GameStop Stock surges due to meme traders

CaitSeith

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This was never about the money.
We'll see about that when the dust clears and see if someone (maybe the first ones to call for action) "causally" got richer after the whole thing is over (and this is far from over). In a similar note, I haven't read the reddit posts, so I ask: was it promoted purely as activism or did they imply the participants may benefit out of it (aka, make money)?
 
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The Rogue Wolf

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Can we take a look at his transactions records to see if he actually paid his rent with a credit card and dumped all his savings into GME? Words are cheap, specially on the Internet.
I sincerely doubt there's a landlord anywhere in the world who lets you charge rent to a credit card. If it's a cash advance/transfer, that's different.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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We'll see about that when the dust clears and see if someone (maybe the first ones to call for action) "causally" got richer after the whole thing is over (and this is far from over). In a similar note, I haven't read the reddit posts, so I ask: was it promoted purely as activism or did they imply the participants may benefit out of it (aka, make money)?
Of course it's about the money.

This didn't start as activism until Wallstreet started doing everything in their power to try and crush this thing, up to and including things that are highly illegal.

Once the hedge funds started whining and calling this market manipulation and trying to get things shut down then it became less about the money and more about sticking it to wallstreet.

If wallstreet is going to have the attitude that even when we win they'll make us lose then it's time to go all out and make them lose harder.

Things rarely start as activism. First you have to piss people off.
 
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Gergar12

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While the optimist would say that Wall Street's days are numbered in the long term given their bad reputation, and the pessimist would say that even a social liberal would bail out Wall Street given too big to fail.

Wall Street could try to hire more token minorities all they want, hire more women, hire more from other global south countries, but by definition, in a capitalist country, some have to be on the top, while the majority are on the bottom.

Also a list of whose a liberal, and who is left-wing.


I think Wall Street will be bailed out in the next recession they caused, because of the revolving door of politicos then joining corporate boards. But they can't get away with this forever, the establishment cannot keep progressive policies let alone progressives out of power forever, because as long as there are working-class people or even lower-middle-class people, there will be progressives, leftists, greens, social democrat, democratic socialists, and a few communists to counter the rest.
 

Trunkage

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While the optimist would say that Wall Street's days are numbered in the long term given their bad reputation, and the pessimist would say that even a social liberal would bail out Wall Street given too big to fail.

Wall Street could try to hire more token minorities all they want, hire more women, hire more from other global south countries, but by definition, in a capitalist country, some have to be on the top, while the majority are on the bottom.

Also a list of whose a liberal, and who is left-wing.


I think Wall Street will be bailed out in the next recession they caused, because of the revolving door of politicos then joining corporate boards. But they can't get away with this forever, the establishment cannot keep progressive policies let alone progressives out of power forever, because as long as there are working-class people or even lower-middle-class people, there will be progressives, leftists, greens, social democrat, democratic socialists, and a few communists to counter the rest.
If the GFC taught us anything, both sides will bail out Wall Street. You had two separate large groups that arose to combat Bush’s and Obama’s bailouts. These groups lead to Trump and Sanders, both are ineffective to combat this problem for very different reasons. I don’t know how the US is going to get out of this without a complete reset
 

Agema

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While the optimist would say that Wall Street's days are numbered in the long term given their bad reputation, and the pessimist would say that even a social liberal would bail out Wall Street given too big to fail.
You really don't want Wall Street to fail. It is a effectively a representation of a massive chunk of the US economy, and if it fails it means the US economy blows up with it.

However, individual entities within Wall Street must be able to fail, and society must be able to scrutinise and have some control over what goes on there, because it's too important to be allowed to run wild.

Ideally, nothing should be "too big to fail", but if the government does need to bail companies out, the government needs to make sure it's not just an investor gravy train. Either they need to lose their money, or the government ultimately needs to be repaid, even if 10-20 years down the line.
 

Thaluikhain

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Ideally, nothing should be "too big to fail", but if the government does need to bail companies out, the government needs to make sure it's not just an investor gravy train. Either they need to lose their money, or the government ultimately needs to be repaid, even if 10-20 years down the line.
Is there any reason why governments have to bail out, rather than buy out? Would seem like a good time to nationalise, to me.
 

Kyrian007

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We'll see about that when the dust clears and see if someone (maybe the first ones to call for action) "causally" got richer after the whole thing is over (and this is far from over). In a similar note, I haven't read the reddit posts, so I ask: was it promoted purely as activism or did they imply the participants may benefit out of it (aka, make money)?
Well, I can't answer your question (I don't frequent reddit.) But in talking with a C.F.P. who we consult with on financial and business stories I learned that there is money (and potentially lots) to be made off of this. But its like a Ponzi scheme, or the South Sea Bubble, or musical chairs. If you buy in and then get out you will profit. The earlier you bought (the guys that started it) and the longer you hold on, the more money you make... PROVIDED you get out before a massive sell off crashes the value. That's what usually stops these kind of things, enough people decide they shouldn't hold and/or buy any longer and start selling... and strangely that actually makes it retroactively the best time to sell.

What makes this different... is spite. Because the hedge funds shorted this stock, spite is keeping people invested more often and longer. Because the longer the bubble lasts and the higher the price goes, the harder it will go on the hedge funds when they have to pay for the stock they shorted. But inevitably, this is an artificial market inflation and it will "rebalance." Any of the investors participating in this movement still holding on to their stock when this rebalancing happens... will lose nearly everything they've put in. Some are aware of this, bought in cheaply early on, and will only lose the small amount they put in and were fine with that from the start. Others bought in later when the prices were up and have cashed out and reinvested and have kept on doing this. And if they don't get out... they will lose it all.

But don't worry about the rich, they'll largely be fine. The hedge fund short sellers, yep they'll lose millions upon millions. But the brokerages that that allow them to short sell, will see large value increases. So yeah, a hedge fund or two is getting pummeled. But it will add to a bigger profit quarter for TD Ameritrade and other similar firms. Yea? A noble effort, yes I suppose so. But a few of the poor underdogs will lose everything to make a few rich people much less rich while making other rich people just a little bit richer.

Now if only there were a way to short sell hedge funds, to profit off of their imminent loss. Maybe TD Ameritrade can get on brokering those transactions.
 
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stroopwafel

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You really don't want Wall Street to fail. It is a effectively a representation of a massive chunk of the US economy, and if it fails it means the US economy blows up with it.

However, individual entities within Wall Street must be able to fail, and society must be able to scrutinise and have some control over what goes on there, because it's too important to be allowed to run wild.

Ideally, nothing should be "too big to fail", but if the government does need to bail companies out, the government needs to make sure it's not just an investor gravy train. Either they need to lose their money, or the government ultimately needs to be repaid, even if 10-20 years down the line.
Playing the stock market and trading with inflated debt is one thing but don't forget the amount of money laundering and shady real estate transactions that occur in the financial sector yet you rarely hear of any criminal investigations or institutions put under review. I guess dressing nicely, being able to speak more than three words and having an army of lawyers at the ready makes all the difference. Without impartial regulations and oversight the financial sector becomes this massive concentration of power and just like every concentration of power this will invariably go wrong. You would actually need to have like a Montesquieu for the financial market that entirely restructures it.
 

Agema

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Is there any reason why governments have to bail out, rather than buy out? Would seem like a good time to nationalise, to me.
A government buyout is a form of bailout as far as I'm concerned. It's perfectly viable. It is of course unfavoured by the right wing.

Of course, whether the government gives a struggling company a loan or takes (part-)ownership, I will bet you business will lobby the crap out of government to cancel the loan or divest itself of the shares at a knockdown price a few years down the line.
 

Agema

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Playing the stock market and trading with inflated debt is one thing but don't forget the amount of money laundering and shady real estate transactions that occur in the financial sector yet you rarely hear of any criminal investigations or institutions put under review. I guess dressing nicely, being able to speak more than three words and having an army of lawyers at the ready makes all the difference. Without impartial regulations and oversight the financial sector becomes this massive concentration of power and just like every concentration of power this will invariably go wrong. You would actually need to have like a Montesquieu for the financial market that entirely restructures it.
Well, it's not just that. A lot of what's going on is that financial companies don't just have battalions of lawyers, they also have battalions of accountants and other financial whizzes. Regulating and overseeing them is thus a case of not only finding out what they may have done that is illegal and proving it beyond reasonable doubt despite incredible complexity, but finding out what they're doing we don't know about that might need to be made illegal. As they have made stupendous profits, they have of course used some of that to lobby government to look less hard at what they are doing.

And yet as unhappy as Americans may be, New York is much better than London.

London's position as a major financial centre is substantially dependent on shady illegal dealings. All those tax havens in British overseas dependencies are really subsidiary operations of the City of London. This is all works as designed: the intent was for London to be the place that takes people's dirty or dodgy money. It doesn't have the advantage of New York as financial centre of a massive economy, so it needed a USP: and world leader in how to launder, make opaque and obfuscate is where it got to. It's no surprise that British banks have frequently got in trouble with the US regulators, because it's hard to truly firewall all the incredibly shady shit they're doing in the rest of the world from their US operations.
 

Eacaraxe

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You really don't want Wall Street to fail.
I do.

...It is a effectively a representation of a massive chunk of the US economy...
It's a giant game of Monopoly backed exclusively by government corruption, opacity, and willful ignorance of widespread criminality. At the end of the day, the specie has about the same value.

...and if it fails it means the US economy blows up with it.
You seem to have missed the presser from the White House yesterday about one in seven US households being food-insecure. I mean, atop the months' of reporting on miles-long food lines, eviction and foreclosure crises, and the ten trillion in QE over the past year. US economy's already a giant sheet of green glowing glass. Remember that scene in Chernobyl when Lyudmila Ignatenko busts into the radiation sickness ward and sees the firefighters laughing, drinking, and playing cards totally unaware they're dead men walking? That's where we're at, we're in the walking ghost phase.

...but if the government does need to bail companies out...
"Too big to fail" means "too big to privatize", end of story. If anything "needs" to be bailed out, it should be nationalized and the idiots who caused the problems, systemic and immediate, should be jailed. And I don't mean Club Fed bullshit white-collar prison or Epstein bullshit "house" arrest with commuted sentences for "good behavior", I mean in federal Supermax right there between Ted Kaczynski and El Chapo. Terry Nichols only killed 168 people and he's in ADX Florence; negligent and reckless financial malpractice that destroyed the livelihoods of millions and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives -- at least -- to starvation, exposure, and failure to receive health care, deserves no less.

We summarily drone strike people without due process of law for less human suffering these parasites cause on a per-minute basis.
 
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