I seriously doubt that the Wall Street situation can hold out until after the Senate Filibuster situation gets resolved, if they ever do remove or water down the filibuster at all. So this seems like a likely outcome.
They're gonna bail out Wall Street again. Fucking again.
And not just bail them out. IMMEDIATELY bail them out.
:obama-drone: uhhhh.... Muh legacy
Yes this is exactly why this situation Is so good and why I can’t understand all these fucking whiny babies around here. There are no really good moves for the bourgeoisie class in this situation because they unknowingly let a bunch of wolves in their henhouse.
wolves in their wallstreet, so to speak
Proletarian revolution, but everyone is dressed like Gordon Gecko with joker makeup on
Proletarian revolution, but everyone is wearing neon green wolf fursuits
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Martin Shkreli did the exact same thing a few years ago, to a greater extent. A bunch of other Wall Street firms are cashing in on the action. Wall Street isn't taking any kind of significant hit from this as a whole. If anything, it's probably gonna get a bunch more people involved in the stock market which is good for them. The framing of the whole thing is really weird. The "victim" is not Wall Street in general, it is Melvin Capital, which probably lost a couple billion, and a few other firms. It's also important to realize that most of the gains didn't even go to the WSB people, they weren't the only ones who bought the shares. Not like other Wall St. ghouls would skip on the action. Not to mention the 3 largest GME shareholders, who whose net worths increased by a hundreds of millions each.
Melvin was bailed out by another company, I'm not sure what this has to do with Biden? I mean, Biden being Biden will probably bail out a bunch of ghouls including Wall St. for corona or whatever at some point but, like, in 2008 the bailout was hundreds of billions of dollars, nothing remotely comparable would happen for the gamestonk thing.
Oh but you have to recognize what makes this a very different situation. Martin Shkreli is an INDIVIDUAL! they have to rewrite the playbook to stop the collective of retail investors. And yes the stock market is still an evil institution that must be destroyed. When you say things like “it’s only Melvin capital taking a hit, not wallstreet” I think you’re under estimating what a small club these people are in. And not only that, they have enough bourgeoisie class consciousness to understand that what’s happening is a threat to all of them. The easy solution for the feds would be to just regulate short selling out of existence but Wall streets gains are really dependent on fake things like that and the government doesn’t want to reveal that because it will reveal our economic system to be a sham. I mean Martin shkreli was a problem for these people too even if he was a fucking slime ball. Because he did the thing, showed how it’s all a sham. I do think it’s an interesting parallel to bring up but I gotta highlight the differences.
Shkreli and his firm organzied it and started it, he wasn't the only one doing it. It is true that they're kind of annoyed at what is happening because they are afraid it will make the already very volatile stock market even more volatile. But it's hardly a big hit.
Well, the entire stock market is some firms taking hits at the benefit of others. And Melvin is hardly TBTF, they control around 13 billion in assets, which is a lot, but not game changing stuff (plus they got bailed out by another company anyways so they're not close to failing either).
You are right to an extent that this is kind of a threat, but the threat isn't WSB taking the rich people's money. They threat is stock market collapsing again due to all the volatility randos gambling brings into the game. Not all agree btw, there are bougie economists who actually think this is good and healthy for the system. I'm not sure if the ones panicking or the ones saying it's good are correct here but I wouldn't overestimate the scope of this.
BTW I brought up Shkreli because it is the most extreme recent example I can think of, but short squeezing is a thing that happens semi-frequently to varying extents.
But even organizing at the level of a chartered firm is different then what’s happening here. I guess I just come down more on the side of the stock market collapsing being a net good for the nascent left of this country. And honestly I think this experience raises a lot of questions in my mind about what a democratically controlled economy would look like. Given the technology we have at hand now. Would it be similar to retail investing except; everyone starts with the same amount to invest, you also work where you invest and that’s part of how people decide where and how they labor, and all speculative devices are banned as well as investing firms whose only job is investing? I’m sure I’m missing things but I’d be very curious to hear other comrades thoughts on how many steps there are between what’s happening now and a democratized economy.
The only thing that is different now is that investing is more convenient. It doesn't democratise the economy at all. Democratising the economy means the working class collectively controls the means of production. The stock market is a system that prevents that, and ultimately encourages and rewards speculators and corporate ghouls. Making access to it easier doesn't change these relations, and at a macroscopic level, a lot more randos will get burned a lot more than the ghouls at the top.
Not sure if the stock market collapsing will be good for the US left. Maybe. But I'm not 100% sure I am looking forward to having the suicide rate soar yet again over here because Americans at Wall Street got a bit too cute.
even that's a stretch. day trading's been hyped on and off for as long as the internet has existed
like I guess robinhood web 2.0-ifying it has increased the convenience factor, but not significantly
Ok yeah I agree that Is the end goal. But on a day to day basis what does that look like for people? How do we set that up in a way people are enthusiastic to participate in? Yes the stock market is evil and must be destroyed I feel like you’re angrily agreeing at me lol. I mean historically the stock market imploding has been good for the U.S. left but hey that pessimistic shit is always correct if you never risk anything. Are you saying suicide will go up Globally as a result of this? In America that’s definitely true but I don’t think this will be what people point to on historical review that made so many people suicidal. It’s possible but we’ll see. I’m throwin a Hundo on funeral home stocks!
Are we about to do a revolution? How are we supposed to determine the details of the structure of a post revolutionary economy?
I'm saying that because it is what happened here as a direct result of 2008. The American stock market shitting itself was the catalyst that triggered a global recession and massive debt crises in southern Europe. Here unemployment almost reached 30% and suicide rates jumped up by like 33%. So it is a thing that happens and I'm not super stoked about it happening again, unless we could use it to finally make radical change, but I'm not seeing that right now.
I mean history is moving RN and you can either be humble enough to recognize that or you can smugly believe you’re sure that nothing will come of this. The result isn’t terribly different either way because we’re just fucking posting.
And yes I am trying to discuss what a post revolutionary economy would look like. So what? Isn’t this comm about speculation?
Wouldn’t it be good to go into a revolutionary movement with some ideas fleshed out about the way the economy should be structured? Specific to the country you’re in i mean. Wouldn’t it be smart to try and build those ideas out of the way the economy is currently constituted to minimize the reactionary forces that will immediately be arrayed against any revolutionary government?
I mean there’s a good Chapo ep about how fundamentally Wal Mart and Amazon prove the logistical benefits and possibility of a planned economy and any communist planned economy should take cues from the logistical framework and infrastructure that have been built by companies like Amazon and Wal mart. Obviously it would be different in the incentive structures that drive it, but nationalizing either company would involve as much keeping things working the same or similarly as it would radically changing the organization. I’m disappointed you’re dodging the question. I guess a big part of the equation is the viability of mass technological democratization of anything when the bourgeoisie control the technology and it Is itself a product of horrible exploitation and extraction. But that said, if technology as it’s constituted today can’t be used as a tool to democratize the economy, what transmits peoples inputs on a Democraticlly owned economy so that ownership is actually decentralized and not just owned by representatives of the people? Do you see what I mean?
And I’m sorry that my country has been terrible for the world. I really am. I wish you and yours all the best. All I can say really is that it was likely just a matter of time before a crash like this. Atleast this has been a surprise to some shitty rich people. It’s also forcing the democrats to knee cap themselves. Which seems like it’s not worth it, but as an American, you gotta trust me when I say nothing revolutionary will ever happen in America until the Democrats are thoroughly delegitamized.
And with all that said I really hope you don’t experience any tragic losses to suicide as a result of this. I think there’s a lot of hope going around right now and that can sure be dangerous but we can’t afford to be afraid to hope. Build an affinity group if you haven’t already and make sure all those people have the support they need not to wanna off themselves over the course of the next couple year. That’s really the best we can do for each other.
This is getting so much attention here because the forum is reddit adjacent and this is related to reddit. Short squeezes aren't remotely new, Robinhood and day trading isn't really that new either. That's my point.
You CAN speculate, it doesn't mean that it makes sense to seriously do that. Anything you say about it won't have any weight because history has shown that you can't plan these things ahead of time.
Ia the question to come up with a model for how Robinhood like apps will be used in an imaginary communist future? If I was writing a Sci fi book maybe I would sit down and think about that but I don't have much to seriously say about it. Anything people say about it right now will be similar to the people in the late 19th century imagining a future of whale taxis. I was planning to visit a close friend in the UK last year, but then covid happened and I couldn't. God's a birch.
Again, I'm not saying that to make the point that you MUST NOT think about this, think about whatever you like, it's just that we can't have a serious opinion about it in the present.
Are you talking about 2008, what is happening now, or what could happen in a while? Because there isn't a crash happening right now. Could there be a crash soon? Idk, maybe.
Well I'm organized and all, the left is much more prominent here in general than the US historically so that's something. But seeing what happened in the wake of 2008 was enough to be worried about massive stock market crashes. It's gonna happen sooner or later but we could really do with some more time. Can you imagine unemployment going from like 7% to upwards of 25% in a couple of years and, even worse, staying there? It's been more than a decade and unemployment was still 15% officially before covid (and the official numbers are complete bullshit too because they stop counting you after you are unemployed for more than 5 years or so). I think for young people unemployment is like upwards of 40%. It's not nice.
Just because the financial devices at work aren’t new doesn’t make this not a novel situation. That’s all I’m saying. And let me say with confidence comrade, the 08 crisis never ended. We’ve just been printing more money and kicking the can down the road and addressing none of the structural things that caused the 08 crash. So yeah it sucks and the timing is never good but I’m not talking out of my ass when I say a crash was without a doubt on the way, and a big one. What is good about this happening now Is that they can’t politically do anything about it without the blowback being incredible considering how little they have done to help the American people during the pandemic. Contradictions be heightening.
That sucks about the employment situation there. It’s really fucking ugly here too. But admittedly probably a little more optimistic being the imperial core and all. Has your country been over run by the gig economy yet? Are they using that to juice unemployment numbers there too?
Kind of but there's labor laws slowing it down luckily. Idk how much longer it's gonna hold for. They rely more on just outright manipulation to have lower numbers. Like, after covid they said "well due to special conditions, we are changing the methods we use to collect data for now", and then they were like "look! We're doing well! Unemployment hasn't increased dramatically!". Yeah of course it hasn't, you literally changed the rules.
Yep I wish there was a good place to get unemployment numbers but I haven’t found one yet. Keep an eye on that struggle comrade. Those fucking hounds will destroy whatever labor protections do exist.
They don't exist. The people who are in a position to do the stats are also incentivized to cheat. The funny thing is that ELSTAT (the Greek statistics agency) cheated by so much this time that OECD (which also cheats but is less tied to the Greek government) is now showing a discrepancy with ELSTAT. It's all very dumb.
And yes, the current neoliberal government is working overtime to get rid of protections and covid is not helping because it is hard to organise when there is a general lockdown. Literally all media except like one channel and a couple newspapers that few people read anyways are 100% supportive of the government too, and combined with everyone just being permanently stuck at home it's like people have developed a Stockholm syndrome for the government and it sucks.
Yeah I think they realized at a certain point that accurate unemployment numbers are just bad for the stock market so we can’t have those lol. That is really funny though, I hope I get to see Greece someday.
I feel like one of the things I’m always trying to beat my lib friends and family over the head with is the idea of America cultural hegemony. The only reason I say this is because that’s almost exactly what it feels like here too, atleast as far as the liberal media goes. It’s so hard to get Americans to understand how tied up the political and economic situations of the rest of the world are in our stupid fucking democracy and in fucking Wall Street. That was so important for me to understand the Cold War, a war basically waged through cultural hegemony. And I still forget sometimes too, thanks for reminding me how real this shit will get all over the world when Wall Street tanks. o7