to corporations (that is, to donors of both parties). China and ALL Asian nations should be credit and recognition for their success in controlling Covid-19. Comparable to population size China's number of deaths (less than 5K) and US so far (~550K) -- Trump's incompetence killed 400 Americans for every China's death. Think about that !!
Religious extremists in government -- the Bible idiot and grifter, Ben Carson is a great example -- "pyramids were built by St. Joseph to store wheat" and selling oleander extract (together with MyPillow charlatan - as sure medicine to prevent Covid infection. The renown CDC was led by newly installed Redfield, a born again fundamentalist who sat on a Board of largest anti-gay organization, whose first action was to nearly double his salary, etc., etc.
About Trump's incompetence and sheer stupidity one can count and write indefinitely. A tragic example was not to pardon Assange while freeing low-life (including monsters that massacred Iraqis in Bagdad) that flatter and payed him. Trump was and still is pursued by DNC cabal and deep state apparatus -- freeing Assange he would help unmask the scam of the century -- Russia-gate hoax. Nothing summarizes better the sheer stupidity of Trump...
Time to wake up and get rid of your delusions.... Have a good day
It might interest you to know that in the last data dump before inauguration, the declassified documents showed something way beyond that the FBI changed that email to say that Page was not a reliable source for the CIA.
They showed that Page had been a source and witness FOR THE FBI itself, in a case where STRZOK WAS THE AGENT. And Page's testimony helped the US get guilty verdicts for Russian agents. So basically, Strzok himself knew personally of Page's history as a friend to the US helping the government, and pursued his BS FISA warrant anyway.
"That was cheap -- I am not at all of Russian origin (although that should be entirely irrelevant)."
Boris, buddy, that was a gag based on our screennames. A lot of the time my jokes don't land because I am a terrible comedian; the Fozzie Bear of this comment section. You have my apologies.
Thank you -- that is actually my name (somewhat shortened so that I don't need to spell it to each operator over and over and listen to giggling noises).
I am of Slavic origin though but don't understand beautiful Russian language-- and am not trying to be funny too often -- I am also not good at it... ;-))
Haha, I thought so, but wanted to punctuate the point about forgetting. Its a massive massive problem --- not knowing our own history. One person's bots are another person's argument service providers :)
«Swartz ain't the only American kid who died under the Obama administration. An American kid got droned, actually.»
Probably hundreds if not thousands, the CIA/DoD death squads who have got their monthly kill lists from GW Bush, BH Obama and D Trump (all of them have boasted about the kill lists for electoral purposes) abduct, torture or kill the targets whether they are american citizens or not, and many are american citizens. Anyhow the USA constitution limits the power of government to kill people without trial whether they are citizens or not, and limits it regardless of where the killing is done. But the USA constitution is just a piece of paper for most voters.
It's worth remembering how George Soros made his first big money...shorting the British pound against the ERM (predecessor to the Euro) in 1992. Soros made a billion - and screwed the entire British economy.
«Soros made a billion - and screwed the entire British economy»
The Conservatives “screwed up the entire British economy” since 1979 with by using oil exports to support a "strong pound" policy, deliberately inflicting on it what was already known as the "Dutch disease", in part to destroy the labor unions, in part to enrich their "sponsors" and voters.
All that Soros did was to take advantage of that "strong pound" policy, knowing that defending the "strong pound" was politically essential to the Conservatives, whose political position effectively handed him a free "put option".
And government politics handing hedgies free "put options" or "call options" is making them very rich.
And yet no Labour government has ever tried to return Britain to the glorious economic policies that the Conservatives inherited. Every now and then, a consensus opinion is actually right.
This is actually a George Soros criticism that's on point. Soros did lay waste to the pound. Anyone who's going to claim the Redditors are animals because they blew up Melvin Capital should find a person who sacked a national currency for profit far more disgusting. Soros incidentally had a massive year last year, as did hedge funds in general, for many of the same reasons listed in the above piece. But he's a socially acceptable investor, apparently.
All the billionaires had a massive year last year. That's why I asked the question. There's no doubt Soros is player, but he's just one of the older and more public figures.
There's something bigger at play and it's abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that it has to do with the loss of personal privacy, due process, and representative government to all but about 2,500 people.
The same people are guilty of the financial racketeering as they are the war crimes, torture, and sanctions that are killing folks every day.
The fact the US refuses to back off sanctions during this over hyped pandemic that is destroying more people every day is tied to this small group behavior as well.
It's the end of an epoch that's for sure. Hold on to your asses folks because things are going to get even weirder here shortly.
Neofeudalism is on the menu with debt peonage for desert unless we still have some ideologues who think the billionaires are stealing all this money and power in order to split it all up equally with us later.
It has become really difficult to say "Why, that's absurd! It's a conspiracy theory!", after 2020. The wealth transfer to the control of ever fewer people has continued apace, even as the whining about it has gone to dog whistle frequency. And the people who get elected decrying it...are also getting rich, somehow. It's just a conundrum, inside a riddle, wrapped in something inexplicable.
This has been going on for a while, but the coordinated "deplatforming" on ever shakier grounds and the balloons floated for "de-financing" make it even worse. The redefinition of words, the dismissal of people and their ideas based on automatic disqualifiers like "dog whistle" and "code words", making it possible to remove them from polite society based NOT ON WHAT THEY SAID, but on what it was asserted they said, by "the right people".
I think most people would be remiss to NOT be a little paranoid.
As for your last paragraph, there are a LOT of people in this country who should have inscribed on their tombstones:
"We should trust them this time, I think they really mean it."
Shows what can be done with shorting on scale... hence he screwed over the entire British economy. But it’s ok because he’s a hero for the “cultural left” so it’s all good!
This is super off-topic, but I engage with various left causes in various ways and Soros' name is never mentioned - EVER. Yes, Soros funds left organizations and writes extensively, but he's neither a hero or an anti-hero, he's a non-entity basically among the people organizing. I'm not advocating for or against any of the causes he funds in this comment, it's not the point. The point is the bizarre and inexplicable obsession with making Soros into this evil boogeyman is a huge distraction from even the issues that you would advocate for. Focus!
He’s a boogy man to the right in the same way the Koch brothers are to the left. The Koch’s get blamed for all manor of things they actually didn’t do. (I’m not on the right or left btw).
These are very equivalent delusions. Soros' Open Society did a lot of damage funding District Attorney campaigns, favoring DAs who seem to want a lot of low level crime in their communities. That's the most impactful thing I've heard attributed to him in a while.
Yes, these folks (SF, LA and Portland anyway) ran on the guise of reforming the criminal justice system and policing, and policing badly needs reform. In practice they have instituted lawlessness and the unequal administration of justice (to the extent it is ever administered).
Good for you. I however live somewhere where his money bought a DA that all seasoned long term local DAs and most of my leftist lawyer friends hate. Already been massively criticized from the left as too far out and progressive. So enjoy your insulation from Soros while we figure out how bad things will get before we can replace the DA.
Exactly this. The Open Society (which is Soro’s “philanthropic” org.) has dumped money into cities like Chicago, LA, Seattle to fund these really left wing progressive Attorney Generals who are wreaking havoc on these cities by releasing serious criminals left & right. I’m not just talking about non-violent drug users here. Aggregated assault, armed robbery the list goes on. That org dumped millions into George Gascons election in LA and he went on to beat the way more moderate candidate who was, ironically, a Black female.
It’s interesting how the media has made it verboten to speak of “Soros”, like you’re some tin foil hat conspiracy nut. Yet the left wingers can go on and in about the Koch brothers and no one blinks an eye. The Koch’s fund a whole bunch of libertarian initiatives as well and mettle where they shouldn’t as does Soros.
I appreciate this. Criminal justice reform is a topic where I need more conversation. There can be no doubt that massive reform is needed. No matter how we go about it, there's going to be tremendous resistance from entrenched interests (seasoned long-term local DA's don't want to lose their jobs to social workers who make $20k a year). The socio-economic reasons underpinning violent crime will take decades to undo. But where do we start? I'm not saying it's starting in the right place. Although the primary injustices of our criminal justice system are based in race, I don't think the "woke" approach is a good one.... Just throwing these thoughts out. This post is probably not the place to bury this discussion (although feel free to respond, I'll be happy to engage). One of those topics it would be nice to see Matt (or other non-MSM writers) tackle.
Mr. Taibbi writes that in 2008 "The free-market purists at the banks begged the government to stop the music," and then goes on to post a litany of examples where the politicians and bankers worked in tandem to loot the American people and save their own hides.
The eastern Wall Street bankers have never, since the first securities were traded there, been "free market purists," quite the opposite. The myth that Wall Street fought against the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank (that ghoul Woodrow Wilson's "Christmas gift to the American people") is just that -a myth. And the Federal Reserve Bank, especially since it was able to shed the gold standard that handcuffed the really lunatic actions it now routinely imposes, has been everything those Wall Street bankers had ever hoped it could be.
Using it they have crushed all competition (there are vastly fewer independent banks in America compared to 1913), taken market share (which was moving to the MidWest prior to 1913) and centered it in New York City (the only Fed branch which always has a vote at FOMC meetings and where all its market interventions are put into action) and siphoned untold trillions of unearned wealth via inflation into the pockets of the bankers and politicians. (Who do you think is monetizing the trillions of federal deficits each year?)
Everyone in the Kool Kids Klub will lament the "mob" that screwed the hedge funds who shorted GameStop, but the real anger should be directed at the Federal Reserve System and the politicians who control it via their banker friends. That is the source of your economic misery. Unlike what that clodhopper William Jennings Bryan said, the working man was not nailed to a "cross of gold." Gold is a shield that protects the working man. There's a reason the elite in the Kool Kids Klub hate gold with a passion.
«I still don't understand how I eat gold or trade it for vegetables after society collapses.»
That's something that great minds think about too, apparently obsessively: one of the most worrying signs of the times is this really, really important (for some obvious implications) article about hedge funders:
«I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own. [ ... ] Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.»
«"How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” I'm a broken record on this topic, but it's the weak spot in this scenario.»
That's indeed what they worry about. What worries me is that these very well informed insiders do worry about that scenario as happening in their own lifetimes.
«"What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader?"»
That's the "pretorians" problem, and there is an age old solution that often works: marry off the daughter to the leader of the "pretorians", so the rich guy and the leader become family, and the leader knows that his children will inherit the wealth.
That often works in a similar way in peacetime too.
Another solution they should consider: be a good guy to your workers right now so they feel like your leadership is a trustworthy schelling point in a crisis.
People are usually happy to default to the default leader if he's not an ass. No time to start not being an ass like the present.
I've asked the guard question myself many a time. If they're smart They (the wealthy) invest most of their largess in hundreds of lifetimes of supplies and have a tiny colony so they have a physician and dentist handy. If I were They I would make sure the bunker or gate and every other electronic device is coded to be accessible only by me, thus locking them out of most easy coup attempts. Having the guards families there being supported by a stable colony might prevent them from risking anything froggy.
«Uh... it's a relatively pliable metal and you can hammer it into jewelry and stuff"»
That's actually what gives fundamental value to gold: women love it because it is shiny and attracts the attention of the hot guys who can give them hot sons. A lot of people forget that "the markets" are not an end in itself, and reproduction is a very powerful motivator. If some people are motivated more by "the markets" than reproduction, eventually they become extinct.
The market trader may not need to exchange vegetables for gold, but if he thinks of a gift to his potential girlfriend, or she thinks of her potential boyfriend...
Additionally and relatedly, as David Graeber wrote in "Debt the first 5000 years", metal-money is soldier money: soldiers want to be paid in something physical and not too heavy. But in particular soldiers want to be paid in something coveted by women, all armies have camp followers, or wives back at home.
Finally, the answer to "Hey, man! Here's a gold nugget! Gimme some carrots and potatoes!" is always "Here is my gun and the other members of my gang, give me the gold nugget".
Thanks for the thought-provoking comment. Many are reluctant to talk about sex as being a motivator for political behavior, when it might be the prime motivator.
"If some people are motivated more by "the markets" than reproduction, eventually they become extinct."
"But in particular soldiers want to be paid in something coveted by women"
I think this take may be historically accurate but may also underestimate the effects of Internetized social isolation and consequent psychosis. As I understand your argument (crudely reductive, sorry), getting gold is getting laid. There are a lot of frustrated young dudes who have grown up in The Matrix; Tinder, etc. and are convinced they will never get laid. I think this feeds into the whole GME thing; just a hypothesis.
Under COVID lockdown (i.e. permanent Internetcy), we're all living in Mom's basement now. The guys who have been living in Mom's basement for years have a much better understanding of Mom's basement and can easily clown us.
I think there's a lot of truth here tho I often suspect the "guys in basements" story is sort of overwrought. There's a lot of people with extra time on their hands, lacking social outlets (getting laid or even just hanging out)
So probably lots of people who would be quite socially functional are playing online.
If you like games of chance and games of all kind, why wouldn't you want to join this stock market game if you can have both the feeling of a game and maybe make some real scratch at the end?
Anyway I may have lost my own thread here but I suspect that a bunch of these guys are pretty normal, socially functional guys. They are stuck at home, but so is everyone.
«There are a lot of frustrated young dudes who have grown up in The Matrix; Tinder, etc. and are convinced they will never get laid. I think this feeds into the whole GME thing»
That's pretty much why I was introducing this topic: that in terms of market behaviour the redditors are "acting out". Relatedly in a very good article on the technicalties (mentioned by another commenter):
the redditors are described as "nihilists". That is the kind of men who are willing to burn a few hundred (or even a few thousand) dollars "because fun", that is men who don't have wives or children. Sort of the prole equivalent of "masters of the universe" paying bums to fight, or burning $100 bills to light a $100 cigar, but with more real consequences that they can afford to bear as they are unattached by family. That is perfect "methodological individualist" market partcipants who don' give a damn.
This from an old dude who's long been through the reproductive phase: the value of gold inflates along with a market bubble and especially in times of crisis and uncertainty.
And, billions of men and especially women, India, Malaysia, etc still buy tons of gold yearly. And not just for dowries or bride price or holiday. Indian women buy lots of it for decoration and investment. If you get to know them, they'll invite you over to admire their stash.
«and are convinced they will never get laid. [...] The guys who have been living in Mom's basement for years have a much better understanding of Mom's basement and can easily clown us.»
In part, but there is another growing category, not the unattractive and despised "involuntary celibates" who remain attached to mom, but the attractive and hated "voluntary celibates" who could get laid, but don't because they reckon it is not worth doing in current conditions, and who don't live with mom, but on their own. These can be even more "nihilistic"/unattached because they don't even live in mom's basement.
Ha! Careful there: I wrote "reproduction" advisedly. Sex is not as important as a motivator, because without reproduction it does not have long term life-changing consequences.
«as being a motivator for political behavior»
In part because of political correctness (most men who are unattractive are unaware of how much women are motivated by sex and especially by reproduction), in part because of the right-wing "whig" propaganda about "methodological individualism", where individuals are imagined without past (parents, siblings) or future (spouses, children) and entirely seen as "market participants".
«(crudely reductive, sorry), getting gold is getting laid.»
Indeed, but perhaps too reductive: it applies with camp followers (it is their business model) and to the majority of men who are unattractive. But it does not apply to the minority of attractive men, who really don't need gold to get laid (as many/most women are quite desperate and aggressive to get laid with them). Indeed many women love gold because it is shiny to get noticed by attractive men. So broadly speaking unattractive men accumulate "gold" to get some access to women who want "gold" to get noticed by attractive men.
I guess your are thinking of roman soldiers, but they were not really paid with salt: they were given salt rations (probably more than they needed so they could trade some). They would not send a bag of salt home to their family or retire with a cartload of salt, and they did not pay the camp followers with bags of salt. Even if salt was a lot more expensive than today, and harder to find, to the point that it was often controlled by the state, but still not as easy to accumulate and carry around as gold or silver, and not as shiny to pay or gift women. And the latter is very important.
Men hustle and fight because of women, not because of markets. Someone wisely pointed out that but for women most men would live in cardboard boxes and fish or play games all day.
"Someone wisely pointed out that but for women most men would live in cardboard boxes and fish or play games all day."
One of my favorite lines in all of American literature, by Mattie Ross, the narrator of Portis's TRUE GRIT: "Men will live like billy-goats if given the chance."
To my earlier point, I think there are many men of marriageable age who are (metaphorically or perhaps literally) living in cardboard boxes and playing games all day. Where are the economic incentives here?
Judge Holden from BLOOD MERIDIAN: "Men are born for games. Nothing else."
«there are many men of marriageable age who are (metaphorically or perhaps literally) living in cardboard boxes and playing games all day. Where are the economic incentives here?»
Really wrong framing/question: what are the *reproductive* incentives? As to that two partial answers:
* Most women are no longer virgins on marriage, that is the paternity of at least the first-born is a lot more uncertain.
* Because they get financial pensions, many or most women no longer want children or just one.
I'm really enjoying your comments, as I'm designing a unit on the history of barter and money for teens, leading up to digital currencies. And I've lived in cultures, most of Asia, that still value gold for ornament and store of value.
Then probably you have already discovered the essential books on the subject, D Graeber's "Debt the first 5000 years" and JK Galbraith's "Money whence it came, where it went".
There is a book that is little known but also vitally important for the history of barter and money and especially close to "barter": David Astle "The babylonian woe", and it can be easily found and downloaded from the WWW (e.g. Archive.org), and there is also Mitchell Innes (mentioned by Astle) "What is money" published in "The Banking Law Journal" that can be dowloaded from the WWW.
Michael Hudson has also written well on the subject, and the "Palgrave dictionary of political economy" of 1894 has an interesting entry for "money".
I have written some summaries of my understanding as comments to this also good series of articles here:
However, Grisha does point out a key issue: in a societal collapse scenario, you lose specialization most of all. Unspecialized farmers don't care much about gold. You need at least enough civilization to have someone making jewelry or needing to do a transaction that barter can't handle. And barter can handle a lot, surely most anything going on at a small farm. It's not often commented on that large denomination coins didn't circulate - most of the gold issues of the US and even silver dollars tend to have a lot of bag marks on them from being transported around in mint bags, but not all that much wear on their surfaces from people touching them. Mainly because they ended up in vaults and mostly stayed there. This was also true of the solidi and aureus of past ages.
«Unspecialized farmers don't care much about gold. You need at least enough civilization to have someone making jewelry or needing to do a transaction that barter can't handle.»
But that is a truly minimal level of civilization, and even unspecialized farmers have daughters or wives who want shiny decorations for the village dance, or are women who want to outcompete other women as to shiny decorations.
«Mainly because they ended up in vaults and mostly stayed there. This was also true of the solidi and aureus of past ages.»
But that happened in relatively advanced civilizations with banks and financial systems and therefore a need for collateral.
At the base the demand for gold when collapse happens is the demand by soldiers for something non-perishable, easily subdivided, with a high value-weight ration, and widely accepted, and that means in large part widely accepted by women, because soldiers.
I guess my point is that gold has value to our society because of the assumptions built within it. Those assumptions may not exist in a differently structured society (or completely unstructured, as it were).
«gold has value to our society because of the assumptions»
My point was that this is only partly true. In the jargon some things are called "collectibles", for example BitCoin or rare stamps, which have only metaphysical (or even negative) value, sometimes as status symbols.
Gold is *mostly* a collectible, but apart from relatively modern industrial uses, it has an intrinsic value as decoration. Most men (who are not attractive) severely underestimate how desperate are most women to attract the attention of hot men, by any means necessary (relatedly most men really underestimate how brutal and violent are all-women schools and working environment).
«differently structured society (or completely unstructured»
Completely unstructured societies are in fluid stages that don't last relatively long. Again, and again, reproduction matters more than "the markets" and it generates structure, and vice-versa lack of structures reduces reproduction.
Actual soldiers in a poorly civilized or uncivilized environment just take what they want. What they want is usually, in this order sex, booze, fungible goods. In practice this means rape and slaughter to get whatever they want. In the absence of a trading infrastructure attaching value to it, gold would be pretty low on the list because it weighs a lot. And they aren't very interested in keeping their women happy, that's what the weapons are for. Even in Napoleon's armies, being a washerwoman/prostitute wasn't a great way to get rich.
«Actual soldiers in a poorly civilized or uncivilized environment just take what they want.»
Looting and raping happen mostly after sieges, and there are long stretches where nothing much happens. And they are very bad for discipline, and disorganized armies or gangs get slaughtered. War is rarely a "free for all",
«In the absence of a trading infrastructure attaching value to it, gold would be pretty low on the list because it weighs a lot.»
If there is no value to it, even for women, why carry it at all, regardless of weight? And if value is attached to it, its scarcity means it has a high value-to-weight ratio, much higher than salt (even if it was a lot scarcer in the past or booze or smokes).
«And they aren't very interested in keeping their women happy, that's what the weapons are for.»
That enormously underestimates the power of women (which is mostly in getting men to fight each other), and the power of family relationships too (not all women are rape targets for soldiers, they have sisters, mothers, daughters too).
Another problem with gold is that the first thing governments tend to do in times or war or financial collapse is seize gold. If/when possession is made illegal you will only be able to sell it on the back market at a poor exchange rate. Having some holdings in a widely recognized and stable foreign currency can be more useful than gold and easier to barter with.
Yes, because physical gold is hard to store and dangerous, and gold "certificates" are rather unreliable, while (established) mining stocks are subject to some double checking by analysts, "the markets" and potential shorts.
But then precious metal mining stocks can be regarded as just a special case of "stocks".
«Having some holdings in a widely recognized and stable foreign currency»
Those are also subject to government seizure. Anyhow if someone has physical control of your body, everything else is rather "negotiable".
That gold might be worth keeping around for better connections (in terms of corrosion resistance, not conductance) when you rewire an old washing machine stator with a pelton wheel and park it down the sluice for your 200w of juice from the creek.
Then it's just gardening by day and reading by night until the radiation finishes you off.
Who wrote the article "Pandemic Villains: Robinhood"; Matt Taibbi or one of the pearl clutchers he mocks here?
Taibbi on Dec 9th: "What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market? A lot, as it turns out."
Taibbi today: "The only thing 'dangerous' about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter."
One of these was one of your worst takes (the first one) and one of these was the correct take (the latter). Together, though, it's a comedy of hypocrisy just as the one you mock here.
The Robinhood story was about Robinhood taking advantage of their customers, and about the issues involved with selling deal flow. I wasn't being critical of more people entering the stock markets. If anything this episode - in which Robinhood abruptly halted trading with the equivalent of a post-it note left on the fridge - underscores some of the issues with those platforms.
And, more often than not (from what I see), getting the complete wrong end of the stick... I've noticed the trend too and it absolutely baffles me because it's not as though the message in that "Pandemic Villains: Robinhood" piece, for example, was difficult to take in.
So you're paying a monthly subscription to either wilfully misinterpret or totally miss the point of these articles and then whine back about them. Very odd.
Yeah I don't get why those people are here. Maybe some of them signed up for a year because someone recommended it, but they actually don't like Matt's writing and they can't get a refund. So they troll the comments. That theory sounds pretty farfetched now that I write it out.....I'm not sure why there are so many commenters on every story trying to prove Matt wrong or prove he messed up.
i'm not setting MT up as some Infallible Golden God, but there are clearly commentities here who have some vested interest in trying to make him look bad. that makes for fun reading; trolling techniques perfected on twitter don't work so well here because of the smaller audience and necessarily longer attention span
i mean, if i, a normal person, subscribed to someone's newsletter and decided it was terrible, i would shrug, eat the loss, and move on. but why subscribe in the first place when many free examples are available? why indeed
I think some commenters are uncomfortable with Matt’s stories on media wokeness at the expense of what they expect is a traditional Rolling Stone lefty/partisan D perspective. If mainstream Ds (and their focus on wokeness as internal party discipline) are the new social power brokers, a lot of people are uncomfortable thinking on the social margins. It’s why Hilldog accused Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian agent-power slapping back.
Matt, did you watch the interview with the CEO of WeBull yesterday attempt to explain the mechanics of what's happening and how trading firms allowed sells and not buys? It made no sense to me even after his deep dive explanation. If you had a chance to listen to it, can you with in on is accuracy? It sounded as though he didn't answer the question.
It's the same problem RH has - you can explain margin calls by volatility, you can even explain not offering options by claiming the market makers are overwhelmed temporarily (though their prices can easily rise to reflect that).
You can't explain a blanket prohibition on buys and not on sales, especially not by saying effectively you think prices are wrong because they're speculative. Price discovery is the supposed value the stock market offers.
Either this was blatant manipulation for their main client, Citadel, or the market AS A WHOLE was minutes from a liquidity crisis. Either way transparency and regulators should be here.
ESPECIALLY when the fund most affected was propped up by your biggest investor (Citadel) and THEN you took action that kept your own customers from cashing in on that loss.
BTW, besides RobinHood and that fund that was shorting the stocks, you know who else Citadel owns? Janet Yellen. They've paid her more than she will make in four years of "public service". AND, good news for Citadel, SHE is the person who is explaining the whole affair to Joe Biden.
Man, I guess it's all above board, Citadel is just really lucky and wealth inequality remains inexplicable.
The market makers are not overwhelmed they are just pricing the call options wrong. Probably done by an algorithm that doesn’t include the sheer disgust and hatred people have for Ivy League elites, vulture capitalists, and Wall Street thugs in its pricing model.
How do you price in spite and contempt into your Black Scholes model?
It's pretty straightforward. When you buy securities, your broker executes the trade and submits the trade for clearance to the NSCC. NSCC multilaterally nets down buys and sells from all the different NSCC participants, reducing settlement costs and settlement risk. Since NSCC doesn't just net down, but also novates all of these transactions, they require collateral between T and T+2 from the participant with the net settlement obligation. Brokers have to fund that themselves. Even if the customer has cash in their account siufficient to pay for the securities, the broker can't use that cash (it's sitting the customer reserve account) until after settlement date. NSCC calculates required collateral on a VAR basis. If all of a sudden you have a bunch of one-sided buys in stocks showing high levels of vol, NSCC is going to require higher collateral from the brokers submitting the one-sided orders in those names. Some brokers, particularly less well capitalized ones like Robinhood, may have difficulty satisfying those requirements, so they did the right and conservative thing of curtailing trades to ensure they wouldn't be hit with NSCC collateral requirements they couldn't satisfy.
Appreciate you walking through this. It's helpful to understand. I'm still confused by the ban on buying but green light to sell. If I sold 1000 shares of GME yesterday, the ban prevented anyone from buying it. So what happened to the shares being sold?
If your broker has 1MM shares of net purchases that are somewhere between T and T+2, a sell order will reduce the NSCC collateral requirement, since NSCC novates all these transactions and calculates VAR on your rolling net purchase or delivery obligation. An additional buy order will increase it.
If every NSC participant was unwilling to take additional buy orders, you are right that Robinhood permitting customers to sell wouldn't work because there would be no purchasers. But that isn't the case. Most BDs did not restrict purchases or sales, just the ones that had NSCC collateral issues (and a few that didn't but were seeking to limit headline risk of letting retail do something stupid). If you wanted to execute buy orders clearing Pershing, Instinet, NFS or JPMSI yesterday, you had no issue.
And if they'd suspended trading on both sides, that might make sense. However they suspended only the buys - even if they were required collateral only on buys, that goes directly against their claim that they didn't want to fuel speculation.
You'd prefer they also suspend sales? Preventing long sellers from closing their positions? That's a minority view. Broker-dealers never want to be in a position of prohibiting customers from closing positions. Remember, Robinhood does not accept short sales.
Wow. Thanks for the explanation. I never understood that before. But when robinhood is facing a liquidity crisis, shouldn't they just get emergency funding from their investors or commercial lines of credit? Doesn't the fed even have a facility for this? The way they chose to solve their liquidity crisis was to put a massive finger on the scales of the market which had a material negative effect on a huge group of their customers. That's unexcusable, and should end with them being shutdown by regulators.
That's exactly what they did, but - and I'm not a VC guy, so I may be mistaken - VCs probably aren't that used to do doing $1B investment rounds with 48 hour turn-around times. What they needed were unsecured NSCC spike-line facilities. News reports suggest that they drew $500-600MM (unclear whether spike lines at the BD level or unsecured revolver at holdco level that holdco in turn contributed as either equity or unsecured financing) on credit facilities, so they had liquidity that they thought was appropriate for spikes in NSCC clearing fund deposit requirements, but they underestimated the size of their liquidity needs. For context, here is Robinhood Securities' most recent publicly-available balance sheet (Robinhood Securities is the clearing firm for Robinhood Financial): https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Unaudited%20Statement%20of%20Financial%20Condition%2006.30.20.pdf
It shows clearing deposits of $235MM. Assuming that was self funded with equity, and the additional $600 drawn is all in excess of normal RH clearing fund deposit requirements, they were hit with $800MM+ NSCC clearing deposit requirement, a littles less than 4x normal liquidity needs.
It's worth noting here that Robinhood is new to clearing. For most of its history, it cleared at Apex (the old Person). It has been self-clearing for only like a year or two and they are doing it with less than half a billion of shareholders equity. For comparison, Interactive Brokers and Fidelity's NFS maintain close to $6B shareholder's equity and they have decades more experience with unusual NSCC spikes. It's easy to criticize new businesses as amateurs and idiots, but remember, they still built a bigger broker-dealer than anyone in this comment section did.
Why couldn't they have limited the amount of new money transfers coming into users accounts or put additional holds on the money coming in. Surely they knew that new money coming in was soon to be used to buy stocks and add to their liquidity problem. They also could have margin called people and closed their positions, right? This theory also doesn't explain why they blocked users from even searching for GME or AMC. It didn't even show up, you couldn't even look at the chart. Like WTF is the reason for that?
I read a NUT story explaining that. You did a good job, except some terms you use might not be understood by a layman such as myself.
But what I gathered from that article, the process has exposed RH’s weakness. If someone, such as the Barstool guy and the WSB people really wanted to crush RH, all they would need to do is pick stocks that are more or less stable and trade them like the devil, all on RH naturally, billions of trades, for a few days. That would cause NSCC to require even more cushion. RH would have to get more infusions of venture capital loans, and pretty soon, they would be way over their potential market value and wouldn’t be able to issue an IPO. Crushed.
Or robinhood just halts buys on those stocks as soon as they detect they may need more cash which is exactly what they did. But that solution pisses off so many customers and people lose faith that they will be able to trade that robinhood's long term future is in question.
They simply shouldn't allowed that amount of customer money to be transferred into their platform until they had enough capital to buffer all the trading with that money in any stock. They could have delayed new customer accounts of limited incoming transfers to $1000 a week or something like that. Their platform shows you the most popular stocks other people are trading. It actively gamifies and encourages trading like this. They should have planned for the consequences on their liquidity.
They can’t halt buys for every stock. The main strategy, I think, would be to make billions of trades on a daily basis to a limited number of stocks. That way RH becomes a drain on the rest of the brokers. They have to add more money to the reserve to cover all the trades at RH.
One consequence, even if venture capitalists loan RH even more money, is that would pressure the other brokers and NSCC to abandon RH. No clearinghouse, no brokerage, no IPO. Leave the two rats holding their multibillion dollar dead app.
How dare they screw the little guys.
But, you know, I’m not wise in the ways of Wall Street. Perhaps it isn’t possible to do what I think can be done. It sure seems that that would be a way to destroy RH.
Now that all the unrestricted trading from Wednesday has cleared and they have secured hundreds of millions in funding, we should expect the restrictions should be reducing right? HA I'm not holding my breath. Currently, as of Sunday morning, GME is limited to a single share: https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/changes-due-to-recent-market-volatility/
I'm not sure. I'm super curious to see whether they actually failed on an NSCC call and got hit with an additional adequate assurance deposit requirement.
That may be, but if it is, they aren't keeping their customers informed. If they cared about their customers ability to make their own investment choices and about price discovery for these tickers in the market, wouldn't it be helpful for them to be more transparent about what's going on so we (and the market) could know what to expect? They don't they only care about themselves.
But... admit it, you were worried for a minute there. Before RH started manipulating GME by preventing buying, and making it clear where they stood, there had to have been a moment where you thought you might have to praise RH :)
The problem with them selling order flow to make money off customers is independent of the problem with them preventing buys of specific stocks. If they hadn't restricted anything and simply allowed people to trade normally they wouldn't really be deserving of any praise, that's what everyone expects a brokerage to do.
Absolutely. But, when the squeeze was on initially, you had people positioned to profit from this order flow making essentially the same argument Matt was "we shouldn't celebrate the inexperienced accessing the market when they could mess stuff up", but for the opposite definitions of "stuff". Matt was worried about the masses getting slaughtered by pros. While the pros were worried about getting slaughtered by the masses.
RH restricting buy access changes the argument. It's no longer about how dumb or smart the retail investors are. It's about the fact that RH is there purely to provide a flow that is profitable to those that are paying for it.
The redditors, but they're hoping to have taken down some hedge funds before that happens. For the most part, this isn't people trying to get rich, it's people willing to spend (and lose) a few hundred bucks in order to take down some multi-billion dollar hedge funds that got greedy and over-shorted stock.
A couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.
I had a person in my office, (who now I know participates in the r/wsb forum) tell me just that. I’ve chosen to potentially take a loss and surrender “taxes” to achieve a community goal. The invert of “if you’re going to tax me I want representation” is “me and some others are going to volunteer for potential taxation to achieve a goal our community supports.” He considered GME a charity fundraiser with potential profits.
«A couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.»
It would have been much better and longer lasting if the bucks had gone to labor union memberships and their political funds so the labor unions could buy their own gaggle of representatives and senators like Wall Street and the Business Roundtable do.
But a large part of the attacks on labor unions by Republicans and "centrist" Democrats was precisely because of that: their sponsors want to be the only ones allowed to buy politicians.
I am presuming you have never worked in NYC. Having done so, I can give an anecdotal reason why I despise labor unions. My job back in the mid-90s involved transporting computers between buildings in Midtown - mostly for repair. I had one of those folding hand trucks. The reason I had a folding one rather than a real hand truck, which would have been way more useful than that cheap folding thing, is that you a. can't use the freight elevator and b. can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is. Of course, being an IT support guy for one of the building tenants, I didn't qualify for any union that controlled the building anyway, even if I were interested in joining.
My little anecdotal story can be extended out to strikes in Great Britain over not much at all, the slowdowns in getting things off the docks or through railroad systems in the US. Anything that has a union involved is slowed down and the service sucks. Ever wonder why there are so many long haul trucks running around spewing diesel fumes? You have your answer.
Unions make life suck just a little more for everyone.
«why I despise labor unions. [...] can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is.»
So you despise free markets and freedom of contract between consenting parties! The building owner and the union have reached an agreement and exercised that freedom of contract, and your employer have chosen in the free market to be a tenant in that building, and nobody is stopping them from choosing from the free market a non-union building in NYC or anywhere else if necessary.
That's the American Way: capitalism means that winners do whatever it takes, and if a party have the leverage to fuck over their customers, they do it to the fullest extent they can get away with.
In particular in the vast majority of cases it is employers that have the leverage to fuck over their employees, and it is corporations that have the leverage to fuck over customers, and impose as many restrictive practices as they can on customers and employees, and labor unions do that in only a minority of cases.
Regardless, in the case you give as example, the party really responsible for the restrictive practices is the building owner, because neither you nor your employer have contract with the union, that you cannot carry stuff yourself is certainly a rule in the tenancy contract between the building owner and your employer.
Why did the building owner put them in the tenancy contract? Because, given their leverage vs. that of the labor union they had two alternatives:
* Give them a higher wage without restrictive practices, and the cost of that falls on them.
* Give them a lower wage plus a monopoly on certain types of work, and the cost of that falls on tenants.
"Rage against the dying of the light." That is what is happening here. At that point it doesn't matter anymore, it's about making a stand and sending a message.
I'm not one of the WSB guys, but I interpret the message to be rage against the decoupling from useful work and financial rewards in American society. I'm glad some of them got rich, although I'm not sure how much a digital dollar is going to be worth in a while.
The Puritan work ethic has been utterly hollowed out. People can see it. It's visible. Hard work doesn't get you ahead financially. Personal connections and knowing how to game the system are what gets you ahead. The elite are scam artists.
Exactly. And that is why this is happening. The curtain has been pulled back as far as it can go. Nobody can deny the markets, the "system," the American Dream is now, and has been for decades, a crock of shit.
Agree-I’m not jealous of blown up financial stock value and I don’t feel bad when it disappears. If you can’t handle the game, stay off the field-and don’t change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing.
"don’t change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing."
haha, this is exactly what the big public trading platforms are doing right now by locking down buys on GME etc. If Twitter is to be believed, Robinhood is actually selling GME holders' shares against their will. That's a pseudo-factoid I can't verify, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
I guess it depends on what your definition of 'getting ahead financially' is but I can't agree with your post. Most people I know have, in fact, 'gotten ahead financially' by working hard and rising either through their ranks or building clientele. America's dream isn't fake, it just isn't being taken advantage of by some people.
The billionaire head of a major U.S. venture capital firm is the self-made child of dirt poor immigrants. He put himself through school, obtained several bio and business degrees, and worked 18- hour days to get where he is. He remains peripatetic and aggressive, working probably 10 times as hard, in real terms, as a randomly chosen nine to fiver. Without venture capital, we wouldn't have Apple or Google, or Silicon Valley, the latter a mixed blessing, or many healthcare innovations. The problem is the excess and greed,the personal jets and steroidal houses, the narcissistic culture we're seeing now, the lack of perspective or proportion, the protestant work ethic/help your neighbor raise his barn restraints. That lack of restraint and greed is what the U.S. must address, the debauched bonus and pay often not always at the expense of the stretched taxpayer. Warren had that right.
Most people who are rich possess the drive to make money -- being smart never hurts. Most people may not have that overweening drive -- they make do and spend time with family, watch the tube, or want to teach, help the sick and the infirm, write, protect the planet, make the world a better place for the innocent or helpless. We make choices. Some phone it in, and gripe about not being rich. In a matter of 15 years, my sister's immigrant gardener, originally from Mexico, became a full-blown landscaping enterpreneur with three beautiful trucks and crews. His brother owns an electrician business that services major developments. They made that happen. The landscaper put his profits back onto the company, and performed consistent, reliable, good work. The result is a thriving business.
There's nothing funnier to me than the people who think WSB is a bunch of principled populists sticking it to the man. It's a tiny minority of that but it's largely nihilistic opportunists laughing at memes and rallying together because they've proven the ability to move the market many times over (GME isn't close to the first time this has worked). To be clear, I have no problem with that! Let 'em rip! The vast majority that are doing it know that it's a stupid idea but it's _fun_! More power to them, I have non problem with it but will always laugh at people who back-fit a populist rebellion on it. Even more so when Taibbi decries the great evils of Robinhood for encouraging reckless trading and then a month and half later praises reckless trading on Robinhood as populist rebellion!
I think you would be surprised. I didn't really care until big tech started trying to deplatform these people. And, then today when the hedge funds and brokerage houses conspired to prohibit buys (not sales, only buys) it exposed a level of corruption that we suspected existed but had never seen so blatantly in the daylight before.
So, I willing to lose a few thousand dollars to help my fellow apes take billions of dollars from Gabe Plotkin. And, I can't wait to be seated next to Gabe at the Applebees.
For me this is 100% protest. I'm not the type of guy who is going to attend a rally in DC. I'm a boring ass 45 year old, but I have diamond hands.
I don't entirely disagree about the mix, but the nihilist group will get out on time so it's not like everyone who backed the move is going to get rekt
Anyway... the redditors who lose will lose no more than they put in
The hedge fund guys will lose geometrically and that's what's charming about the story
I feel like Matt's uber fan boys think me mocking his gross hypocrisy here project on me that I don't find this charming/hilarious. I'm pro WSBers here! It's great! It's just Matt had his two totally predictable takes and they're directly opposed to one another.
You work for Wall Street. That meme thing is just what the hedge fund scum have been using on the news. Wall Street is fake, dude. It's fake for everyone. Let us know where you live and when you will be out of town next so we can go through your shit.
This trade is safer by leaps and bounds than buying index funds at ATHs, right? The hedgies have publicly disclosed that they are short 140% of the float in $GME and keep loading up every time it climbs. In that scenario a swing group of buyers controls the price. It would be reckless to not pile on, right?!
I agree about people trying to back-fit a populist rebellion onto this. Well said.
I disagree with the idea that Matt's two articles are in conflict. It's funny that these guys sent the hedge funds running. But at the end of the day, the stock price will fall, or else GME will have to find a new business model. If the Robinhood crowd wind up with a majority of the stock, they'd own the company. But what do they do with it? Hire a new board to do what?
Sometimes public companies go private. They do so because they think the company is worth more than the market value. Do these investors think that's true in this case?
[Who is to say the original planners are still the ones moving the stock? Robinhood is allowing buys of ONE share? That ain't gonna move anything.]
The real story here was the proof of concept. For the first time in my 40+ years, I've seen the populous stick it to the wealthy in a way that they actually give a shit about. I liked Occupy, but at the end of the day Finance didn't ultimately care that much. It didn't affect their money long-term and they were already experienced with waiting out a Long position in their penthouses.
This seems like it might be different. They're panicking so much over this that they're being blatantly... blatant about it in their hypocritical calls for regulation. That and the fact that they're losing money and maybe the citizens finally found something that will threaten them.
At this point, that which discomfits my enemy is welcome. IF there were such a thing as "Trumpism" (outside the tiny brains of hysterical blue checks), and IF it could be shown this little blow against the Empire was committed by "Trumpistas"...I'd still approve.
It's going to take some bitter hatred and a willingness to absorb loss for this to get turned around. If it gets turned around.
I could be reading him wrong but my understanding is that Matt thinks that the populists and the socialists would be much more effective at learning even the basics of Finance. He's said as much before.
For example - setting aside losing twice in races that were absolutely rigged in various ways against him - Bernie might have got the edge he needed to tip past the long odds in 2020 if he had been able to talk solutions to the Finance issues like Warren was able to do. Warren was able to peel enough of the "I'm a socialist but I'm a serious ADULT! harumph" vote off of Bernie mostly (in my opinion) due to the fact that she could talk a wonky finance game. Warren may or may not have been all talk with her "Plans" but she could still talk, and they weren't even hugely complicated concepts! Imagine if Bernie could have trumped (original meaning) Warren with his own specific finance regulation/tax plans?
My take is this is asymmetrical political warfare, and sometimes the poorly equipped/financed teams can win the battle using guerrilla warfare. Using their weapons against them is a key principle of guerrilla. VC sent France and the US limping out of their country by using their own weapons against them. VC would take discarded ration cans left by soldiers and fix them into mines.
The question of which opportunists/deplorables/gamerpoopsocks constitute the meme stock class is beside the point. This has been a proof of concept for a strategy that works because it's a counterstrike that the elites actually give a shit about. It gutted some of them where it hurt the most. It's plausible that the populists could further develop this strategy and bring back a little wealth in doing so. I want to see where this goes because nothing else that has been tried in recent decades has done anything to make them care.
Well just right now there's AMC and BB as well. Prior to this you had Hertz, NIO, NKLA, arguably TSLA, possible AMD argument, though that one really matches well with fundamentals. There's been more but these are some I remember from the top of my head.
Exactly, there are people all in on Gamestop, but the majority put in as much as they're willing to lose. If and when their position's value evaporates, it will have been more than worth it. Per WSB, "Diamond Hands" don't sell.
After prohibiting the purchase of shares and options earlier, the big market makers implemented a short ladder attack, wherein they put in lower and lower bid prices between themselves with little volume, and since no one can buy, it causes the stock price to appear to be plummeting. However, people who follow the subreddit quickly learned of the ruse. The shorts are still screwed for the foreseeable future.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Did anybody even mention "a bailout" for these plebes?? Don't think so.
Quite the contrary, BIden's press secretary's brother ran the hedge fund that got caught with their shorts down. Janet Yellen made a million dollars in "speaking fees" from Citadel alone! I think people know what "side" our public servants are on.
BTW, the press secretaries LinkedIn profile had her brother scrubbed from it, TODAY.
"Who do you think is going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up?" - as always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20. On the bright side, the publicity will probably help keep the company alive. Retail is a tough business, these days.
«as always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20»
A critical detail is that the redditors are not buying the stock, for $20 or $200, they are buying call options on the stock. They know very well that their call options will eventually and soon become worthless, most of them have only bought a $100-$200 of call options and they can afford to lose them.
The big banks selling the call options will lose a lot of money though because their option pricing algorithms make them buy the stock to cover their positions. A large part of the story is that if a stock price ramps up very quickly, those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag.
calls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out huge. The people jumping in now are either long buying small amounts or spending a small fortune for calls. Puts are also wildly inflated too so someone sees the writing on the wall. Truth be told a lot of the last few days are FOMO guys and aren’t going to get rich.
“calls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out huge”
You are missing two important details:
* The huge rise on GME happened because a few days ago calls were "below $100". We are discussing how the stock could have jumped so much in so few days, the past, not the present. As I wrote part of the issue is likely that "those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag", and the lag has shrunk.
* Most of the Redditors buy calls and stock on RobinHoodm and the important selling point of RobinHood is that they "sell" fractional shares and calls. That a lot of people are buying fractions is strongly hinted by RobinHood having to suspend new purchases of fractions for a while while they went out and raised capital for collateral, which makes sense only if they are the actual holders of the unfractioned shares and calls.
Greedy uneducated FOMO amateurs. Stack Market is gambling pure and simple and if you don't study and understand the odds you will leave the table broke. The house (Wall Street) always wins in the end. But those that understand the odds will at times score big time. This is a grown up world, these are not kindergarteners investing their milk money hoping to ride the pony outside. You make your bets and you takes your chances. If mom and pop have their life saving in a managed account and their account manager is not aware of the GameStop danger then they surely chose the wrong place to trust their saving s to. Anyone buying in at $200 has to know the risk.
Or, "Anyone buying in at $200 has to have $200 to lose." And I'm pretty sure most of them do.
Wonder how they're going to phrase the message that "You're not getting your $1400 Covidbux checks because some of you might do something irresponsible with it."
They'll have to first set it up that it's all the fault of "Trumpers" or "Alt-righters", which, with a fully compliant media, they'll probably be able to dl.
Who do you think was going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up without the WSB/RH rise? GME was shorted 140%, so we know who was going to make money - the guys who just lost their asses. So who would have lost without WSB and RH?
Exactly my sentiment. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Andrew has only a vague idea who is holding GME stock, and much more important, Andrew's has never, ever voiced concern for that group prior to this situation.
Everyone who agrees with, "Hold the line" - although, quite a few of the "holders" didn't invest their life savings (we can only hope). It sounds as if most of my fellow redditors simply threw in nominal amounts and let the network effect take hold.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Unless something really crazy happens it will be a lot of Redditors and some of the hedge fund guys. You're totally right, though, they have 100% stuck it to Melvin and have proven (they already had, this is just the biggest time) they can squeeze a short with great effect.
To be totally fair to the story here, WSB is promoting a Robinhood boycott after this GME fiasco. I know that you're specifically attacking Matt's take on bringing in more retail investors overall, but if you simplify his point down to "Robinhood bad," WSB would agree in solidarity. They were the ones who orchestrated the mass 1-star ratings on Robinhood, after all.
In any case, it's nice to see Matt get a different perspective on retail investing. Curious to see if his perspective shifts after WSB "GME loss porn" begins making headlines. I always knew that WSB was somewhere special, but to see it get this much attention and scrutiny, leading to nonsense "alt-right" takes and censorship from Discord... well, it's a little bittersweet, like seeing your favorite indie band go mainstream. Let the autists trade in peace, I say!
Amen. Agreed across the board. As you said, though, my point is Matt rips Robinhood for letting and even encouraging its users to be reckless and then now praises their recklessness. I would do neither and just say "let the reckless be reckless, it's their choice".
Say that I wrote an article about how Tesla automobiles are unsafe - they spontaneously combust, they spontaneously accelerate, the autopilot will crash, etc.
Then say I wrote an article about how the National Automobile Dealers Association lobbying states pass laws prohibitively regulating factory-owned automobile dealerships (i.e. Tesla) is an attempt to ban competition and corner the market.
Is this a comedy of hypocrisy? No, both things can be true at the same time. A product can be unsafe and its competitors can be cheats.
Are you really suggesting Matt was off base in the earlier article when he questioned the true nature of Robinhood? Today? After Robinhood straight up drove the prices of a number of stocks down by only allowing users to sell?
The main claim of that article was that RH is incentivized to encourage investors to behave in ways that are profitable to those that are pfof... Today we witnessed the extent to which RH is willing to go encourage specific behavior (only allowing closing of gme positions).
There is no inconsistency here. You can enjoy watching retail investors fuck with hedge fund managers for fun and possibly profit and, at the same time, observe that RH is designed for the benefit someone other than the users of the app.
Let me first accept your leading sentence as true.
If you encourage investors to behave in ways that are are profitable to PFOF, that isn't inherently bad. It's only bad if those ways are actually themselves harmful to the investors. Well what are the users encouraged to do that is harmful? Things that are reckless gambles with high possible returns like buying short dated, OOTM options also known as what's going on with WSB and GME. So either encouraging this behavior is bad or it isn't. In his RH article, he makes it pretty clear he views encouraging this behavior is bad.
Taibbi makes clear in this article that he's in favor of this behavior and even encourages it specifically!
"Buy the ticket, take the ride, nitwits."
Either encouraging this behavior is bad or it isn't!
Me? IDGAF, play whatever stupid games you want! But I'm always going to laugh at the blatant hypocrisy. Just as I laughed at the hypocrisy Taibbi lays out in this article.
>Well what are the users encouraged to do that is harmful?
Yesterday, when RH removed the ability to buy gme, users were encouraged to sell.
Again, there is no hypocrisy here... One can believe that RH encouraging harmful behavior is bad, and still enjoy it when the entire thing backfires on them.
This article is good and if I wrote the other article, it would be really short and go something like: "Robinhood revolutionized retail trading by giving end users an easy to use platform to trade for free. This made every other platform offer free trades. You can also buy fractional shares so if you can't afford expensive stocks, you can still get in on the action. It's pretty much completely idiotic to trade options but RH gives you those too if you want to play like the big boys. All in all, a pretty great innovation for the little guy!"
All the same, they are bad for traders in tons of little ways. They've been great training wheels — and midwifed an important market transformation — but when you figure out how to balance you probably want something that doesn't have plastic tires and an open recall on it.
"What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market? A lot, as it turns out." Yes, for the hedge fund folks
"The only thing 'dangerous' about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter." Yes at the hedge fund folks
I don't see the hypocrisy here. In both cases it applies to the hedge fund folks who got bit and are now getting laughed at. I get the joke. Evidently you didn't.
Taibbi on Dec 9th: "What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market? A lot, as it turns out."
Taibbi today: "The only thing 'dangerous' about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter."
I see no problem there: more people putting their pension savings in the stockmarket has at least three huge downsides that are all quite bad for everybody but Wall Street, a gaggle of redditors burning a few hundred each to mock a faction of Wall Street is just comical, it has next to no implications for everybody but Wall Street.
The three huge downsides of putting everybody's pension savings in the stockmarket are:
* It creates, as Grover Norquist has boasted, extraordinary political pressure to bail out stock prices.
* It exposes pension savers to losing 30-60% of their pensions in Wall Street fees.
* It gives either "dumb money" or those managing their funds a ridiculous level of influence on capital allocation decisions.
Interesting, let's look at the context of that Dec 9th quote:
"What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market?
A lot, as it turns out. “Every time someone says they want to ‘democratize access,’” says Joe Saluzzi of Themis Trading, “I get very scared.”
On June 12th, a 20-year-old University of Nebraska student named Alexander Kearns looked at his app and saw what he thought was a negative balance of $730,000. Misunderstanding the readout, which only showed part of a series of options trades he’d made, Kearns mistakenly believed he’d been ruined financially. He killed himself by stepping in front of a train, leaving behind a note asking, “How was a 20-year-old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollar’s worth of leverage?”
Please explain how the quote you cited implies what you stated in your comment?
If you really think that limited context breaks my point, why don't I use this passage:
"Brewster isn’t buying it. “Everything is designed to make investing look like DraftKings,” he says. Moreover, the company’s practice of offering push notifications when customers’ stocks move up or down 5% or 10% could trigger an endless cycle of dopamine-generating responses, combining FOMO/clickbait psychology with the betting urge. Customers think, “if it’s down, I gotta get out. If it’s up, I gotta buy more,” says Brewster.
The obvious problem is that a lot of these younger customers have no clue what they’re doing. “Retail investors don’t understand stocks, let alone options,” sighs Saluzzi. He compares the service to bringing amateur poker players to Vegas and seating them not at a table with old ladies and tourists, but with the best players in town. “It’s throwing them right in with the sharks,” he says."
Shouldn't you be talking about how this is out of context or something? Maybe making a bad point about false equivalence? ;)
The fish ravaged a couple sharks, a bunch of sharks have been feeding on the chum generated and we still have to wait a bit to see how the fish work out in a couple months.
You can be on Team Piranha or Team Remora. My wholly speculative thesis is that the sharks are doomed in the end; Nature's antediluvian cretins, cruising the oceans with nowhere to go.
Sorry, I don't see how that makes your claim any more accurate. Stating that RH encourages bad behaviors while also allowing ppl to stick to the man are both true statements, a lot of RH users don't know much about the market, and the latest GME frenzy is actually given them a way to "fight back" (a lot of them don't understand how or why, but they know that predatory firms are hurting because of it), plus RH made clear today that it expects only one type of behavior.
First, is there anything more annoying than starting a comment with a faux "sorry"? Strap on a pair (balls or tits, your choice) and just say what you want to say.
> Stating that RH encourages bad behaviors while also allowing ppl to stick to the man are both true statements, a lot of RH users don't know much about the market, and the latest GME frenzy is actually given them a way to "fight back" (a lot of them don't understand how or why, but they know that predatory firms are hurting because of it), plus RH made clear today that it expects only one type of behavior.
Agreed but also totally irrelevant to my claim that Matt is a hypocrite in these two articles. In the RH article, Matt makes it clear that RH is a villain because it encourages bad behavior such as buying short dated, OOTM calls. In this article, Matt glorifies the same behavior as a populist rebellion. If the behavior is bad and RH is bad for encouraging then Matt is just as guilty of the crime when he says "Buy the ticket, take the ride, nitwits" and glorifies the selfsame behavior he vilified RH for encouraging. Matt's RH article isn't much further from the pearl clutching he calls out as bull shit here.
My take is let the people do whatever they want in this case. If RH wants to give uninformed retail investors the tools for their own demise, it's the uninformed retail investors' job to use them in a way that matches their risk appetite. If they want to informally gang up to put Melvin in a short squeeze, let 'em rip! RH wasn't doing anything wrong until the closed down the ability to trade GME and friends.
It wasn't a faux "sorry" actually, I really didn't get your point.
> Agreed but also totally irrelevant to my claim that Matt is a hypocrite in these two articles.
I'm missing something again, because if you agree that both statements can be true, how is that not relevant to your claim?
> Matt makes it clear that RH is a villain because it encourages bad behavior such as buying short dated, OOTM calls. In this article, Matt glorifies the same behavior as a populist rebellion.
Yes, RH is a villain encouraging bad behaviors, and following the same patterns as facebook and the likes, what's happening with GME is using that system against itself, and in the case of RH it enabled people to stick it to their bosses, both are true and renders your argument moot IMO.
> I'm missing something again, because if you agree that both statements can be true, how is that not relevant to your claim?
Because my claim is he holds wildly inconsistent standards depending on his populist flavor of the day not whether you can both claim the RH encourages bad behavior and also that it gives access to tools to create a short squeeze.
In Matt's world, when RH encourages risky trading that's bad and makes RH a "Pandemic Villain" but when Matt encourages risky trading that's good and is a populist revolt. That's inconsistent. This is a completely different question for what you're talking about as a set of consistent views.
> Yes, RH is a villain encouraging bad behaviors, and following the same patterns as facebook and the likes, what's happening with GME is using that system against itself, and in the case of RH it enabled people to stick it to their bosses, both are true and renders your argument moot IMO.
Look, either it's bad to give newbies access to and encourage the use of highly risky, speculative investments or it's not! It can't be that RH encouraging it is bad and Matt Taibbi encouraging it is good and you stay self-consistent. RH ISN'T evil (not even it's temporary shutting down of GME trading after further research: https://www.ft.com/content/9a1b24e6-0433-462a-a860-c2504ea565e4). Nor is Matt evil in this article for encouraging idiotic (I guess it's arguable if it's idiotic or not) use of investment platforms. But it is wildly inconsistent to vilify RH for encouraging use of risk, speculative investment vehicles and then turn around and do the exact same thing.
I mean, did you read the article this comment thread is on? Half of it is Matt, correctly, mocking the hypocrisy of the people trying to shut down WSB. It's just that Matt was doing the same idiotic complaining when he wrote about how evil RH was.
I had a bit of a realization watching this coverage: seeing a couple of different attempts to link the "yahoo! screw the rich guys" rhetoric of the WSB gang to the alt-right and other members of Americas whacko fringe, I realized that that goofy-ass nerdballs who occupy most of the bylines in this country are just made very nervous by that-which-comes-from-the-internet.
And so, much like mapmakers from the era of the explorer, when they reach a part of the playing field that they can't wrap their heads around they write: "Here there be dragons"
Only the language they use for that now is "rumored links to the alt-right."
Yep, yep and yep. I do not normally get caught up in internet media news phenomena, but I agree that this is truly hilarious. I have barely been able to get work down today as I exchange emails with friends over how perfect a send-up of the whole financial system this is, as it has devolved over my lifetime. Anyone paying attention who still believes that there is a shred of credibility left in the structure of our political economy must either be delusional or have a hefty dose of covid-brain.
And do you know why ostensible “right wingers” are cheering this on-b/c the Redditors actually had a specific goal, understood their objective-fuck the elite hedges and make a profit, and executed a competent, 100% legal plan. They weren’t some trust fund wokesters and bong hit 70s era Marxists living in a tent city and spouting inane post doc platitudes about “capital” and doing nothing but making a nuisance of themselves to ordinary working folk who might actually like the opportunity to gamble/invest a few bucks in the market to improve their situation.
Can we agree the what the Redditors did was unbelievably effective and a revolutionary form of protest without slagging off OWS? At the time the protest was unthinkable, and an important and necessary step socioculturally to get to this point. I would agree 100% that boilerplate protest marches, sit-ins, etc. have now become meaningless. That is why this action is so inspiring.
What’s the fun in not slagging on OWS? They were a bunch of hack leftist morons spouting off about something they had no clue about, or, indeed, any real goal. People in the OWS camp considered having a plan or a tangible manifesto to be some kind of denial of agency to morons or something. Marxist feminist lesbian black icon Audre Lorde had a famous saying about how “You can’t destroy the Masters house using the Masters tools”. That theory just got blown sky high.
There is a massive difference between demanding equality of access to a system-which is an American ideal stretching from Frederick Douglass to the Hoffa era Teamsters to the Redditors, and demanding a new pie in the system that it’s supposed devotees can’t even comprehensively define. End of libertarian rant!
I think the government reaction to this will say more about America's political system than any other event. Obama lost a lot of credibility after 2008 by allowing Wall Street to get away with theft.
If the Biden administration potects Wall Street again the democrats are dead.
As I was reading this article, it dawned on me that Mass. Secretary of State Bill Galvin was the guy who stiffed the production company I worked for in 1990. Galvin was running for Treasurer, and this was my first post-college gig, so I didn't know any better and was excited to work with a politician. We shot some spots with him (I remember thinking he was a human eyebrow) and he wound up never paying us.
Take note, those on the left. Your small businesses could be burning all summer long and the "leaders" didn't care. But the minute the small guy fucks with Wall Street, they are immediately un-personed.
Winning the election wasn't the big victory you thought it was.
The time is ripe for another OWS/Tea Party movement against the banks.
*"those on the BOTTOM", there is no right or left among the financial elite.
You're exactly right, and this story illustrates it perfectly.
True that.
At this point we're basically on the same side, huh?
We ought to be, but there's a huge chasm separating the cultural left and right. Politicians and corporate media use social issues related to race, gender, abortion, welfare benefits, etc. etc. to keep us divided. Their new trick is to shut down alternative communication networks that might enable us to bridge the divide.
I've been saying this very thing for the last couple of years. Trump and Sanders voters have more in common with each other than they'll ever know. As do Gabbard, AOC and some of the Ted Cruz voters. People would be well served to get past their ideas of who's on their side.
ten billion likes
Except for the racism.....
Review the local news interview with the black Portland cop who says that every time he tries to speak person to person to a black protestor, a white person whitesplains to them not to talk to him.
Sorry, what exactly is the cop trying to discuss, "person to person"? "Here's why we tear gas and murder with impunity, can't we talk about that?"
Define racism.
See Jonathan's comment. The "racism" was (and still is) a narrative used to silence one side of the political spectrum.
Bernie was accused of being anti-Semitic at one point if I recall correctly. Too lazy to dig up links and it doesn't matter anyway.
Exactly. Racism, anti-semetism, and they even tried to metoo him for not micromanaging each one of his 100million volunteers.
You might want to realize that the people falsely telling you that the left is all "woke cancel culture" are doing so to foster exactly that division that's being discussed here. While you're busy fretting about cancel culture, they're stealing all the money.
The people trying to accuse Bernie of racism are working for people well to his right. The centrists weaponize idpol against the left, so they don't have to argue with us.
getting old and grumpy, but feeling like vaguely intelligent people should be able to see through the "cultural" smokescreen
Hopefully, most intelligent people (aside from CNN and MSNBC anchors, or politicians, oh wait bit I'm being redundant I already said intelligent) can see the "culture war" framings of so many things are simply a ruse.
If they are saying that msnbc, for instance, is “left”, then they are not seeing past the framing nonsense.
Jesus, you idiots really are so desperate to be the victim, it'd be funny if you weren't also insane and violent.
My personal problem is that i'm interested in supporting something that doesn't result in an authoritarian system of government. I do not believe anyone has that on offer at this time.
Yeah, weird how we bothered with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and all of that shit. Outmoded!
...clearly I was being sarcastic, but there are Wokesters out there screaming that "the Constitution is the problem!!!"
and i'm like, "there's an established legal process by which it can be amended and has been historically"
and I waste my time
I believe that a republican system of government presumes a set of common expectations from its population/voting base. I don't think we have that anymore, and can any system survive without that? I'm not saying exactly the same thing Jefferson did, but pretty close.
I'm sorry, which people are saying "the Constitution is the problem"?
I mean, William Lloyd Garrison did call it a pact with hell due to its support for slavery, but that was 180 years ago . . .
Same. I'm ready to fight for Revolution but not if it's doomed from the start with shitty leadership and by being peppered with catastrophic non-starters like any of the wokeshit and violent tactics.
You're not wrong, yet there's no denying it's been effective since the beginning of time and still is.
I believe Jimmy Dore is taking this on. Check out his latest videos.
Yep, divide and rule.
Relevant and highly recommended: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/04/an-open-letter-to-patriot-prayer-and-the-proud-boys-cc-antifa/
We've basically ALWAYS been on the same side. We just have different solutions to the problems that we both see.
that's a bingo
I like how the left divides itself here just by itself. No need for anyone to come in from the outside. Just say racism or transphobism or anti-Inuitism, or any other cultural left bullshit and you all scatter into your houses. Economic lefties, as opposed to the worthless, donor-supported cultural left, will absolutely need to talk to people they don't like. You're going to have to talk to people who say "nigger" and watch NASCAR and pro wrestling. The cultural left is going to keep going with "Ooh, there's a tweet from so-and-so from 2016 where he didn't use someone's requested pronoun." Cut these people out of your lives.
Both sides are guilty of all your charges. Never heard of a RHINO ? Don't remember Ronny Ray-gun using class warfare ? How old are you anyway ?
"You're going to have to talk to people who say "nigger" and watch NASCAR and pro wrestling."
You remember when Howard Dean said pretty much the equivalent of this in 2004 and got canceled?
Now he's just a DNC shill. :( Turns out one side of the bread has butter on it after all.
With the help of the right. Once again, you can blame whichever fake "side" you wish but both are owned by the same crowd. Blaming one of these fake sides accomplishes nothing but further division.
We always were. But if you're too busy letting your personal prejudices be leveraged and manipulated by the ruling class to figure that out, then it's never to late to become enlightened on that fact. That goes both ways, politically.
Mate, you're assuming a whole bunch of things about me, when you've only met me on the web.
Always were from the perspective of the wealthy.
No one genuinely on the left thought Biden winning was a "big victory."
You need to tell all my friends who are acting that way, then.
Can't comment on your friends. Still, three possibilities spring to mind. 1) Liberals who conflate being "on the left" with being a "leftist." This is becoming a smaller and smaller group, though, as there are now several left voices not named Chomsky or West that can't be completely ignored in mainstream discourse. True liberals hate these people, as you should know. For them, this hate is as definitional as is seeing Biden's win as a "great victory." 2) People on the right who conflate "liberal" and "leftist" out of ignorance, laziness or convenience, i.e., most likely these friends of whom you speak aren't leftists or, if they identify as such, aren't very well informed. 3) Those suffering a reflexive need to evince optimism, which is a peculiarly American disease.
Is your comment supposed to be some kind of mind-blowing revelation? We KNOW they didn’t care. And said that those of us on the left thought winning the election was a “big victory”? It was inevitable, because trump sucked so bad, but anybody who thinks that Biden in the White House is a “big victory” obviously hasn’t been paying any attention at all. Or maybe they’ve just been paying attention to MSNBC.
The reason Biden winning is a catastrophe is that his administration will never be held accountable for anything, just as the Obama administration wasn't. While I didn't share Trump administration politics, I knew that administration would be held accountable. (Witness Trump admin. being held accountable for things that actually were holdover Obama administration policies). There are far worse things than someone sucking as a person; it's unaccountable power. So, to all my friends who were like "Oh, I know Biden isn't great, but we HAVE to get Trump out." I said - really? Because Biden will very LITERALLY be able to do anything at all and get away with it. And, now - not even a week in we not only have massive crack downs on free speech but now there will be crack downs on anyone who dares challenge hedge fund market manipulators. And, ZERO accountability.
"The reason Biden winning is a catastrophe is that his administration will never be held accountable for anything, just as the Obama administration wasn't."
JFC, run_dmc, please stop making me want to play Russian Roulette with 6 rounds chambered.
Exactly. I prefer a rabidly anti-government press to a lapdog press that covers up everything they should be writing about.
Trump will die with a hooker's tit in his mouth.
Doesn't sound so bad. There are worse ways to go out.
Better than with a tube up your nose in an Alzheimer’s Ward like Biden...
His presidency has seemed more like Weekend at Bernie's and less like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but we're only a week in.
Randle McMurphy 4 Prez
DNC hires a mimic who can throw his voice to make it sound like Biden's corpse is saying "malarkey!" and "listen, fat!"
I’ve seen Bernie as a “fake fan” cutout in several sporting events!
Who believes Biden is even actually alive at his point? Many people, clearly.
Not his press secretary, imo....
*this, not "his". not worth the effort to delete a shitpost, although my OCD compels me to offer a correction to a shitpost
"A lotta people are saaaaayiiiiiin'..."
Stop making me like him even more.
Stormy actually had a trenchant analysis of how a SC ruling involving at will contract employees would affect the girl’s working the poles
In my experience, hookers and strippers are expert political analysts. Sharp as tacks.
But as HST wrote: "Old whores don't do much giggling."
Who cares who delivers the final shot to the back of the head ? Either the "good" cop or the "bad" cop were always going to be the one who pulled the trigger.
Trump wasn't ever going to save anyone from anything. He never intended to win in the first place and on top of that has never gave a warm runny shit about anyone other than his own ego.
"not even a week in we not only have massive crack downs on free speech" What are you referring to?
WTF?!?!?! Parler? Facebook, Youtube/Google, and Twitter turning into the Ministry of Truth?
Trump was at least entertaining on occasion. That's the only positive thing I can say about either of them.
«those on the left. Your small businesses could be burning all summer long and the "leaders" didn't care. But the minute the small guy fucks with Wall Street, they are immediately un-personed.»
The "left" your refer to is the financialist/globalist neoliberal faction of the right, which happen to support identity politics in the name of property rights and free markets.
As a side note: "un-personed", "cancel culture", "deplatforming" are all novel and cool sounding euphemisms to actually mean "blacklisted".
That’s why the streets are full of actual combat troops.
Those guardsmen are not really combat troops. Also, their officers are afraid of ordering them to fire. Did time in Iraq and 20y working the Army, had this discussion repeatedly with officers, they have no idea what soldiers might do if ordered to fire on civilians and are not interested in finding out. The word "frag" comes to mind.
Another secret: they (99% of the time) don't even have any ammo. Protip.
hahaha photos of NG in DC clearly show them WITHOUT MAGAZINES
Even if they had mags, you can almost guarantee they have nothing in them. A full combat load is 7 mags, usually in clip-on pockets that go into the molle loops of their body armor. The soldiers are responsible for loading them up themselves under normal circumstances and can choose how much tracer and how much ball ammo they want in each mag. But no officer or NCO is going to want guardsmen on police duty carrying live ammo. Think Kent State.
I used to drive onto base after 9/11 with a tripod mounted M240 pointed at my hood at the checkpoint. This was scary until I noticed the lack of a belt.
You remember the rhetoric "Weapons of war have no place on our streets?"
That all went out the window when the Bush Administration called them "first responders" and gave them funding and access to all the tactical gear they could handle. Dumbest move ever, but what did we expect from that tard. That I sadly voted for twice.
Yep have to stop that unarmed insurrection.
Yes. But do it this way. Mess with their plunder/feast legally. Bunch of people in tents, snapping their fingers, is just a photo op for celebrities.
Psst - this IS the next OWS - and it's hurting TPTB a lot more than just squatting in tents in the street.
But both the inaction for the peasants and the action for the Hedgers were I*N*T*E*R*S*E*C*T*I*O*N*A*L, bruh.
Another?
The original Tea Party was an anti-bailout movement and spearheaded by Ron Paul. It was eventually taken over and lost its credibility as a result.
Exactly. The original TP was anti-bailout, but the focus got coopted quickly, IIRC. I remember being really surprised to hear from people claiming to be TP proponents, but the clap they were selling had nothing to do with the legit criticisms of the consequence free bailouts that had occurred.
I'm going to weigh in as a participant in the very nascent days of the Tea Party. #1) nobody even talked about the Koch Bros or really knew who they were #2) I guarantee you that the vast majority of participants/protesters were Ron Paul types (he was a big thing in 2008) #3) The TP was co-opted by I don't know who but most of us early participants dropped out after seeing that the TP somehow became something it was not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYRLqwPQQuo
Here's the rally in Austin, Dec 17 2007. There are plenty of videos from all over from the same timeframe.
Jim keeps talking about organizations formed in 2009. That's the takeover we were talking about.
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money
Great book.
Scary, though.
I'm going to be honest here and say I was one of the people calling the (very loud) Paul supporters "paultards" back in the day. I'm sorry, and he was largely right.
What exactly is your point? Early honest and naïve Tea Partiers may have been dupes for the Koch Bros or something like that? So what? Please elaborate.
Check it out pls
https://time.com/secret-origins-of-the-tea-party/
oh brother. Who said the right only promulgated conspiracy theories. Believe what you want.
Just read it.
Then digest The Powell Memo.
No conspiracies, just the ruling class ruling.
Thank you for pointing this out. The TO started out as a libertarian fiscal sanity movement and got him jacked by ultra-MAGA, pre-QAnon wingnut types in many locales. The msm refuses to acknowledge this truth, b/c it’s a lot harder to shill for the utility of corporate bailouts with a straight face than it is to Michael wack jobs in weird hats who sometimes say stuff that is kinda racist.
The Kochs took over the Libertarian Party in 1980.
David Koch was the party’s VP.
I campaigned for him in Montana, dumb kid that I was.
Mock, not Michael!
I figured this was new slang for when someone gets Michael Corleone'ed.
Micheal is fine
It was funded and organized, tip to tail, by the Koch brothers’ PR firm, Americans for Prosperity.
I was literally at the one of the first ones. It was a bunch of Ron Paulers hanging out in a tea house in downtown Portland. This is well documented by the actual people who were there.
The astroturfing came after Obama won.
Sorry, it was conducted by the Kochs, from the first note, sang by Santelli.
lol k
You are just full of shit. I was there. I bet you weren't. Or were you?
I like how you argue definitions so you can do abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
Well perhaps my personal experience doesn't count but I was there at the beginning of the Tea Party (in California). And for good measure, I was also at the beginnings of OWS in Zuccotti Park. (I know, but I really was at both in the beginning days.) I will acknowledge that Rick Santelli did sort of kick of the Tea Party with his CNBC rant but the early Tea Party attendees (and there were many) were mostly Ron Paul Libertarian types who were anti-bailout, anti-Fed manipulation, and anti-TBTF. (And fyi, at the NYC OWS, it was mostly the same actors in the beginning.) There were very, very few right-wing Republicans at the Tea Party demonstration I attended and this was in Orange County, which if the right-wing was onboard with the Tea Party, they would have been there. Pretty much all of the rhetoric and signs were directed at the govt bailouts of the big banks. Both OWS and the Tea Party were quickly co-opted by the status quo; the Tea Party more obviously because the media love to play that up.
At this point you are trolling and not having an honest conversation. I am muting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X000Dxmr9ws
Watch the people who were there. Look around the crowd.
Thanks for posting that video. The good old days of Paul lobbying for 'audit the fed'. Good times.
You're watching the actual tea party rallies.
If Yasha's piece doesn't talk about them, then Yasha's piece doesn't cover the founding of the Tea Party movement.
January 27th and 28th, 2021 saw the Washington Post at last totally divorce itself from what used to be called “the news”. I have the Post delivered to my door every day. On the morning of January 27, I eagerly opened my copy to see what the Post had reported on one of the biggest if not the biggest news stories of the week, the revolt of the small retail investor against the hedge fund giants. To wit the meteoric rise of shares in GameStop which cost several hedge funds who had shorted the stock billions of dollars. A rare, rare victory of the small guy against the titans of the financial world. I couldn’t find a single mention of the story in the paper! Not on the front page and even not in the “business” section. I assumed I had missed the story and went back through the paper page by page. Nope, it wasn’t there. Not one word! In the real world of journalism this would have led to the firing of the editor. But we work under different rules now.
I can imagine the editors not knowing how to play this news. Yes, they could have simply stated the plain facts; the stock moved how much, and hedge funds lost so much, but they didn’t. News is about so much more than facts these days. The dilemma was this; clearly it was at least a symbolic victory for the small guy and a demonstration of a fearsome new power in the financial world and the Post staff and management saw themselves as champions of the little guy. On the other hand, it was a near mortal blow to some of the captains of the industry who have now become (at least for public consumption) friends of the Democratic party and fierce enemies of the guy who used to be president. (Don’t blame me for bringing him into the story, the Post did that on their own) And besides the Post is a business that has had its ups and downs in recent years, and it doesn’t pay to make enemies of these guys, not to mention the owner of the Post, Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest men and has much more in common, if not outright friendship with said titans. So the Post decided to punt and skip the story altogether. Perhaps it took them a day to consult with Mr. Bezos and others in the industry and in the world of politics to see how to spin the story. Oh, how I would like to be a fly on the wall of the editor’s office! I am sure there was some real debate going on! I am sure the Post’s woke staff had plenty to say about this story.
Move to Thursday the 28th. The story framing is complete, and it comes down on the side of the elites. Now it’s a front-page story. In a very long two-page article the Post plays the role of the hedge fund toady and defender. The small investor is now “a flash mob with money”. And we know what sinister connotations the word “mob” has taken on in the past few weeks. As crazy as it seems the article doesn’t mention the role of short sellers (who smell bad) until the twentieth paragraph on an inside page and doesn’t mention the specific hedge fund until the twenty-ninth paragraph when this information was all over the news. Unbelievable! The Post preferred to call the hedge funds “big Wall Street firms, “wealthy institutions”, and “big institutions”.
By late Thursday the political/financial industry dealt the small investor a savage blow in a naked show of force. Halting the purchase of GameStop shares but not their sale meant the market could go only one way, down, saving hedge funds from losing billions more if not saving some from total destruction. If this isn’t the definition of market manipulation, the word has no meaning. It will be interesting to see how the liberal mainstream media plays this story in coming days. They can’t support both sides. At least we know where the Post stands. The story is not over.
Wow, did they really not have a GameStop story on the 27th?
This made me curious and the other commenters on this thread seemed to accept Robert's accusation that Washington Post wasn't adequately covering the gamestop story early on. A quick google search turns up two substantial stories. One on the 25th another on the 27th. I just wanted to link them here for posterity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/25/gamestop-stock-short-squeeze/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/27/gamestop-amc-reddit-short-sellers-wallstreetbets/
print copy as stated
The Washington Post has been highly biased for quite some time. They published probably 2000 stories and opinion pieces on the "Russia collusion" thing, all of which were wrong. They covered many topics very poorly. Their opinion writers (and cartoonists) are heavily biased toward the Democrats, and they have made no effort to correct this.
For example, Salena Zito wrote the best articles about the 2016 Presidential Campaign for The Atlantic after taking a buyout from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review that summer. She could have been hired by the Washington Post, but instead is with the New York Post. Here is her article that is the most quoted of all articles in 2016: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-makes-his-case-in-pittsburgh/501335/
Likewise, Michael Ramirez, the best American political cartoonist, moved to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2018. The cartoonists at the Post are very poor, and Ramirez would have been a great improvement.
Who would want to work for Jeff Bezos? i know people from my employer that have gone over to AMZN and ultimately came back because of the terrible climate there.
Amazon, as a company, can be summed up by reference to their response to a bad situation in one of their fulfillment centers (in Ohio, I believe). Turns out it was, in addition to being non-air conditioned, poorly ventilated. To the point that employees were passing out during their work hours. The response? Put a rental ambulance at the front door. This was either a sign that they really cared about the employees or an attempt to ensure that lawsuits over the working conditions did not have a newsworthy and possibly expensive FATALITY in them.
NOTE: The huge warehousing structure had previously been used for storage and distribution of forklift-accessed, pallet-based quantities of product, as opposed to the Amazon model of thousands of desperate people grabbing individual items and tossing them into shopping carts. Thus, heat stroke in one operation that was not a concern in the previous ones.
"Halting the purchase of GameStop shares but not their sale meant the market could go only one way, down, saving hedge funds from losing billions more if not saving some from total destruction. "
Not true. What the move did was cut off buying from retail investors, not the big guys. The price was down as much as 65% today, but closed down 44% and now after hours is UP 61% HIGHER THAN THE OPEN.
Great news. How could the government legally cut off one and not the other?
How indeed?
There are many ways, for example there are different rules for "qualified" (rich) investors and for retail investors, or for members of exchanges and the public.
Note also that it is impossible though to stop the "purchase of GameStop shares but not their sale", because every sale implies someone is purchasing.
It wasn't the government, it was Citadel-connected Robin Hood "protecting" its customers from, in a very small blow against the Empire, slowing the transfer of wealth to the top 00.1%ers.
In other "official" news, wealth inequality is because of "systemic racism".
Robert I came to this conclusion in 2015 but welcome to the party
To me it's still less bizarre that we've been living in an age now where we can have multiple wars still going on and not have daily front page coverage of it. Seems like it would be unthinkable 80 years ago to think we've reached this point.
I guess we'll get used to Postwashing the breakdown of the economy and government pretty soon.
*less bizarre than that
This might be the moment when 90% of the population realizes 10% of the population is purposely crushing them while keeping them occupied with race and lockdowns and focused on who is wearing a D or R on their jersey. Cmon , forget the “team” you think you’re on and wake up and understand Politicians , MSM , and the elite financial class want to Hoover up all your money and then stub you out like a cigarette and have a good chuckle when they’re done.
There are people defending Pelosi's purchase of Tesla stock. That's how dumbed down and genuinely stupid some of our fellow Americans are. Or if you want to be more charitable, that's how deep the manipulation of the American mind has gone..... people defending bought government because it's 'their team' doing it.
The brainwashing is breathtaking to see.
This is a clear conflict of interest, as the House will be taking up lots of legislation that would send money to Tesla, directly or indirectly. Electric cars, solar, batteries, ...
Musk got his start with a gubmint grant.....
That said, attacking that machine is suicidal. So many people's livelihood and future depend on it that they'll support any atrocity to avoid not being able to fund junior's college.
Thank you. This is a shorter version of what I wrote on Greenwald's blog on the same topic.
It's been interesting watching Democrats (except for AOC - I actually agree with her on something, partially) line up to demand "something be done" about all these day traders, and Republicans defend the day traders. Methinks we may be in the midst of a political realignment in this country like we've not seen since FDR ...
Not sure what to think about her slapping away the hand of bipartisanship from Ted Cruz on this issue. Would rather not turn this into another left-right thing, since it seems to be one of the few issues the common people agree on. (Not that I have any particular love for Ted Cruz, but still.)
She's (histrionically) accused him of trying to have her killed. In doing so she's painted herself into the corner. That hissy fit combined with an inability to admit when you're actually wrong (as opposed to apologizing for the approved mistake narrative) and AOC has made her own bed here.
This is all theoretical anyhow. She's not going to do what it takes to get anything done if it means risking her position at this point, and Finance are some of the most powerful enemies to have. She's not going to risk them astroturfing her brand as hard as they do with Bernie. I think Greenwald said it took about 6 months before AOC shifted from Class to IdPol and rendered herself completely worthless.
Which makes her well suited for Congress
Intentional or not, I'll give you the credit due to using a synonymous term for "useful idiot."
She can't break kayfabe. Gotta keep the fake left/right split fiction going.
Always slap the hand of the guy who relishes stabbing you in the back (while smiling, if you can call that vile smirk a smile).
I've been told that "progressives" don't want help from "fascists." They hate it when there's common ground.
No self help for progressives.
Everybody hates a NazBol. Ask Limonov. oh wait he dead
Apparently she holds a grudge. Anyway, no on like Cruz.
"no onE". Sheesh. Edit function, please.
I'd hold a grudge too if someone egged on a crowd that wanted me dead. Kind of puts a chill in the air.....
Fantasy land...
With you on AOC. I had pegged her as a phony, but she's stepping up to the plate here.
I do not know the details (and never will), but I speculate that many of the day-traders are on the internet trading all day because decent jobs have largely vanished from the American landscape. I speculate further that many of these people are nostalgic for the time when they worked at GameStop for minimum wage.
AOC is definitely not a phony, she sees the future (ie, the politics of young people) as clearly as any of us and is gonna ride it all the way to the top.
First Woman President, unless she's too late. Which is not to say she isn't a phony.
You mean phony she doesn't believe what she says? She is one of the most articulate people I've ever heard, it's hard to believe she's not speaking honestly. I dunno, you could be right and at the end of the day it doesn't matter as long as she stays the course AFAIC. I can be really naive, but I'm also really sensitive and cynicism to that degree is hard to live with.
"She is one of the most articulate people I've ever heard, it's hard to believe she's not speaking honestly."
I gently request you to reconsider this assumption.
"Articulate" isn't "honest" any more than "beauty" is "virtue."
I've watched AOC make her career by blurring these lines; always for the camera.
Thank you Grisha, I do know that (said without snark). Having trouble saying what I mean... I think I mean - I don't follow her closely. Virtually everything I hear her say sounds smart (if not no-brainer) and exactly right to me. Same with Matt, for example, that's why I love him. In both cases I have trouble believing that dishonesty is the underlying foundation of what they are saying. And, in the immortal words of Warren Beatty, "There's nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is there existing?" ;)
Bullshit on the "most articulate" bit. You need to expand your network.
AOC is not a deep thinker. It doesn't mean she's wrong on everything, but relying on her intellect would be a mistake.
As in the votes don't match the rhetoric.
That's fair. I know nothing about her voting record, but I also try to be a realist and not hold the Bernies and AOCs of the world to a standard of purity that prevents them from engaging in politics (ie horsetrading, picking battles) and gaining power over the long term. But again, I'm basically talking out of my ass here.
OK, but the guy that started it is named Keith Gill, a former registered rep and general securities principal at a FINRA member firm, and prior to that worked at a small investment adviser. The only person I know that was talking to me about this trade in December is a retired (in his 40s) KCG trader that is a member of Winged Foot. Just, you know, something to consider.
Yes, I never thought I would see AOC and Ted Cruz on the same, correct, side of a few manically issue.
It's funny but also neither of them will do jack or shit at the end of the day.
Truth!
I think Cruz and AOC have both perfected an act that plays well with their constituents. The Capitol is Warner Bros. Studios at this point.
"How dare the filthy extras overrun our *sacred* Warner Bros. Studios?!"
RomCom where Cruz and AOC realize they have more in common than they thought when they run into each other at the store where they both buy their fainting couches.
Cut to the floor of congress later on when they're sending each other clips of overdramatic soccer flops that they admire.
I don't think this is anything new. Politicians have been getting re-elected by maintaining the status quo for as long as history has been written. Fricking Pericles would be nodding emphatically if he were here.
It will be a trend
I doubt it, seeing as how AOC accused Cruz of trying to have her killed in the Capitol riot when she was informed of his agreement with her on the RH issue.
Huh? Dems haven’t shown themselves to be free marketeers of late
True, but they've still claimed the moral high ground in terms of supposedly defending the interests of the "little people." On this issue, however, they've stopped even pretending that they're interested in what the rest of us think - the Democrats are now officially the part of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the country club set.
It will be interesting to see how long AOC, Bernie, etc., stay in the party before trying something new. Warren, bless her greedy little soul, absolutely sold out today, demanding the SEC "do something" about all these day traders.
Yep. I say it all the time. Main Street Democrats don't yet realize they are the party of Wall Street, endless war, Big Media, "lockdown" corporations like Walmart and Amazon, and the literal formation of the Ministry of Truth.
But they are going to find out.
Great observation. Let's see; more lockdowns after the vaccine, wear 7 masks at a time, use big tech to de-platform everyone we disagree with, use big finance to lock out the same people, possibly send our political opponents to reeducation camps. But at least we voted out the "fascist"!
You’re a little out in orbit.
Wave to us as you pass over our relocation camp.
My overall point is that a segment of the left LARPs opposing fascism while being in favor of massive censorship, corporate power, and zero checks on government power (when they are in charge). I don't actually think reeducation camps are on the horizon. I only threw it in there because it was mentioned by that PBS lawyer and a few Bernie staffers.
I sometimes wonder if Trump got in the way of that understanding. Maybe MT is right- with DTrump gone, the air clears, Dems realize they have been mind-fucking themselves and the real fight can then be waged. Guess we'll see.
I was inspired in 1960 by JFK to become a liberal Democrat. I was inspired in 2009 by Nancy Pelosi to become a liberal independent. I had finally realized that the Democratic Party was authoritarian in nature. Just how authoritarian wasn't clear until GameStop. The mask is off. The alliance between Wall Street, Big Tech, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party wants control and has now successfully overthrown the government.
The government is we, the people. We don't matter any more. It's not even necessary to pretend to hold political campaigns and elections, although I expect they'll go on for quite a while yet. The outcome is foreordained. More power and money for the Nomenklatura of the Authoritarians, less power and money for the plebs of the Libertarians. Something akin to rational debate will be allowed for a short while, but the game is over.
Left-right, Red-Blue, R-D, it's an illusion. The Authoritarians have been running an asset-stripping vulture game on the US for about thirty years now. The common people are left holding the bag. We allowed it to happen.
Well put. The key is the media and its corruption. If you can keep the people mesmerized, distracted and generally fed a steady line of bullshit, then you can control any narrative. Trump- for all his flaws- threatened that control. With him gone, the push is on to consolidate and prevent any further threats. Your point that they will give it some time still allowing simulated elections and rational debates is spot on. Eventually, those will be total frauds as well.
Matt T's single flaw in his thinking is that he wanted Trump gone- almost at any cost. Not unlike the wokest resister. By his thinking he will now be able to fight the fight he wants to engage in. But I think he will be ultimately disappointed as he is increasingly marginalized. Only too late will he realize Trump may well have been his only hope.
What a sad state of affairs when the only hope for a left-wing journalist is a right-wing narcissist.
Yep. The real battle is authoritarians vs. libertarians. Probably always has been.
That is so.
But the Republican Party is run by malevolent sociopaths, who fuel and rely on hate and cruelty to get and maintain power.
Yeah, that's why I don't vote for them.
On balance, I figure the Dems will kill fewer of us, and not be quite so greedy, but I could be wrong.
The Dems claim a lot of moral high ground that they don't own. As for the progressives, they're long-game strategy is winning. Why would they change?
Their long-game strategy is winning in the short-term. But look at how Congress and the new administration are behaving - not like confident adults who believe the future is theirs. They are panicking, as if they realize that once Heartland moderates realize the Democratic Party is in thrall to coastal elites, the re-alignment we saw in Congressional races in November is only going to accelerate.
Re-alignment to what? It's not like the Republicans have any credibility as the party of the little guy, either.
What panic, I ask?
lol ... the flurry of executive orders, the commission to justify packing the Court, now the blowback against the day traders. These are the actions of people who believe they are on a short clock and have a rapidly closing window in which to act before they lose power.
There is no free market - that is exactly what this incident and the response illustrates.
How old are you?
Republicans jumping on the populism train as Democrats covering their faces.
I also agreed with AOC on this, too, then I recalled her braying for a vote on M4A, then pulling back on this and voting Pelosi in for another term as speaker. I get dizzy from all of AOC's antics. It's like AOC serves her purpose for the Democratic elites by rebelling just enough, then coming back inside for family dinner time. What will she do when the Dems act on behalf of their Wall Street masters and vote on new regulations restricting the unwashed from spoiling the party? I guess she'll be allowed a dissenting vote, unless it's a close one, then Nancy will pull on that leash again...
Her district is so safe, she actually could realistically defy her party's leadership without repercussion. If she's serious about wanting to be a power broker, she'll create an alliance with libertarian-leaning Republicans to block any expansion of the surveillance state as well as blocking any attempts to criminalize the squeezing of the short-sellers like we saw last week.
What's incredible is that the media - and popular focus as result - hone in on "manipulation" by the /r/Wallstreetbets forum, and decry that, interspersed with moralizing about ordinary people gambling not knowing what they are doing.
What is more galling - should be more galling - is this: Gamespot is just part of the story. This morning (January 28, 2021) several retail brokers blocked the Buy button on a number of stocks with high short interest: this included BB, AMC and others. During this blackout of these stocks (for purchase and not for selling, you could still sell), hedge funds were able to unwind their short positions.
It's being said that Citadel, which bailed out Melvin Capital (the GME loser), owns a stake in Robinhood and also works with TDA and Schwab.
So the story here is that hedge funds called up their business partners in the retail brokerages and said, don't let people buy this for a period of time. So they could protect themselves, at the expense of retail. CNBC dutifully reminds us that retail are imbeciles, and CNN mentioned that the subreddit has white supremacists on it.
It's a mad world, but through all of this insanity there's a breadcrumb that should be followed.
Here's the question for Taibbi and whoever reads this: should we expect the general public to further lose faith in Wall St., the media and government (the SEC) after this?
"should we expect the general public to further lose faith in Wall St., the media and government (the SEC) after this?"
How do you fall below the floor of the basement? Is there a sub-basement? A coal chute?
Strange we don't see the House Speaker demand we investigate THIS. No, we need to investigate ordinary Americans who finally got sick and tired of being taken advantage of.
Actually, well
https://twitter.com/FSCDems/status/1354901344704991232?s=20
"So the story here is that hedge funds called up their business partners in the retail brokerages and said, don't let people buy this for a period of time."
hahaha. "Free Market," my Byelorussian ass.
[appears as Boris Badenov, drops trou, moons all and sundry]
"In Capitalist Russia, you buy stock. In Soviet America, stock sells YOU!"
I thought that was Yakov Smirnoff's bit.
I stole it! I just think Badenov has a better iconic appearance as a villainous Russ... I mean, Pottsylvanian.
Behind the scene, pulling all the strings on the hedge fund side, was, of course, that avatar of moral authority and financial responsibility, Steve Cohen (of SAC notoriety).
For those unfamiliar with Big Stevie (who just bought the frickin Mets 😳):
“In 2013, the Cohen-founded S.A.C. Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading and agreed to pay $1.8 billion in fines ($900 million in forfeiture and $900 million in fines) in one of the biggest criminal cases against a hedge fund. Cohen was prohibited from managing outside money for two years as part of the settlement reached in the civil case over his accountability for the scandal. The hedge fund agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud and to close to outside investors.”
Money
It's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I'll buy me a football team
What faith?
Lost that faith long ago.....
"Further"?
«During this blackout of these stocks (for purchase and not for selling, you could still sell)»
Every sale implies a purchase. What has happened is rather different: that different types of market participants have been given different rules. Also the redditors have not been buying GME stock, they have been buying call options. The technicalities matter a fair bit.
The real story isn't who makes money or whether the hedgies took a mortal blow (they didn't), but rather what this incident exposes. It shows the corporate media as the sleazy little satraps to money they are. It shows the Wall Streeters exposed as bullshit artists, as they hilariously try to justify their position in society. But most of all, the joy being experienced by millions of Americans right now shows just how powerful the anti-neoliberal movement really is. Or at least could be, if it was harnessed properly. People know they're being screwed, and the reactions to this story show they know who is screwing them.
True colors are appearing everywhere. Twitter and Facebook used free speech and assembly as a ruse to control the commons. Robinhood and the other discount brokers lured retail traders with the promise of being able to trade like the bog boys and ignited a blow off top on top of a blow off top.
As soon as their true purpose was fulfilled their total mendacity is exposed. Free speech, free markets, and circuit breakers for me but not for thee. The users of these systems are not customers, they’re lambs to the slaughter, and all roads eventually lead back to the real customers.
All of this is out in the open now and they can no longer hide it. Now that the schadenfreude around the election is starting to fade and the new authoritarians realize that they are the real targets there is a real chance that these lying, fake companies will get the reckoning they deserve.
I love optimism. It keeps one going until one is finally in the grave.
Lol I’m gonna get that tattoo’d on my ass
On Aaron Swartz and REDDIT
Aaron Swartz was a man who was a part of a whole lot of incredibly and visionary things, including:
- He created Reddit
- He helped make a thing called "RSS" which helps people learn all the stuff they want to without going to all the different websites that that takes (for that Obama government maximally persecuted him)
He was brutally prosecuted by Obama’s attack dog, Wall Street layer and Obama’s Attorney General, despicable Eric Holder, whose MO was to pile a mountain of charges on his many victims to push them in prolonged ultra-expensive trials.
The noble genius, Aaron Swartz, has been driven to suicide by Obama’s administration.
Thank you for bringing this up. The Aaron Swartz story is one of the tragedies of our time yet so few know about it. I believe he would have been pleased to see that his creation provided the platform for wsb and the incredible events of this week. Sadly, like Aaron, wsb will eventually be defeated by the elite powers that rule this country and drove him to suicide. Bring out the fucking pitchforks already!
I hope Larry Lessig writes something on the issue.
Thank you so much.
I will always remember Prof. Lessig saying that he learned much more from Aaron than Aaron ever possibly from him...
I am still grieving for loss of Aaron due to cruelty of Obama's / Holder's administration.
I wish Larry Lessig were President, but I wish in one hand and shit in the other.
Somehow I have a lot more shit in my one hand than realized wishes in my other hand.
Someone like Lessig doesn't stand a chance in any electoral system. You need to find a seller and get 50% of what you want.
Lessig knew it. It was a run on principle. I greatly admire screaming prophets who know their cause is doomed but keep screaming anyway.
Swartz ain't the only American kid who died under the Obama administration.
An American kid got droned, actually.
I think Boris makes a good point Grisha. The origins of Reddit and its history often get scrubbed from our consciousness in the neoliberal diet of social and traditional media.
It is interesting that this occurred on Reddit. No?
Now, we agree there are many young who needlessly died under US imperial domination - but not that many like him who were to be leaders in tech with a sound ethical base (sharing research, making it public etc.)
I'm not knocking Boris, I'm agreeing with him! Us Russian bots gotta stick together.
That was cheap -- I am not at all of Russian origin (although that should be entirely irrelevant).
But I am convinced since day one, like Matt, Glenn, Aaron, many others) that the Russia-gate hoax has been and still is (see recent Brennan, Hillary, Pelosi, etc.) -- that is a scam of the century.
No "unity and healing" until there is accounting for this fraud. By far the highest interest of new government and the DNC cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax will NO Tbe / will NEVER be exposed -- hence many IOU's to primary propagandists, including despicable Kamala Harris, Neera Tanden, Pete Buttigieg, etc.
The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
The Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup
"Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism."
Let me unpack this Boris. You recognize and rightly resent the fraudulent attack on a duly elected President - A deep state assault from day one - {I believe lee Smith's THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT - does for Trump what Wodward & Bernboy did for Watergate - and you're itemization covers about the 1st one third of his}
Yet - despite all the attempts to destroy this Man, his Family and his presidency - he was the most effective 1st term president of my lifetime.
An economy on fire - record growth - Lowest unemployment of minorities and first real bottom up wage increases since the pre-Great Society 60's - NO NEW WARS AND ACTUAL PUSH BACK TO THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND THEIR MINIONS - who resisted winding down those still there...
A president who did more for Veterans than McNasty or any other Commander In Chief since Truman. In a weekend! Decoupled health care for vets from a decrepit health care system that would make Bulgaria under Nicolae Ceaușescu blush.
All of which began to unravel once the Chinese Communist Party did what they NOT TRUMP did - we have yet to determine if the release was accidental or deliberate - but what was deliberate was their allowing thousands infected to head west - and - they - being the gangsters they are - locked down their own CCP populations while simultaneously vacumming up all the vital support PPP which they had become the worlds biggest export of.
Democrats exploited every opportunity - including a faux impeachment over nonsense - and it is TRUMPS FAULT - and he is a racist. To destroy this economy - what has been a devastating economic DEPRESSION FOR MOST AMERICANS.
He has always been an asshole. But his policies were working. Yes there are many things I wish he would have done differently - but how do you grade this particular pandemic? -
As opposed to Hoover's response to helping to feed starving Europe in 1919 and the follow up attempts - which by any standard were failures since the 1918 Pandemic killed until it spent itself - not via human agency thwarting it- but -au natural?
"he brought into government religious extremism and racism."
Trump switched from life-long Presbyterian to non-denominational Christian - the 1st president to switch denominations while in office since Eisenhower to do that.
So where is the 'religious extremism?' I have heard the racist charges before and reject them as well but the religious accusation - this is a new one.
Thanks -- your "unpacking" has not been very successful... ;-))
Hatred of China -- after decades of US corporations exported jobs to China to lower labor costs and (well documented) opposed regulations to better protect and pay workers there... BTW, China was written of as global basket case -- tens of millions would die of starvations every couple of years. The "godless" socialist China lifted 800M of its population out of abject poverty in merely 40 years -- an unprecedented success in history of mankind...
For months, instead of implementing well understood measures for combating virus (strict testing, contact tracing, lockdown of entire cities, paying monthly citizens to stay at home and/or unemployed) Trump "leadership" fought against even masks, fabricated transparent lies about "virus escaping", giving trillions of "aid" to corporations (that is, to donors of both parties). China and ALL Asian nations should be credit and recognition for their success in controlling Covid-19. Comparable to population size China's number of deaths (less than 5K) and US so far (~550K) -- Trump's incompetence killed 400 Americans for every China's death. Think about that !!
Religious extremists in government -- the Bible idiot and grifter, Ben Carson is a great example -- "pyramids were built by St. Joseph to store wheat" and selling oleander extract (together with MyPillow charlatan - as sure medicine to prevent Covid infection. The renown CDC was led by newly installed Redfield, a born again fundamentalist who sat on a Board of largest anti-gay organization, whose first action was to nearly double his salary, etc., etc.
About Trump's incompetence and sheer stupidity one can count and write indefinitely. A tragic example was not to pardon Assange while freeing low-life (including monsters that massacred Iraqis in Bagdad) that flatter and payed him. Trump was and still is pursued by DNC cabal and deep state apparatus -- freeing Assange he would help unmask the scam of the century -- Russia-gate hoax. Nothing summarizes better the sheer stupidity of Trump...
Time to wake up and get rid of your delusions.... Have a good day
I agree with you on crime of the century.
It might interest you to know that in the last data dump before inauguration, the declassified documents showed something way beyond that the FBI changed that email to say that Page was not a reliable source for the CIA.
They showed that Page had been a source and witness FOR THE FBI itself, in a case where STRZOK WAS THE AGENT. And Page's testimony helped the US get guilty verdicts for Russian agents. So basically, Strzok himself knew personally of Page's history as a friend to the US helping the government, and pursued his BS FISA warrant anyway.
This stuff is so sickening.
"That was cheap -- I am not at all of Russian origin (although that should be entirely irrelevant)."
Boris, buddy, that was a gag based on our screennames. A lot of the time my jokes don't land because I am a terrible comedian; the Fozzie Bear of this comment section. You have my apologies.
Thank you -- that is actually my name (somewhat shortened so that I don't need to spell it to each operator over and over and listen to giggling noises).
I am of Slavic origin though but don't understand beautiful Russian language-- and am not trying to be funny too often -- I am also not good at it... ;-))
Haha, I thought so, but wanted to punctuate the point about forgetting. Its a massive massive problem --- not knowing our own history. One person's bots are another person's argument service providers :)
[reinvents self as "argument service provider" along the lines of "sensitivity reviewer"]
that will be $60 per minute of your attention, please
.79 cents - you really are not a Russian bot -- would have had a quicker response :)
How about rubles? :)
«Swartz ain't the only American kid who died under the Obama administration. An American kid got droned, actually.»
Probably hundreds if not thousands, the CIA/DoD death squads who have got their monthly kill lists from GW Bush, BH Obama and D Trump (all of them have boasted about the kill lists for electoral purposes) abduct, torture or kill the targets whether they are american citizens or not, and many are american citizens. Anyhow the USA constitution limits the power of government to kill people without trial whether they are citizens or not, and limits it regardless of where the killing is done. But the USA constitution is just a piece of paper for most voters.
"But the USA constitution is just a piece of paper for most voters."
A lot of voters actively cheer on extrajudicial detention and assassination. Maybe it's a popular policy.
To your point,
That said, the blank look in their eyes when you explain how dumb they are is priceless.
Critical error in your story: Swartz's suicide was tied to his prosecution by the State of Massachusetts, not the Feds.
It's worth remembering how George Soros made his first big money...shorting the British pound against the ERM (predecessor to the Euro) in 1992. Soros made a billion - and screwed the entire British economy.
«Soros made a billion - and screwed the entire British economy»
The Conservatives “screwed up the entire British economy” since 1979 with by using oil exports to support a "strong pound" policy, deliberately inflicting on it what was already known as the "Dutch disease", in part to destroy the labor unions, in part to enrich their "sponsors" and voters.
All that Soros did was to take advantage of that "strong pound" policy, knowing that defending the "strong pound" was politically essential to the Conservatives, whose political position effectively handed him a free "put option".
And government politics handing hedgies free "put options" or "call options" is making them very rich.
And yet no Labour government has ever tried to return Britain to the glorious economic policies that the Conservatives inherited. Every now and then, a consensus opinion is actually right.
It's not here. Third way politics in both the US and UK became the standard after the 1980s, but the results are not good.
What does George Soros have to do with this ?
This is actually a George Soros criticism that's on point. Soros did lay waste to the pound. Anyone who's going to claim the Redditors are animals because they blew up Melvin Capital should find a person who sacked a national currency for profit far more disgusting. Soros incidentally had a massive year last year, as did hedge funds in general, for many of the same reasons listed in the above piece. But he's a socially acceptable investor, apparently.
All the billionaires had a massive year last year. That's why I asked the question. There's no doubt Soros is player, but he's just one of the older and more public figures.
There's something bigger at play and it's abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that it has to do with the loss of personal privacy, due process, and representative government to all but about 2,500 people.
The same people are guilty of the financial racketeering as they are the war crimes, torture, and sanctions that are killing folks every day.
The fact the US refuses to back off sanctions during this over hyped pandemic that is destroying more people every day is tied to this small group behavior as well.
It's the end of an epoch that's for sure. Hold on to your asses folks because things are going to get even weirder here shortly.
Neofeudalism is on the menu with debt peonage for desert unless we still have some ideologues who think the billionaires are stealing all this money and power in order to split it all up equally with us later.
It has become really difficult to say "Why, that's absurd! It's a conspiracy theory!", after 2020. The wealth transfer to the control of ever fewer people has continued apace, even as the whining about it has gone to dog whistle frequency. And the people who get elected decrying it...are also getting rich, somehow. It's just a conundrum, inside a riddle, wrapped in something inexplicable.
This has been going on for a while, but the coordinated "deplatforming" on ever shakier grounds and the balloons floated for "de-financing" make it even worse. The redefinition of words, the dismissal of people and their ideas based on automatic disqualifiers like "dog whistle" and "code words", making it possible to remove them from polite society based NOT ON WHAT THEY SAID, but on what it was asserted they said, by "the right people".
I think most people would be remiss to NOT be a little paranoid.
As for your last paragraph, there are a LOT of people in this country who should have inscribed on their tombstones:
"We should trust them this time, I think they really mean it."
The sooner the better.
Shows what can be done with shorting on scale... hence he screwed over the entire British economy. But it’s ok because he’s a hero for the “cultural left” so it’s all good!
This is super off-topic, but I engage with various left causes in various ways and Soros' name is never mentioned - EVER. Yes, Soros funds left organizations and writes extensively, but he's neither a hero or an anti-hero, he's a non-entity basically among the people organizing. I'm not advocating for or against any of the causes he funds in this comment, it's not the point. The point is the bizarre and inexplicable obsession with making Soros into this evil boogeyman is a huge distraction from even the issues that you would advocate for. Focus!
He’s a boogy man to the right in the same way the Koch brothers are to the left. The Koch’s get blamed for all manor of things they actually didn’t do. (I’m not on the right or left btw).
These are very equivalent delusions. Soros' Open Society did a lot of damage funding District Attorney campaigns, favoring DAs who seem to want a lot of low level crime in their communities. That's the most impactful thing I've heard attributed to him in a while.
Yes, these folks (SF, LA and Portland anyway) ran on the guise of reforming the criminal justice system and policing, and policing badly needs reform. In practice they have instituted lawlessness and the unequal administration of justice (to the extent it is ever administered).
Unequal as opposed to standard DAs?
Good for you. I however live somewhere where his money bought a DA that all seasoned long term local DAs and most of my leftist lawyer friends hate. Already been massively criticized from the left as too far out and progressive. So enjoy your insulation from Soros while we figure out how bad things will get before we can replace the DA.
Exactly this. The Open Society (which is Soro’s “philanthropic” org.) has dumped money into cities like Chicago, LA, Seattle to fund these really left wing progressive Attorney Generals who are wreaking havoc on these cities by releasing serious criminals left & right. I’m not just talking about non-violent drug users here. Aggregated assault, armed robbery the list goes on. That org dumped millions into George Gascons election in LA and he went on to beat the way more moderate candidate who was, ironically, a Black female.
It’s interesting how the media has made it verboten to speak of “Soros”, like you’re some tin foil hat conspiracy nut. Yet the left wingers can go on and in about the Koch brothers and no one blinks an eye. The Koch’s fund a whole bunch of libertarian initiatives as well and mettle where they shouldn’t as does Soros.
I appreciate this. Criminal justice reform is a topic where I need more conversation. There can be no doubt that massive reform is needed. No matter how we go about it, there's going to be tremendous resistance from entrenched interests (seasoned long-term local DA's don't want to lose their jobs to social workers who make $20k a year). The socio-economic reasons underpinning violent crime will take decades to undo. But where do we start? I'm not saying it's starting in the right place. Although the primary injustices of our criminal justice system are based in race, I don't think the "woke" approach is a good one.... Just throwing these thoughts out. This post is probably not the place to bury this discussion (although feel free to respond, I'll be happy to engage). One of those topics it would be nice to see Matt (or other non-MSM writers) tackle.
Correct, although he's not the only one. Therefor focusing on any one of these players gives the rest a free pass.
Shorting can be bad
And later the Thai currency too (BAHT)
UGH
Mr. Taibbi writes that in 2008 "The free-market purists at the banks begged the government to stop the music," and then goes on to post a litany of examples where the politicians and bankers worked in tandem to loot the American people and save their own hides.
The eastern Wall Street bankers have never, since the first securities were traded there, been "free market purists," quite the opposite. The myth that Wall Street fought against the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank (that ghoul Woodrow Wilson's "Christmas gift to the American people") is just that -a myth. And the Federal Reserve Bank, especially since it was able to shed the gold standard that handcuffed the really lunatic actions it now routinely imposes, has been everything those Wall Street bankers had ever hoped it could be.
Using it they have crushed all competition (there are vastly fewer independent banks in America compared to 1913), taken market share (which was moving to the MidWest prior to 1913) and centered it in New York City (the only Fed branch which always has a vote at FOMC meetings and where all its market interventions are put into action) and siphoned untold trillions of unearned wealth via inflation into the pockets of the bankers and politicians. (Who do you think is monetizing the trillions of federal deficits each year?)
Everyone in the Kool Kids Klub will lament the "mob" that screwed the hedge funds who shorted GameStop, but the real anger should be directed at the Federal Reserve System and the politicians who control it via their banker friends. That is the source of your economic misery. Unlike what that clodhopper William Jennings Bryan said, the working man was not nailed to a "cross of gold." Gold is a shield that protects the working man. There's a reason the elite in the Kool Kids Klub hate gold with a passion.
Pretty sure Matt wrote "The free-market purists at the banks begged the government to stop the music," with pure unadulterated sarcasm in mind.
I did
I, too, am sure that Mr. Taibbi wrote that with sarcasm. As the writer of this little reply, it is my fault if there was any confusion about that.
I still don't understand how I eat gold or trade it for vegetables after society collapses.
"Hey, man! Here's a gold nugget! Gimme some carrots and potatoes!"
"Why"
"Uh... it's a relatively pliable metal and you can hammer it into jewelry and stuff"
"I think I'll keep my carrots and potatoes"
«I still don't understand how I eat gold or trade it for vegetables after society collapses.»
That's something that great minds think about too, apparently obsessively: one of the most worrying signs of the times is this really, really important (for some obvious implications) article about hedge funders:
https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
«I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own. [ ... ] Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.»
"How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
I'm a broken record on this topic, but it's the weak spot in this scenario.
"What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader?"
What indeed? What happens when the trigger-pullers unionize? Lord Humungus!
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/roadwarrior/images/a/ab/Lord_Humungus.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100113012502
«"How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” I'm a broken record on this topic, but it's the weak spot in this scenario.»
That's indeed what they worry about. What worries me is that these very well informed insiders do worry about that scenario as happening in their own lifetimes.
«"What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader?"»
That's the "pretorians" problem, and there is an age old solution that often works: marry off the daughter to the leader of the "pretorians", so the rich guy and the leader become family, and the leader knows that his children will inherit the wealth.
That often works in a similar way in peacetime too.
Another solution they should consider: be a good guy to your workers right now so they feel like your leadership is a trustworthy schelling point in a crisis.
People are usually happy to default to the default leader if he's not an ass. No time to start not being an ass like the present.
I think they may have fucked this one up, then. Did Chelsea or Ivanka marry generals or police chiefs?
gah, botched link
https://madmax.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_Humungus
Can't have enough Lord Humungus.
I think we're going to be getting more and more Lord Humungus. Up the clacker.
Petroleum refinement chemistry could be a very valuable Homestead skill to learn.
I've asked the guard question myself many a time. If they're smart They (the wealthy) invest most of their largess in hundreds of lifetimes of supplies and have a tiny colony so they have a physician and dentist handy. If I were They I would make sure the bunker or gate and every other electronic device is coded to be accessible only by me, thus locking them out of most easy coup attempts. Having the guards families there being supported by a stable colony might prevent them from risking anything froggy.
Sounds like Romero's LAND OF THE DEAD!
heh, I think I was one of the few who liked that movie.
What did we learn?
Deacon kept too large a colony.
Don't hire John Leguizamo as a merc.
«Uh... it's a relatively pliable metal and you can hammer it into jewelry and stuff"»
That's actually what gives fundamental value to gold: women love it because it is shiny and attracts the attention of the hot guys who can give them hot sons. A lot of people forget that "the markets" are not an end in itself, and reproduction is a very powerful motivator. If some people are motivated more by "the markets" than reproduction, eventually they become extinct.
The market trader may not need to exchange vegetables for gold, but if he thinks of a gift to his potential girlfriend, or she thinks of her potential boyfriend...
Additionally and relatedly, as David Graeber wrote in "Debt the first 5000 years", metal-money is soldier money: soldiers want to be paid in something physical and not too heavy. But in particular soldiers want to be paid in something coveted by women, all armies have camp followers, or wives back at home.
Finally, the answer to "Hey, man! Here's a gold nugget! Gimme some carrots and potatoes!" is always "Here is my gun and the other members of my gang, give me the gold nugget".
Thanks for the thought-provoking comment. Many are reluctant to talk about sex as being a motivator for political behavior, when it might be the prime motivator.
"If some people are motivated more by "the markets" than reproduction, eventually they become extinct."
"But in particular soldiers want to be paid in something coveted by women"
I think this take may be historically accurate but may also underestimate the effects of Internetized social isolation and consequent psychosis. As I understand your argument (crudely reductive, sorry), getting gold is getting laid. There are a lot of frustrated young dudes who have grown up in The Matrix; Tinder, etc. and are convinced they will never get laid. I think this feeds into the whole GME thing; just a hypothesis.
Under COVID lockdown (i.e. permanent Internetcy), we're all living in Mom's basement now. The guys who have been living in Mom's basement for years have a much better understanding of Mom's basement and can easily clown us.
I think there's a lot of truth here tho I often suspect the "guys in basements" story is sort of overwrought. There's a lot of people with extra time on their hands, lacking social outlets (getting laid or even just hanging out)
So probably lots of people who would be quite socially functional are playing online.
If you like games of chance and games of all kind, why wouldn't you want to join this stock market game if you can have both the feeling of a game and maybe make some real scratch at the end?
Anyway I may have lost my own thread here but I suspect that a bunch of these guys are pretty normal, socially functional guys. They are stuck at home, but so is everyone.
I specialize in hyperbole and overwroughtness. It seems to gain traction on the internet.
oh i'm not pinning that one on you.
it's everywhere!
«There are a lot of frustrated young dudes who have grown up in The Matrix; Tinder, etc. and are convinced they will never get laid. I think this feeds into the whole GME thing»
That's pretty much why I was introducing this topic: that in terms of market behaviour the redditors are "acting out". Relatedly in a very good article on the technicalties (mentioned by another commenter):
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-01-25/money-stuff-the-game-never-stops
the redditors are described as "nihilists". That is the kind of men who are willing to burn a few hundred (or even a few thousand) dollars "because fun", that is men who don't have wives or children. Sort of the prole equivalent of "masters of the universe" paying bums to fight, or burning $100 bills to light a $100 cigar, but with more real consequences that they can afford to bear as they are unattached by family. That is perfect "methodological individualist" market partcipants who don' give a damn.
This from an old dude who's long been through the reproductive phase: the value of gold inflates along with a market bubble and especially in times of crisis and uncertainty.
And, billions of men and especially women, India, Malaysia, etc still buy tons of gold yearly. And not just for dowries or bride price or holiday. Indian women buy lots of it for decoration and investment. If you get to know them, they'll invite you over to admire their stash.
«and are convinced they will never get laid. [...] The guys who have been living in Mom's basement for years have a much better understanding of Mom's basement and can easily clown us.»
In part, but there is another growing category, not the unattractive and despised "involuntary celibates" who remain attached to mom, but the attractive and hated "voluntary celibates" who could get laid, but don't because they reckon it is not worth doing in current conditions, and who don't live with mom, but on their own. These can be even more "nihilistic"/unattached because they don't even live in mom's basement.
«reluctant to talk about sex»
Ha! Careful there: I wrote "reproduction" advisedly. Sex is not as important as a motivator, because without reproduction it does not have long term life-changing consequences.
«as being a motivator for political behavior»
In part because of political correctness (most men who are unattractive are unaware of how much women are motivated by sex and especially by reproduction), in part because of the right-wing "whig" propaganda about "methodological individualism", where individuals are imagined without past (parents, siblings) or future (spouses, children) and entirely seen as "market participants".
«(crudely reductive, sorry), getting gold is getting laid.»
Indeed, but perhaps too reductive: it applies with camp followers (it is their business model) and to the majority of men who are unattractive. But it does not apply to the minority of attractive men, who really don't need gold to get laid (as many/most women are quite desperate and aggressive to get laid with them). Indeed many women love gold because it is shiny to get noticed by attractive men. So broadly speaking unattractive men accumulate "gold" to get some access to women who want "gold" to get noticed by attractive men.
"metal-money is soldier money: soldiers want to be paid in something physical and not too heavy."
I'd argue for salt over gold.
I guess your are thinking of roman soldiers, but they were not really paid with salt: they were given salt rations (probably more than they needed so they could trade some). They would not send a bag of salt home to their family or retire with a cartload of salt, and they did not pay the camp followers with bags of salt. Even if salt was a lot more expensive than today, and harder to find, to the point that it was often controlled by the state, but still not as easy to accumulate and carry around as gold or silver, and not as shiny to pay or gift women. And the latter is very important.
Men hustle and fight because of women, not because of markets. Someone wisely pointed out that but for women most men would live in cardboard boxes and fish or play games all day.
"Someone wisely pointed out that but for women most men would live in cardboard boxes and fish or play games all day."
One of my favorite lines in all of American literature, by Mattie Ross, the narrator of Portis's TRUE GRIT: "Men will live like billy-goats if given the chance."
To my earlier point, I think there are many men of marriageable age who are (metaphorically or perhaps literally) living in cardboard boxes and playing games all day. Where are the economic incentives here?
Judge Holden from BLOOD MERIDIAN: "Men are born for games. Nothing else."
«there are many men of marriageable age who are (metaphorically or perhaps literally) living in cardboard boxes and playing games all day. Where are the economic incentives here?»
Really wrong framing/question: what are the *reproductive* incentives? As to that two partial answers:
* Most women are no longer virgins on marriage, that is the paternity of at least the first-born is a lot more uncertain.
* Because they get financial pensions, many or most women no longer want children or just one.
I'm really enjoying your comments, as I'm designing a unit on the history of barter and money for teens, leading up to digital currencies. And I've lived in cultures, most of Asia, that still value gold for ornament and store of value.
«a unit on the history of barter and money»
Then probably you have already discovered the essential books on the subject, D Graeber's "Debt the first 5000 years" and JK Galbraith's "Money whence it came, where it went".
There is a book that is little known but also vitally important for the history of barter and money and especially close to "barter": David Astle "The babylonian woe", and it can be easily found and downloaded from the WWW (e.g. Archive.org), and there is also Mitchell Innes (mentioned by Astle) "What is money" published in "The Banking Law Journal" that can be dowloaded from the WWW.
Michael Hudson has also written well on the subject, and the "Palgrave dictionary of political economy" of 1894 has an interesting entry for "money".
I have written some summaries of my understanding as comments to this also good series of articles here:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/value-redemption-debt-free-money-part-3.html#comment-1232991
However, Grisha does point out a key issue: in a societal collapse scenario, you lose specialization most of all. Unspecialized farmers don't care much about gold. You need at least enough civilization to have someone making jewelry or needing to do a transaction that barter can't handle. And barter can handle a lot, surely most anything going on at a small farm. It's not often commented on that large denomination coins didn't circulate - most of the gold issues of the US and even silver dollars tend to have a lot of bag marks on them from being transported around in mint bags, but not all that much wear on their surfaces from people touching them. Mainly because they ended up in vaults and mostly stayed there. This was also true of the solidi and aureus of past ages.
«Unspecialized farmers don't care much about gold. You need at least enough civilization to have someone making jewelry or needing to do a transaction that barter can't handle.»
But that is a truly minimal level of civilization, and even unspecialized farmers have daughters or wives who want shiny decorations for the village dance, or are women who want to outcompete other women as to shiny decorations.
«Mainly because they ended up in vaults and mostly stayed there. This was also true of the solidi and aureus of past ages.»
But that happened in relatively advanced civilizations with banks and financial systems and therefore a need for collateral.
At the base the demand for gold when collapse happens is the demand by soldiers for something non-perishable, easily subdivided, with a high value-weight ration, and widely accepted, and that means in large part widely accepted by women, because soldiers.
I guess my point is that gold has value to our society because of the assumptions built within it. Those assumptions may not exist in a differently structured society (or completely unstructured, as it were).
«gold has value to our society because of the assumptions»
My point was that this is only partly true. In the jargon some things are called "collectibles", for example BitCoin or rare stamps, which have only metaphysical (or even negative) value, sometimes as status symbols.
Gold is *mostly* a collectible, but apart from relatively modern industrial uses, it has an intrinsic value as decoration. Most men (who are not attractive) severely underestimate how desperate are most women to attract the attention of hot men, by any means necessary (relatedly most men really underestimate how brutal and violent are all-women schools and working environment).
«differently structured society (or completely unstructured»
Completely unstructured societies are in fluid stages that don't last relatively long. Again, and again, reproduction matters more than "the markets" and it generates structure, and vice-versa lack of structures reduces reproduction.
Actual soldiers in a poorly civilized or uncivilized environment just take what they want. What they want is usually, in this order sex, booze, fungible goods. In practice this means rape and slaughter to get whatever they want. In the absence of a trading infrastructure attaching value to it, gold would be pretty low on the list because it weighs a lot. And they aren't very interested in keeping their women happy, that's what the weapons are for. Even in Napoleon's armies, being a washerwoman/prostitute wasn't a great way to get rich.
«Actual soldiers in a poorly civilized or uncivilized environment just take what they want.»
Looting and raping happen mostly after sieges, and there are long stretches where nothing much happens. And they are very bad for discipline, and disorganized armies or gangs get slaughtered. War is rarely a "free for all",
«In the absence of a trading infrastructure attaching value to it, gold would be pretty low on the list because it weighs a lot.»
If there is no value to it, even for women, why carry it at all, regardless of weight? And if value is attached to it, its scarcity means it has a high value-to-weight ratio, much higher than salt (even if it was a lot scarcer in the past or booze or smokes).
«And they aren't very interested in keeping their women happy, that's what the weapons are for.»
That enormously underestimates the power of women (which is mostly in getting men to fight each other), and the power of family relationships too (not all women are rape targets for soldiers, they have sisters, mothers, daughters too).
Another problem with gold is that the first thing governments tend to do in times or war or financial collapse is seize gold. If/when possession is made illegal you will only be able to sell it on the back market at a poor exchange rate. Having some holdings in a widely recognized and stable foreign currency can be more useful than gold and easier to barter with.
Precious mining stocks are more liquid and perhaps the best way to invest in gold.
Yes, because physical gold is hard to store and dangerous, and gold "certificates" are rather unreliable, while (established) mining stocks are subject to some double checking by analysts, "the markets" and potential shorts.
But then precious metal mining stocks can be regarded as just a special case of "stocks".
«Having some holdings in a widely recognized and stable foreign currency»
Those are also subject to government seizure. Anyhow if someone has physical control of your body, everything else is rather "negotiable".
Homesteading skills.
That gold might be worth keeping around for better connections (in terms of corrosion resistance, not conductance) when you rewire an old washing machine stator with a pelton wheel and park it down the sluice for your 200w of juice from the creek.
Then it's just gardening by day and reading by night until the radiation finishes you off.
<lights cigar with valueless $100 bill>
The federal reserve system isn't evil. It is a drug dealer plain and simple. The economy needs the drug to survive, it just keeps delivering it.
If by drug in the analogy you mean credit, this country has built up one hell of a tolerance...
Who wrote the article "Pandemic Villains: Robinhood"; Matt Taibbi or one of the pearl clutchers he mocks here?
Taibbi on Dec 9th: "What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market? A lot, as it turns out."
Taibbi today: "The only thing 'dangerous' about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter."
One of these was one of your worst takes (the first one) and one of these was the correct take (the latter). Together, though, it's a comedy of hypocrisy just as the one you mock here.
The Robinhood story was about Robinhood taking advantage of their customers, and about the issues involved with selling deal flow. I wasn't being critical of more people entering the stock markets. If anything this episode - in which Robinhood abruptly halted trading with the equivalent of a post-it note left on the fridge - underscores some of the issues with those platforms.
You seem to have a dedicated following of people dead set on finding and pointing out any perceived hypocrisy they can find in your writing.
And, more often than not (from what I see), getting the complete wrong end of the stick... I've noticed the trend too and it absolutely baffles me because it's not as though the message in that "Pandemic Villains: Robinhood" piece, for example, was difficult to take in.
So you're paying a monthly subscription to either wilfully misinterpret or totally miss the point of these articles and then whine back about them. Very odd.
Yeah I don't get why those people are here. Maybe some of them signed up for a year because someone recommended it, but they actually don't like Matt's writing and they can't get a refund. So they troll the comments. That theory sounds pretty farfetched now that I write it out.....I'm not sure why there are so many commenters on every story trying to prove Matt wrong or prove he messed up.
see e.pierce's comment above
i'm not setting MT up as some Infallible Golden God, but there are clearly commentities here who have some vested interest in trying to make him look bad. that makes for fun reading; trolling techniques perfected on twitter don't work so well here because of the smaller audience and necessarily longer attention span
i mean, if i, a normal person, subscribed to someone's newsletter and decided it was terrible, i would shrug, eat the loss, and move on. but why subscribe in the first place when many free examples are available? why indeed
I think some commenters are uncomfortable with Matt’s stories on media wokeness at the expense of what they expect is a traditional Rolling Stone lefty/partisan D perspective. If mainstream Ds (and their focus on wokeness as internal party discipline) are the new social power brokers, a lot of people are uncomfortable thinking on the social margins. It’s why Hilldog accused Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian agent-power slapping back.
also William Lee's
not only am i always late to the party, nobody wanted me there in the first place
Matt, you only respond to the trolls of your articles and not the inquisitive, idea-spitballing supporters...
Don't we all? Trolling's a thing because it works.
Matt, did you watch the interview with the CEO of WeBull yesterday attempt to explain the mechanics of what's happening and how trading firms allowed sells and not buys? It made no sense to me even after his deep dive explanation. If you had a chance to listen to it, can you with in on is accuracy? It sounded as though he didn't answer the question.
He didn't.
It's the same problem RH has - you can explain margin calls by volatility, you can even explain not offering options by claiming the market makers are overwhelmed temporarily (though their prices can easily rise to reflect that).
You can't explain a blanket prohibition on buys and not on sales, especially not by saying effectively you think prices are wrong because they're speculative. Price discovery is the supposed value the stock market offers.
Either this was blatant manipulation for their main client, Citadel, or the market AS A WHOLE was minutes from a liquidity crisis. Either way transparency and regulators should be here.
ESPECIALLY when the fund most affected was propped up by your biggest investor (Citadel) and THEN you took action that kept your own customers from cashing in on that loss.
BTW, besides RobinHood and that fund that was shorting the stocks, you know who else Citadel owns? Janet Yellen. They've paid her more than she will make in four years of "public service". AND, good news for Citadel, SHE is the person who is explaining the whole affair to Joe Biden.
Man, I guess it's all above board, Citadel is just really lucky and wealth inequality remains inexplicable.
We should "circle back" on that later.
Yellen has received 800K in speaking fees from Citadel over the past several years.
The market makers are not overwhelmed they are just pricing the call options wrong. Probably done by an algorithm that doesn’t include the sheer disgust and hatred people have for Ivy League elites, vulture capitalists, and Wall Street thugs in its pricing model.
How do you price in spite and contempt into your Black Scholes model?
"How do you price in spite and contempt into your Black Scholes model?" should win the internet today.
It's pretty straightforward. When you buy securities, your broker executes the trade and submits the trade for clearance to the NSCC. NSCC multilaterally nets down buys and sells from all the different NSCC participants, reducing settlement costs and settlement risk. Since NSCC doesn't just net down, but also novates all of these transactions, they require collateral between T and T+2 from the participant with the net settlement obligation. Brokers have to fund that themselves. Even if the customer has cash in their account siufficient to pay for the securities, the broker can't use that cash (it's sitting the customer reserve account) until after settlement date. NSCC calculates required collateral on a VAR basis. If all of a sudden you have a bunch of one-sided buys in stocks showing high levels of vol, NSCC is going to require higher collateral from the brokers submitting the one-sided orders in those names. Some brokers, particularly less well capitalized ones like Robinhood, may have difficulty satisfying those requirements, so they did the right and conservative thing of curtailing trades to ensure they wouldn't be hit with NSCC collateral requirements they couldn't satisfy.
Appreciate you walking through this. It's helpful to understand. I'm still confused by the ban on buying but green light to sell. If I sold 1000 shares of GME yesterday, the ban prevented anyone from buying it. So what happened to the shares being sold?
If your broker has 1MM shares of net purchases that are somewhere between T and T+2, a sell order will reduce the NSCC collateral requirement, since NSCC novates all these transactions and calculates VAR on your rolling net purchase or delivery obligation. An additional buy order will increase it.
If every NSC participant was unwilling to take additional buy orders, you are right that Robinhood permitting customers to sell wouldn't work because there would be no purchasers. But that isn't the case. Most BDs did not restrict purchases or sales, just the ones that had NSCC collateral issues (and a few that didn't but were seeking to limit headline risk of letting retail do something stupid). If you wanted to execute buy orders clearing Pershing, Instinet, NFS or JPMSI yesterday, you had no issue.
Does that mean it's possible RH users can find themselves unable to close positions in stocks where RH is submitting one-sided sell orders?
And if they'd suspended trading on both sides, that might make sense. However they suspended only the buys - even if they were required collateral only on buys, that goes directly against their claim that they didn't want to fuel speculation.
You'd prefer they also suspend sales? Preventing long sellers from closing their positions? That's a minority view. Broker-dealers never want to be in a position of prohibiting customers from closing positions. Remember, Robinhood does not accept short sales.
"That's a minority view." What are you basing that on? Did you check with the 7.9M people on WSB?
Instead of firmly putting their thumb on the scale?
Yes, of course.
Again, note Robinhood's supposed reason, which was that the markets were too volatile, not that they couldn't cover buys.
Wow. Thanks for the explanation. I never understood that before. But when robinhood is facing a liquidity crisis, shouldn't they just get emergency funding from their investors or commercial lines of credit? Doesn't the fed even have a facility for this? The way they chose to solve their liquidity crisis was to put a massive finger on the scales of the market which had a material negative effect on a huge group of their customers. That's unexcusable, and should end with them being shutdown by regulators.
That's exactly what they did, but - and I'm not a VC guy, so I may be mistaken - VCs probably aren't that used to do doing $1B investment rounds with 48 hour turn-around times. What they needed were unsecured NSCC spike-line facilities. News reports suggest that they drew $500-600MM (unclear whether spike lines at the BD level or unsecured revolver at holdco level that holdco in turn contributed as either equity or unsecured financing) on credit facilities, so they had liquidity that they thought was appropriate for spikes in NSCC clearing fund deposit requirements, but they underestimated the size of their liquidity needs. For context, here is Robinhood Securities' most recent publicly-available balance sheet (Robinhood Securities is the clearing firm for Robinhood Financial): https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Unaudited%20Statement%20of%20Financial%20Condition%2006.30.20.pdf
It shows clearing deposits of $235MM. Assuming that was self funded with equity, and the additional $600 drawn is all in excess of normal RH clearing fund deposit requirements, they were hit with $800MM+ NSCC clearing deposit requirement, a littles less than 4x normal liquidity needs.
It's worth noting here that Robinhood is new to clearing. For most of its history, it cleared at Apex (the old Person). It has been self-clearing for only like a year or two and they are doing it with less than half a billion of shareholders equity. For comparison, Interactive Brokers and Fidelity's NFS maintain close to $6B shareholder's equity and they have decades more experience with unusual NSCC spikes. It's easy to criticize new businesses as amateurs and idiots, but remember, they still built a bigger broker-dealer than anyone in this comment section did.
Why couldn't they have limited the amount of new money transfers coming into users accounts or put additional holds on the money coming in. Surely they knew that new money coming in was soon to be used to buy stocks and add to their liquidity problem. They also could have margin called people and closed their positions, right? This theory also doesn't explain why they blocked users from even searching for GME or AMC. It didn't even show up, you couldn't even look at the chart. Like WTF is the reason for that?
I read a NUT story explaining that. You did a good job, except some terms you use might not be understood by a layman such as myself.
But what I gathered from that article, the process has exposed RH’s weakness. If someone, such as the Barstool guy and the WSB people really wanted to crush RH, all they would need to do is pick stocks that are more or less stable and trade them like the devil, all on RH naturally, billions of trades, for a few days. That would cause NSCC to require even more cushion. RH would have to get more infusions of venture capital loans, and pretty soon, they would be way over their potential market value and wouldn’t be able to issue an IPO. Crushed.
Or robinhood just halts buys on those stocks as soon as they detect they may need more cash which is exactly what they did. But that solution pisses off so many customers and people lose faith that they will be able to trade that robinhood's long term future is in question.
They simply shouldn't allowed that amount of customer money to be transferred into their platform until they had enough capital to buffer all the trading with that money in any stock. They could have delayed new customer accounts of limited incoming transfers to $1000 a week or something like that. Their platform shows you the most popular stocks other people are trading. It actively gamifies and encourages trading like this. They should have planned for the consequences on their liquidity.
They can’t halt buys for every stock. The main strategy, I think, would be to make billions of trades on a daily basis to a limited number of stocks. That way RH becomes a drain on the rest of the brokers. They have to add more money to the reserve to cover all the trades at RH.
One consequence, even if venture capitalists loan RH even more money, is that would pressure the other brokers and NSCC to abandon RH. No clearinghouse, no brokerage, no IPO. Leave the two rats holding their multibillion dollar dead app.
How dare they screw the little guys.
But, you know, I’m not wise in the ways of Wall Street. Perhaps it isn’t possible to do what I think can be done. It sure seems that that would be a way to destroy RH.
Sorry. NYT
Now that all the unrestricted trading from Wednesday has cleared and they have secured hundreds of millions in funding, we should expect the restrictions should be reducing right? HA I'm not holding my breath. Currently, as of Sunday morning, GME is limited to a single share: https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/changes-due-to-recent-market-volatility/
I'm not sure. I'm super curious to see whether they actually failed on an NSCC call and got hit with an additional adequate assurance deposit requirement.
That may be, but if it is, they aren't keeping their customers informed. If they cared about their customers ability to make their own investment choices and about price discovery for these tickers in the market, wouldn't it be helpful for them to be more transparent about what's going on so we (and the market) could know what to expect? They don't they only care about themselves.
So Matt misfired with his comments on why Robinhood stopped trading then.
Weigh in
But... admit it, you were worried for a minute there. Before RH started manipulating GME by preventing buying, and making it clear where they stood, there had to have been a moment where you thought you might have to praise RH :)
RH has been a part of the club all along. You cannot get into the stock market/financial sector without membership.
All you have to do is look at who their investors are to know they're absolutely in the club.
Well that and the fact that google just deleted a bunch of negative reviews that came from them preventing their users from using their platforms
The problem with them selling order flow to make money off customers is independent of the problem with them preventing buys of specific stocks. If they hadn't restricted anything and simply allowed people to trade normally they wouldn't really be deserving of any praise, that's what everyone expects a brokerage to do.
Absolutely. But, when the squeeze was on initially, you had people positioned to profit from this order flow making essentially the same argument Matt was "we shouldn't celebrate the inexperienced accessing the market when they could mess stuff up", but for the opposite definitions of "stuff". Matt was worried about the masses getting slaughtered by pros. While the pros were worried about getting slaughtered by the masses.
RH restricting buy access changes the argument. It's no longer about how dumb or smart the retail investors are. It's about the fact that RH is there purely to provide a flow that is profitable to those that are paying for it.
out of context, false equivalence
in the 1st quote he's talking about little-guy investors being exploited by the platform
in the 2nd quote he's talking about how hilarious it is it blew up in their faces
Robinhood is Wile E. Coyote
Who do you think is going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up?
The redditors, but they're hoping to have taken down some hedge funds before that happens. For the most part, this isn't people trying to get rich, it's people willing to spend (and lose) a few hundred bucks in order to take down some multi-billion dollar hedge funds that got greedy and over-shorted stock.
A couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.
I had a person in my office, (who now I know participates in the r/wsb forum) tell me just that. I’ve chosen to potentially take a loss and surrender “taxes” to achieve a community goal. The invert of “if you’re going to tax me I want representation” is “me and some others are going to volunteer for potential taxation to achieve a goal our community supports.” He considered GME a charity fundraiser with potential profits.
Bear em’ at their own game-can’t get more American can do spirit than that.
«A couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.»
It would have been much better and longer lasting if the bucks had gone to labor union memberships and their political funds so the labor unions could buy their own gaggle of representatives and senators like Wall Street and the Business Roundtable do.
But a large part of the attacks on labor unions by Republicans and "centrist" Democrats was precisely because of that: their sponsors want to be the only ones allowed to buy politicians.
I am presuming you have never worked in NYC. Having done so, I can give an anecdotal reason why I despise labor unions. My job back in the mid-90s involved transporting computers between buildings in Midtown - mostly for repair. I had one of those folding hand trucks. The reason I had a folding one rather than a real hand truck, which would have been way more useful than that cheap folding thing, is that you a. can't use the freight elevator and b. can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is. Of course, being an IT support guy for one of the building tenants, I didn't qualify for any union that controlled the building anyway, even if I were interested in joining.
My little anecdotal story can be extended out to strikes in Great Britain over not much at all, the slowdowns in getting things off the docks or through railroad systems in the US. Anything that has a union involved is slowed down and the service sucks. Ever wonder why there are so many long haul trucks running around spewing diesel fumes? You have your answer.
Unions make life suck just a little more for everyone.
«why I despise labor unions. [...] can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is.»
So you despise free markets and freedom of contract between consenting parties! The building owner and the union have reached an agreement and exercised that freedom of contract, and your employer have chosen in the free market to be a tenant in that building, and nobody is stopping them from choosing from the free market a non-union building in NYC or anywhere else if necessary.
That's the American Way: capitalism means that winners do whatever it takes, and if a party have the leverage to fuck over their customers, they do it to the fullest extent they can get away with.
In particular in the vast majority of cases it is employers that have the leverage to fuck over their employees, and it is corporations that have the leverage to fuck over customers, and impose as many restrictive practices as they can on customers and employees, and labor unions do that in only a minority of cases.
Regardless, in the case you give as example, the party really responsible for the restrictive practices is the building owner, because neither you nor your employer have contract with the union, that you cannot carry stuff yourself is certainly a rule in the tenancy contract between the building owner and your employer.
Why did the building owner put them in the tenancy contract? Because, given their leverage vs. that of the labor union they had two alternatives:
* Give them a higher wage without restrictive practices, and the cost of that falls on them.
* Give them a lower wage plus a monopoly on certain types of work, and the cost of that falls on tenants.
The builder owner are proper americans!
"Rage against the dying of the light." That is what is happening here. At that point it doesn't matter anymore, it's about making a stand and sending a message.
I'm not one of the WSB guys, but I interpret the message to be rage against the decoupling from useful work and financial rewards in American society. I'm glad some of them got rich, although I'm not sure how much a digital dollar is going to be worth in a while.
The Puritan work ethic has been utterly hollowed out. People can see it. It's visible. Hard work doesn't get you ahead financially. Personal connections and knowing how to game the system are what gets you ahead. The elite are scam artists.
Exactly. And that is why this is happening. The curtain has been pulled back as far as it can go. Nobody can deny the markets, the "system," the American Dream is now, and has been for decades, a crock of shit.
This is why Library of Congress lists The Wizard of Oz America's most popular book! They still want the delusions.
Maybe it's Wall Street's version of the Thucydides trap?
Agree-I’m not jealous of blown up financial stock value and I don’t feel bad when it disappears. If you can’t handle the game, stay off the field-and don’t change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing.
"don’t change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing."
haha, this is exactly what the big public trading platforms are doing right now by locking down buys on GME etc. If Twitter is to be believed, Robinhood is actually selling GME holders' shares against their will. That's a pseudo-factoid I can't verify, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
I guess it depends on what your definition of 'getting ahead financially' is but I can't agree with your post. Most people I know have, in fact, 'gotten ahead financially' by working hard and rising either through their ranks or building clientele. America's dream isn't fake, it just isn't being taken advantage of by some people.
The billionaire head of a major U.S. venture capital firm is the self-made child of dirt poor immigrants. He put himself through school, obtained several bio and business degrees, and worked 18- hour days to get where he is. He remains peripatetic and aggressive, working probably 10 times as hard, in real terms, as a randomly chosen nine to fiver. Without venture capital, we wouldn't have Apple or Google, or Silicon Valley, the latter a mixed blessing, or many healthcare innovations. The problem is the excess and greed,the personal jets and steroidal houses, the narcissistic culture we're seeing now, the lack of perspective or proportion, the protestant work ethic/help your neighbor raise his barn restraints. That lack of restraint and greed is what the U.S. must address, the debauched bonus and pay often not always at the expense of the stretched taxpayer. Warren had that right.
Most people who are rich possess the drive to make money -- being smart never hurts. Most people may not have that overweening drive -- they make do and spend time with family, watch the tube, or want to teach, help the sick and the infirm, write, protect the planet, make the world a better place for the innocent or helpless. We make choices. Some phone it in, and gripe about not being rich. In a matter of 15 years, my sister's immigrant gardener, originally from Mexico, became a full-blown landscaping enterpreneur with three beautiful trucks and crews. His brother owns an electrician business that services major developments. They made that happen. The landscaper put his profits back onto the company, and performed consistent, reliable, good work. The result is a thriving business.
There's nothing funnier to me than the people who think WSB is a bunch of principled populists sticking it to the man. It's a tiny minority of that but it's largely nihilistic opportunists laughing at memes and rallying together because they've proven the ability to move the market many times over (GME isn't close to the first time this has worked). To be clear, I have no problem with that! Let 'em rip! The vast majority that are doing it know that it's a stupid idea but it's _fun_! More power to them, I have non problem with it but will always laugh at people who back-fit a populist rebellion on it. Even more so when Taibbi decries the great evils of Robinhood for encouraging reckless trading and then a month and half later praises reckless trading on Robinhood as populist rebellion!
I think you would be surprised. I didn't really care until big tech started trying to deplatform these people. And, then today when the hedge funds and brokerage houses conspired to prohibit buys (not sales, only buys) it exposed a level of corruption that we suspected existed but had never seen so blatantly in the daylight before.
So, I willing to lose a few thousand dollars to help my fellow apes take billions of dollars from Gabe Plotkin. And, I can't wait to be seated next to Gabe at the Applebees.
For me this is 100% protest. I'm not the type of guy who is going to attend a rally in DC. I'm a boring ass 45 year old, but I have diamond hands.
This is the same deplatforming that’s happening everywhere. We all think we’re citizens until they decide we’re just subjects.
"I willing to lose a few thousand dollars to help my fellow apes"
Return to Monke!
The Mod Gorilla Boss, brought to you by Gamespot (sadly not GameStop, which would have perfected the bit: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/strange-adventures-201-the-mod-gorilla-boss/4000-9403/
I don't entirely disagree about the mix, but the nihilist group will get out on time so it's not like everyone who backed the move is going to get rekt
Anyway... the redditors who lose will lose no more than they put in
The hedge fund guys will lose geometrically and that's what's charming about the story
I feel like Matt's uber fan boys think me mocking his gross hypocrisy here project on me that I don't find this charming/hilarious. I'm pro WSBers here! It's great! It's just Matt had his two totally predictable takes and they're directly opposed to one another.
You work for Wall Street. That meme thing is just what the hedge fund scum have been using on the news. Wall Street is fake, dude. It's fake for everyone. Let us know where you live and when you will be out of town next so we can go through your shit.
I don't work for Wall Street.
Also, wtf is this: "Let us know where you live and when you will be out of town next so we can go through your shit."??
This trade is safer by leaps and bounds than buying index funds at ATHs, right? The hedgies have publicly disclosed that they are short 140% of the float in $GME and keep loading up every time it climbs. In that scenario a swing group of buyers controls the price. It would be reckless to not pile on, right?!
Hah, maybe! Fingers crossed you're onto something
I agree about people trying to back-fit a populist rebellion onto this. Well said.
I disagree with the idea that Matt's two articles are in conflict. It's funny that these guys sent the hedge funds running. But at the end of the day, the stock price will fall, or else GME will have to find a new business model. If the Robinhood crowd wind up with a majority of the stock, they'd own the company. But what do they do with it? Hire a new board to do what?
Sometimes public companies go private. They do so because they think the company is worth more than the market value. Do these investors think that's true in this case?
[Who is to say the original planners are still the ones moving the stock? Robinhood is allowing buys of ONE share? That ain't gonna move anything.]
The real story here was the proof of concept. For the first time in my 40+ years, I've seen the populous stick it to the wealthy in a way that they actually give a shit about. I liked Occupy, but at the end of the day Finance didn't ultimately care that much. It didn't affect their money long-term and they were already experienced with waiting out a Long position in their penthouses.
This seems like it might be different. They're panicking so much over this that they're being blatantly... blatant about it in their hypocritical calls for regulation. That and the fact that they're losing money and maybe the citizens finally found something that will threaten them.
Even if it's mostly nihilistic, it's a protest in spite of itself.
At this point, that which discomfits my enemy is welcome. IF there were such a thing as "Trumpism" (outside the tiny brains of hysterical blue checks), and IF it could be shown this little blow against the Empire was committed by "Trumpistas"...I'd still approve.
It's going to take some bitter hatred and a willingness to absorb loss for this to get turned around. If it gets turned around.
I could be reading him wrong but my understanding is that Matt thinks that the populists and the socialists would be much more effective at learning even the basics of Finance. He's said as much before.
For example - setting aside losing twice in races that were absolutely rigged in various ways against him - Bernie might have got the edge he needed to tip past the long odds in 2020 if he had been able to talk solutions to the Finance issues like Warren was able to do. Warren was able to peel enough of the "I'm a socialist but I'm a serious ADULT! harumph" vote off of Bernie mostly (in my opinion) due to the fact that she could talk a wonky finance game. Warren may or may not have been all talk with her "Plans" but she could still talk, and they weren't even hugely complicated concepts! Imagine if Bernie could have trumped (original meaning) Warren with his own specific finance regulation/tax plans?
My take is this is asymmetrical political warfare, and sometimes the poorly equipped/financed teams can win the battle using guerrilla warfare. Using their weapons against them is a key principle of guerrilla. VC sent France and the US limping out of their country by using their own weapons against them. VC would take discarded ration cans left by soldiers and fix them into mines.
The question of which opportunists/deplorables/gamerpoopsocks constitute the meme stock class is beside the point. This has been a proof of concept for a strategy that works because it's a counterstrike that the elites actually give a shit about. It gutted some of them where it hurt the most. It's plausible that the populists could further develop this strategy and bring back a little wealth in doing so. I want to see where this goes because nothing else that has been tried in recent decades has done anything to make them care.
Can you give a few more examples of WSB moving the markets? I'm genuinely curious.
Robinhood's list of stocks you cannot buy today gives a partial list.
<Due to ongoing market volatility, the following securities are currently set to position-closing only:>
AAL
AMC
BB
BBBY
CTRM
EXPR
GME
KOSS
NAKD
NOK
SNDL
TR
TRVG
https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/changes-due-to-recent-market-volatility/
Well just right now there's AMC and BB as well. Prior to this you had Hertz, NIO, NKLA, arguably TSLA, possible AMD argument, though that one really matches well with fundamentals. There's been more but these are some I remember from the top of my head.
Exactly, there are people all in on Gamestop, but the majority put in as much as they're willing to lose. If and when their position's value evaporates, it will have been more than worth it. Per WSB, "Diamond Hands" don't sell.
After prohibiting the purchase of shares and options earlier, the big market makers implemented a short ladder attack, wherein they put in lower and lower bid prices between themselves with little volume, and since no one can buy, it causes the stock price to appear to be plummeting. However, people who follow the subreddit quickly learned of the ruse. The shorts are still screwed for the foreseeable future.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Did anybody even mention "a bailout" for these plebes?? Don't think so.
Quite the contrary, BIden's press secretary's brother ran the hedge fund that got caught with their shorts down. Janet Yellen made a million dollars in "speaking fees" from Citadel alone! I think people know what "side" our public servants are on.
BTW, the press secretaries LinkedIn profile had her brother scrubbed from it, TODAY.
"Who do you think is going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up?" - as always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20. On the bright side, the publicity will probably help keep the company alive. Retail is a tough business, these days.
«as always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20»
A critical detail is that the redditors are not buying the stock, for $20 or $200, they are buying call options on the stock. They know very well that their call options will eventually and soon become worthless, most of them have only bought a $100-$200 of call options and they can afford to lose them.
The big banks selling the call options will lose a lot of money though because their option pricing algorithms make them buy the stock to cover their positions. A large part of the story is that if a stock price ramps up very quickly, those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag.
calls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out huge. The people jumping in now are either long buying small amounts or spending a small fortune for calls. Puts are also wildly inflated too so someone sees the writing on the wall. Truth be told a lot of the last few days are FOMO guys and aren’t going to get rich.
“calls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out huge”
You are missing two important details:
* The huge rise on GME happened because a few days ago calls were "below $100". We are discussing how the stock could have jumped so much in so few days, the past, not the present. As I wrote part of the issue is likely that "those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag", and the lag has shrunk.
* Most of the Redditors buy calls and stock on RobinHoodm and the important selling point of RobinHood is that they "sell" fractional shares and calls. That a lot of people are buying fractions is strongly hinted by RobinHood having to suspend new purchases of fractions for a while while they went out and raised capital for collateral, which makes sense only if they are the actual holders of the unfractioned shares and calls.
Greedy uneducated FOMO amateurs. Stack Market is gambling pure and simple and if you don't study and understand the odds you will leave the table broke. The house (Wall Street) always wins in the end. But those that understand the odds will at times score big time. This is a grown up world, these are not kindergarteners investing their milk money hoping to ride the pony outside. You make your bets and you takes your chances. If mom and pop have their life saving in a managed account and their account manager is not aware of the GameStop danger then they surely chose the wrong place to trust their saving s to. Anyone buying in at $200 has to know the risk.
Or, "Anyone buying in at $200 has to have $200 to lose." And I'm pretty sure most of them do.
Wonder how they're going to phrase the message that "You're not getting your $1400 Covidbux checks because some of you might do something irresponsible with it."
They'll have to first set it up that it's all the fault of "Trumpers" or "Alt-righters", which, with a fully compliant media, they'll probably be able to dl.
Who do you think was going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up without the WSB/RH rise? GME was shorted 140%, so we know who was going to make money - the guys who just lost their asses. So who would have lost without WSB and RH?
Do you fret for people who are stuck holding lottery tickets that don't win too?
Exactly my sentiment. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Andrew has only a vague idea who is holding GME stock, and much more important, Andrew's has never, ever voiced concern for that group prior to this situation.
Tell me more about these donuts
Everyone who agrees with, "Hold the line" - although, quite a few of the "holders" didn't invest their life savings (we can only hope). It sounds as if most of my fellow redditors simply threw in nominal amounts and let the network effect take hold.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Some of the redditors. A lot of the hedge fund guys. There's no neat answer here.
I think you got your modifiers reversed :)
Unless something really crazy happens it will be a lot of Redditors and some of the hedge fund guys. You're totally right, though, they have 100% stuck it to Melvin and have proven (they already had, this is just the biggest time) they can squeeze a short with great effect.
And a lot of people who have no idea what's going on and think they can buy and sell for profit.
To be totally fair to the story here, WSB is promoting a Robinhood boycott after this GME fiasco. I know that you're specifically attacking Matt's take on bringing in more retail investors overall, but if you simplify his point down to "Robinhood bad," WSB would agree in solidarity. They were the ones who orchestrated the mass 1-star ratings on Robinhood, after all.
In any case, it's nice to see Matt get a different perspective on retail investing. Curious to see if his perspective shifts after WSB "GME loss porn" begins making headlines. I always knew that WSB was somewhere special, but to see it get this much attention and scrutiny, leading to nonsense "alt-right" takes and censorship from Discord... well, it's a little bittersweet, like seeing your favorite indie band go mainstream. Let the autists trade in peace, I say!
Amen. Agreed across the board. As you said, though, my point is Matt rips Robinhood for letting and even encouraging its users to be reckless and then now praises their recklessness. I would do neither and just say "let the reckless be reckless, it's their choice".
Say that I wrote an article about how Tesla automobiles are unsafe - they spontaneously combust, they spontaneously accelerate, the autopilot will crash, etc.
Then say I wrote an article about how the National Automobile Dealers Association lobbying states pass laws prohibitively regulating factory-owned automobile dealerships (i.e. Tesla) is an attempt to ban competition and corner the market.
Is this a comedy of hypocrisy? No, both things can be true at the same time. A product can be unsafe and its competitors can be cheats.
Are you really suggesting Matt was off base in the earlier article when he questioned the true nature of Robinhood? Today? After Robinhood straight up drove the prices of a number of stocks down by only allowing users to sell?
Matt expressed two broad problems with RH in that article:
1) That PFOF is predatory.
2) RH preys on the inexperienced and dupes them into reckless investment choices.
I disagree with #1 (see here for more: https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1340030132627509248)
#2 is what I'm mocking. He villainized RH for encouraging reckless investment and now praises it as populist rebellion. That's hilarious.
The main claim of that article was that RH is incentivized to encourage investors to behave in ways that are profitable to those that are pfof... Today we witnessed the extent to which RH is willing to go encourage specific behavior (only allowing closing of gme positions).
There is no inconsistency here. You can enjoy watching retail investors fuck with hedge fund managers for fun and possibly profit and, at the same time, observe that RH is designed for the benefit someone other than the users of the app.
Let me first accept your leading sentence as true.
If you encourage investors to behave in ways that are are profitable to PFOF, that isn't inherently bad. It's only bad if those ways are actually themselves harmful to the investors. Well what are the users encouraged to do that is harmful? Things that are reckless gambles with high possible returns like buying short dated, OOTM options also known as what's going on with WSB and GME. So either encouraging this behavior is bad or it isn't. In his RH article, he makes it pretty clear he views encouraging this behavior is bad.
Taibbi makes clear in this article that he's in favor of this behavior and even encourages it specifically!
"Buy the ticket, take the ride, nitwits."
Either encouraging this behavior is bad or it isn't!
Me? IDGAF, play whatever stupid games you want! But I'm always going to laugh at the blatant hypocrisy. Just as I laughed at the hypocrisy Taibbi lays out in this article.
>Well what are the users encouraged to do that is harmful?
Yesterday, when RH removed the ability to buy gme, users were encouraged to sell.
Again, there is no hypocrisy here... One can believe that RH encouraging harmful behavior is bad, and still enjoy it when the entire thing backfires on them.
NO, you missed with everything you wrote. Because you lost money.
No, you lost money
Well why don't you write a better article, instead of playing gotcha like a 5-year-old.
This article is good and if I wrote the other article, it would be really short and go something like: "Robinhood revolutionized retail trading by giving end users an easy to use platform to trade for free. This made every other platform offer free trades. You can also buy fractional shares so if you can't afford expensive stocks, you can still get in on the action. It's pretty much completely idiotic to trade options but RH gives you those too if you want to play like the big boys. All in all, a pretty great innovation for the little guy!"
I think you wasted you time in college getting an MBA.
I mean, you could actually just Google my name and probably figure out who I am. You're not very good at guessing...
And you're not very good at guessing how many shits are given about that.
All the same, they are bad for traders in tons of little ways. They've been great training wheels — and midwifed an important market transformation — but when you figure out how to balance you probably want something that doesn't have plastic tires and an open recall on it.
"What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market? A lot, as it turns out." Yes, for the hedge fund folks
"The only thing 'dangerous' about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter." Yes at the hedge fund folks
I don't see the hypocrisy here. In both cases it applies to the hedge fund folks who got bit and are now getting laughed at. I get the joke. Evidently you didn't.
You comment has not aged well, given RobinHood's subsequent criminal actions.
Taibbi on Dec 9th: "What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market? A lot, as it turns out."
Taibbi today: "The only thing 'dangerous' about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter."
I see no problem there: more people putting their pension savings in the stockmarket has at least three huge downsides that are all quite bad for everybody but Wall Street, a gaggle of redditors burning a few hundred each to mock a faction of Wall Street is just comical, it has next to no implications for everybody but Wall Street.
The three huge downsides of putting everybody's pension savings in the stockmarket are:
* It creates, as Grover Norquist has boasted, extraordinary political pressure to bail out stock prices.
* It exposes pension savers to losing 30-60% of their pensions in Wall Street fees.
* It gives either "dumb money" or those managing their funds a ridiculous level of influence on capital allocation decisions.
Interesting, let's look at the context of that Dec 9th quote:
"What could possibly go wrong with bringing more people into the stock market?
A lot, as it turns out. “Every time someone says they want to ‘democratize access,’” says Joe Saluzzi of Themis Trading, “I get very scared.”
On June 12th, a 20-year-old University of Nebraska student named Alexander Kearns looked at his app and saw what he thought was a negative balance of $730,000. Misunderstanding the readout, which only showed part of a series of options trades he’d made, Kearns mistakenly believed he’d been ruined financially. He killed himself by stepping in front of a train, leaving behind a note asking, “How was a 20-year-old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollar’s worth of leverage?”
Please explain how the quote you cited implies what you stated in your comment?
If you really think that limited context breaks my point, why don't I use this passage:
"Brewster isn’t buying it. “Everything is designed to make investing look like DraftKings,” he says. Moreover, the company’s practice of offering push notifications when customers’ stocks move up or down 5% or 10% could trigger an endless cycle of dopamine-generating responses, combining FOMO/clickbait psychology with the betting urge. Customers think, “if it’s down, I gotta get out. If it’s up, I gotta buy more,” says Brewster.
The obvious problem is that a lot of these younger customers have no clue what they’re doing. “Retail investors don’t understand stocks, let alone options,” sighs Saluzzi. He compares the service to bringing amateur poker players to Vegas and seating them not at a table with old ladies and tourists, but with the best players in town. “It’s throwing them right in with the sharks,” he says."
Seems like the little fish ate the sharks in the past coupla' days.
Shouldn't you be talking about how this is out of context or something? Maybe making a bad point about false equivalence? ;)
The fish ravaged a couple sharks, a bunch of sharks have been feeding on the chum generated and we still have to wait a bit to see how the fish work out in a couple months.
Icthyology fun fact-piranhas will not bite/attack each other-they will whip each other with their tales, but will not attack their own with teeth.
incredibly underrated comment
You can be on Team Piranha or Team Remora. My wholly speculative thesis is that the sharks are doomed in the end; Nature's antediluvian cretins, cruising the oceans with nowhere to go.
It’s always hilarious to listen to the hedgies and institutionals bitch about retail when they’re always the worst villains no matter what the topic.
Sorry, I don't see how that makes your claim any more accurate. Stating that RH encourages bad behaviors while also allowing ppl to stick to the man are both true statements, a lot of RH users don't know much about the market, and the latest GME frenzy is actually given them a way to "fight back" (a lot of them don't understand how or why, but they know that predatory firms are hurting because of it), plus RH made clear today that it expects only one type of behavior.
First, is there anything more annoying than starting a comment with a faux "sorry"? Strap on a pair (balls or tits, your choice) and just say what you want to say.
> Stating that RH encourages bad behaviors while also allowing ppl to stick to the man are both true statements, a lot of RH users don't know much about the market, and the latest GME frenzy is actually given them a way to "fight back" (a lot of them don't understand how or why, but they know that predatory firms are hurting because of it), plus RH made clear today that it expects only one type of behavior.
Agreed but also totally irrelevant to my claim that Matt is a hypocrite in these two articles. In the RH article, Matt makes it clear that RH is a villain because it encourages bad behavior such as buying short dated, OOTM calls. In this article, Matt glorifies the same behavior as a populist rebellion. If the behavior is bad and RH is bad for encouraging then Matt is just as guilty of the crime when he says "Buy the ticket, take the ride, nitwits" and glorifies the selfsame behavior he vilified RH for encouraging. Matt's RH article isn't much further from the pearl clutching he calls out as bull shit here.
My take is let the people do whatever they want in this case. If RH wants to give uninformed retail investors the tools for their own demise, it's the uninformed retail investors' job to use them in a way that matches their risk appetite. If they want to informally gang up to put Melvin in a short squeeze, let 'em rip! RH wasn't doing anything wrong until the closed down the ability to trade GME and friends.
It wasn't a faux "sorry" actually, I really didn't get your point.
> Agreed but also totally irrelevant to my claim that Matt is a hypocrite in these two articles.
I'm missing something again, because if you agree that both statements can be true, how is that not relevant to your claim?
> Matt makes it clear that RH is a villain because it encourages bad behavior such as buying short dated, OOTM calls. In this article, Matt glorifies the same behavior as a populist rebellion.
Yes, RH is a villain encouraging bad behaviors, and following the same patterns as facebook and the likes, what's happening with GME is using that system against itself, and in the case of RH it enabled people to stick it to their bosses, both are true and renders your argument moot IMO.
> I'm missing something again, because if you agree that both statements can be true, how is that not relevant to your claim?
Because my claim is he holds wildly inconsistent standards depending on his populist flavor of the day not whether you can both claim the RH encourages bad behavior and also that it gives access to tools to create a short squeeze.
In Matt's world, when RH encourages risky trading that's bad and makes RH a "Pandemic Villain" but when Matt encourages risky trading that's good and is a populist revolt. That's inconsistent. This is a completely different question for what you're talking about as a set of consistent views.
> Yes, RH is a villain encouraging bad behaviors, and following the same patterns as facebook and the likes, what's happening with GME is using that system against itself, and in the case of RH it enabled people to stick it to their bosses, both are true and renders your argument moot IMO.
Look, either it's bad to give newbies access to and encourage the use of highly risky, speculative investments or it's not! It can't be that RH encouraging it is bad and Matt Taibbi encouraging it is good and you stay self-consistent. RH ISN'T evil (not even it's temporary shutting down of GME trading after further research: https://www.ft.com/content/9a1b24e6-0433-462a-a860-c2504ea565e4). Nor is Matt evil in this article for encouraging idiotic (I guess it's arguable if it's idiotic or not) use of investment platforms. But it is wildly inconsistent to vilify RH for encouraging use of risk, speculative investment vehicles and then turn around and do the exact same thing.
Ooooooh, hit him with the "hypocrite" tag, the lowest form of criticism available in Darwin's waiting room.
I mean, did you read the article this comment thread is on? Half of it is Matt, correctly, mocking the hypocrisy of the people trying to shut down WSB. It's just that Matt was doing the same idiotic complaining when he wrote about how evil RH was.
Maybe he was moving fast/breaking things?
I had a bit of a realization watching this coverage: seeing a couple of different attempts to link the "yahoo! screw the rich guys" rhetoric of the WSB gang to the alt-right and other members of Americas whacko fringe, I realized that that goofy-ass nerdballs who occupy most of the bylines in this country are just made very nervous by that-which-comes-from-the-internet.
And so, much like mapmakers from the era of the explorer, when they reach a part of the playing field that they can't wrap their heads around they write: "Here there be dragons"
Only the language they use for that now is "rumored links to the alt-right."
<<when they reach a part of the playing field that they can't wrap their heads around they write: "Here there be dragons">>
You're on fire. Please keep it up.
Yep, yep and yep. I do not normally get caught up in internet media news phenomena, but I agree that this is truly hilarious. I have barely been able to get work down today as I exchange emails with friends over how perfect a send-up of the whole financial system this is, as it has devolved over my lifetime. Anyone paying attention who still believes that there is a shred of credibility left in the structure of our political economy must either be delusional or have a hefty dose of covid-brain.
Occupy Wall Street, for real this time.
And do you know why ostensible “right wingers” are cheering this on-b/c the Redditors actually had a specific goal, understood their objective-fuck the elite hedges and make a profit, and executed a competent, 100% legal plan. They weren’t some trust fund wokesters and bong hit 70s era Marxists living in a tent city and spouting inane post doc platitudes about “capital” and doing nothing but making a nuisance of themselves to ordinary working folk who might actually like the opportunity to gamble/invest a few bucks in the market to improve their situation.
Can we agree the what the Redditors did was unbelievably effective and a revolutionary form of protest without slagging off OWS? At the time the protest was unthinkable, and an important and necessary step socioculturally to get to this point. I would agree 100% that boilerplate protest marches, sit-ins, etc. have now become meaningless. That is why this action is so inspiring.
What’s the fun in not slagging on OWS? They were a bunch of hack leftist morons spouting off about something they had no clue about, or, indeed, any real goal. People in the OWS camp considered having a plan or a tangible manifesto to be some kind of denial of agency to morons or something. Marxist feminist lesbian black icon Audre Lorde had a famous saying about how “You can’t destroy the Masters house using the Masters tools”. That theory just got blown sky high.
There is a massive difference between demanding equality of access to a system-which is an American ideal stretching from Frederick Douglass to the Hoffa era Teamsters to the Redditors, and demanding a new pie in the system that it’s supposed devotees can’t even comprehensively define. End of libertarian rant!
I think the government reaction to this will say more about America's political system than any other event. Obama lost a lot of credibility after 2008 by allowing Wall Street to get away with theft.
If the Biden administration potects Wall Street again the democrats are dead.
When the Biden administration protects Wall Street again, the democrats will blame Trump.
FIFY
"If the Biden administration potects Wall Street again the democrats are dead."
Oh, optimism. Such a heady perfume. A "potective potent potable," even.
But we must have optimism, even in the face of overwhelming odds.
As I was reading this article, it dawned on me that Mass. Secretary of State Bill Galvin was the guy who stiffed the production company I worked for in 1990. Galvin was running for Treasurer, and this was my first post-college gig, so I didn't know any better and was excited to work with a politician. We shot some spots with him (I remember thinking he was a human eyebrow) and he wound up never paying us.
stealing "human eyebrow"
Anyone else feeling warm and fuzzy inside right now?