This is a post that was originally intended for the paying subscribers to this newsletter but considering the importance of this developing story and the fact that I wanted to give everyone a little taste of what you get in addition to the regular email I am adding a few thoughts to the regular Friday mail in here. If this is something that you are interested in supporting, as well as getting a never expiring discount code for any and all gear I make I would greatly appreciate if you hit that button below.
If like myself you have found yourself glued to various news sources, be it social media or the traditional propaganda machines over this developing story of how a bunch of people on a reddit subthread played Wall Street at their own game, almost forcing one of the biggest Hedge Funds to go bankrupt and the US government falling over themselves to expose their only real function, protecting Wall Street capitol, this is for you.
To be clear, I know very little about the workings of Wall Street- I am far too poor to have ever wanted to waste time figuring out how to potentially play that casino. Furthermore, I consider Wall Street, and their international twins to be one of the most destructive forces pitted against the potential of humanities progression, it is highly corrupt, exists purely on an idea that at best of times does nothing but make the 1% richer without contributing anything of value to any society and at in the worst of times, costs all of us our existence, again, over something entirely fraudulent and metaphysical. Thus, not only has it never been a reality to me to play with whatever little money I have to spare but ideologically I consider it to be the big bad boss on the edge of my horizon.
With that, what actually happened and what are the cultural implications / insights from all this?
Again, I don’t know enough about the workings of the stock market to give you a concise and clever summary of it all but in short, a hedge fund was betting huge sums of money on a company called Gamestop to go bust in what is called short selling. This here sums it up extremely well and after reading this I hope that you can all see how this is nothing short of criminal, yet remains what drives the stock markets:
Now the significance of this is that essentially a bunch of “regular” people with a little time, work and effort figured out what the game is at Wall Street and this is where it gets important, got together and not only made a bunch of fucking money but at the same time bankrupted one of the most destructive hedge funds in the meantime. Make no mistake this was equally the reason behind this move as well as walking away with cash - and that’s the fascinating fact behind at all this. Over the next few days you are going to be hearing from the CNN’s of this world ( including the government ) how these people were criminally motivated, don’t buy it. This has ironically more to do with Robin Hood meets Mr. Robot than anything else. Everything the 1% works incredibly hard at from ever materializing, is the union of us worker bees and beating them at their own game. So much so that every Wall Street bastard in the last 24hrs has been exerting pressure on the politicians they pay so well to do their bidding and lo and behold, not only has the subreddit been taken offline for hate speech - you remember the discussion we had about 4-5 media companies determining what is “free speech” and what isn’t - and you bet your tax paying ass that DC is going to be bailing out Wall Street once again, and before you get any financial help during a global pandemic.
I find it absolutely fascinating how seemingly effortless it was to expose not only the violently corrupt and deconstructive nature of “the market”, the holy line that we have unnecessarily sacrificed millions of peoples LIVES for, the sheer insanity of a stock market whose “value” is entirely metaphysical and in no shape or form representative of the value you and I actually produce but equally important how fraudulent the governments response SO FAR already has been. Again, it is vitally important to remember what the government actually is meant to be: a representation of our communal life, ideas and plans for the future. It is anything but, has arguably never been but that is the ideal we have held the world hostage to and we are witnessing the final stages of its masks removal. I find that exciting and I find it even more exciting to see what is going to happen in regards to the governments response to it all over the next few days. If you needed any more prove of what is possible when we all get together, this is it.
I am going to leave you with a video from Glen Greenwald that explains this from a different, US based perspective that I found interesting enough to want to share this with you. These are wild times comrades and I am here for them. Below you will find your usual hot shots from the internet as per usual, and I hope you enjoyed this little foray. Pay attention to this, have a good think about what is possible in an union and figure out for yourself how to fuck back harder. This is what this here is all about.