Hedge Funds Want a Bailout Ahead of Families Facing Eviction During a Pandemic
Maybe they can learn to code
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Billion-dollar hedge funds are filing for bankruptcy because of Reddit shitposters, and wealth is being redistributed from the ownership class to the working class in real-time. It’s way more effective than anything Occupy Wall Street ever did, and I say this as someone who was active in the Occupy movement for months, camped out in public parks, and got arrested at multiple Occupy actions.
For those unclear about what the hell is happening on Wall Street, here’s the gist of it:
A big part of the hedge fund business model is aggressively “shorting” stocks. This is basically making a bet that a struggling business’ stock price will plummet and never go above a certain amount. This destroys the lives of ordinary working people, kills jobs, and makes rich people a lot of money. It’s an inherently sick, predatory, vulture-like practice. Remember that episode of The Sopranos where Tony “busts out” the local sporting goods store because the owner was in debt to him? It’s like that.
Earlier this month, the /r/WallStreetBets subreddit found out that a hedge fund called Melvin Capital was shorting the stock for Gamestop. This was probably considered a safe short given how the Covid pandemic has devastated the retail sector. Reddit decided they were going to do the opposite — seemingly overnight, thousands of retail investors collectively bought Gamestop shares and speculated the price up to more than $325 per share, where it is today.
For reference, Gamestop was trading at $17 per share the day of the Georgia runoffs. That’s an increase of 1,911% over just three weeks. That’s unheard of in the stock market.
Naturally, a lot of Redditors made a lot of money from buying Gamestop low and selling high. And unlike the hedge funds, they’re using their gains for the greater good.
“When this is over and the battle is won - let’s do something the fat cats on Wall Street would never do. Let’s donate some of our earnings to a deserving charity,” one Redditor wrote. “Post some great charities, non-profits, funds, etc. in the comments! Let’s give to those in need together.”
“I can now write my mom a check and put my sister through lymes treatment,” another wrote, posting a screenshot showing he made more than $64,000 from Gamestop. “This has been a rough year, I’m so thankful for every single one of you.”
Naturally, wealthy investors and their lickspittle are furious that the rabble has caught onto their game and is now making money on the Wall Street casino that they thought they had to themselves. The Biden administration is reportedly “monitoring the situation.” Business Insider columnist Josh Barro wants us to please think of the publicly traded megacorporations. A MarketWatch op-ed is urging us to “stop laughing about Gamestop’s stock mania.”
“You may think it’s funny to value GameStop like it’s 2007 again and hurt some hedge funds in the process, but you might not think the next target is funny, nor the next, nor the next,” MarketWatch San Francisco bureau chief Jeremy C. Owens wrote, without mentioning that Wall Street has pilfered ordinary people out of their savings with similar speculation for decades.
While this is all hilarious, what’s not very funny at all is that hedge funds are now expecting the federal government to bail them out.
It’s hard to comprehend the amount of balls required to insist on a bailout for wealthy investors while millions of families facing eviction during a lethal pandemic are still waiting for theirs. Healthcare workers who are overwhelmed by the nearly 80,000 Covid deaths this month alone are still in need of personal protective equipment. Elderly and immunocompromised people in long-term care facilities still need help getting vaccines. Workers who lost their jobs amid the pandemic through no fault of their own are still waiting on the $2,000 checks Biden and the Democrats promised would go out “immediately.”
Here’s a better idea: Maybe hedge fund investors who make millions of dollars recklessly speculating could get a real job? Many of the nearly 8,000 journalists whose publications laid them off in the great media apocalypse of 2019 were told to “learn to code.” Home health aides are the most in-demand job in America right now, and investors can earn a cool $11.98 an hour doing real, actual work!
Figure it out, investors. But save us the crocodile tears.
