It is ironic in the most humorous way that Gamestop, the mall videogame retailer, was quite recently ridiculed by many of the same people now conducting an uprising to save it and boost the share price beyond imagining, for the ridiculously low trade-in value of games. But this is kind of the exact flip I was hoping for post-doughface, populist action against brazenly corrupt hedge funds instead of fascist takeovers of the Capitol.
I am sure by now that everyone is up to speed (and probably more in-the-know than me) on the story. Hedge funds took a huge short position in Gamestop (GME), looking to make a killing by destroying the company. This is an incredible example of how something can be legal and yet corrupt and destructive at the same time. Day traders, that are now called "retail investors" in a twist of understanding what roles are as this makes them sound like marks to be taken by the "institutional investors" i.e. Hedge funds and other predators, with online accounts to trade stocks at home rallied on a subReddit thread called WallStreetBets to buy the stock like crazy and screwing the short sellers. Also of no surprise to readers is what short selling is, borrowing shares from a pension fund or university endowment, etc. that hold extremely long positions and selling them immediately in hopes of buying them back at a later date at a lower price and pocketing the difference. It is betting on failure, a way to make money after the top 1% tank the economy or a wildly mismanaged pandemic throws the economy in chaos.
There are all kinds of laws and regulations concerning stock and other forms of trading, they are selectively enforced and are usually written and regulated by Wall Street executives taking sabbaticals from milking the productive economy and doing their time as "public servants". This is the reason so many Goldman Sachs executives end up as Treasury Secretary and the like. Sure, they want to keep markets fair... for them, but they are throwing a fit when those rules are used by small time investors to make money.
The last time arrogant financiers crippled the country the response from the left was Occupy Wall Street, a physical takeover of space but no real action. It was met with responses from the Obama Administration about the sanctity of contracts even if they are company killing bonuses for executives that ran it into the ground. As usual, fox news demonized the occupiers and cops did their duty for property and protection of elites. Regardless of how many connections were made, how many organizations gestated due to a bunch of people hanging out in the park, when it was all over how many dollars did the whole episode drain out of Wall Street? Did anyone get their house back because of physical activism? I hate to be a downer because I really appreciated the energy and commitment, but in the end they were all just sitting ducks. Why did we have to start at square one like that? Why did organizing against one of the top priorities of everyone born after 1964, wealth inequality, have to start almost from scratch? Well I guess I gave it away huh?
A lot of the framing around WallStreetBets has been about millennials clawing into elite boomer terrain. There are a lot of comments about how their generation has been screwed and born to fail. That is part of a much larger discussion, for now it is enough to say that yes, when it comes to wealth and opportunity the boomer generation pulled the ladder up behind them. And this episode of screwing short selling hedge funds is an attempt at revenge. Revenge, sticking it to the man, screwing Wall Street after they ate our generation's seed corn these are all much more concrete motives, and tangible rewards (enough "amateurs" are getting windfalls for their positions that it is a significant transfer of wealth downwards) than Occupy Wall Street's vague "common good" arguments for activism.
We ended 2020 with an insurrection of fascists rampaging the Capitol and are starting 2021 by punching arrogant hedge funds in the nose and some little guys actually getting some of the filthy lucre. It remains to be seen whether even this much can be maintained, but I like the energy.
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