Congress is busy fixing Wall Street today
That's what they want you to think, anyway. Today they are holding a live hearing to grill some of the players in the recent Game Stop/Reddit/Robinhood short squeeze saga.
There is a lot to unpack in this whole story. I have been following it pretty closely since it broke loose and I have learned a lot that I never had any idea about.
However, as I am currently "working" at home, 
I don't have the time I would like to spend on putting some of it together for you. If there is interest, I will try to add more over time. I will just say that it's too bad the slogan "Stop the Steal" has already been taken, because the real steal that is going on is the one where Wall Street and Congress are working together to take everything from us and collect it for themselves. That is the Big Steal that we should have all consolidated around, I think.
Here's a link to the live feed, for anyone feeling masochistic:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7N4S_FKMq4]
But why subject yourself to that?
I was happy to see that Krystal and Saagar did an excellent take on it this morning that covers the basics of the situation and gets to the heart of it. If you haven't seen it, this is only 6.5 minutes and will get you up to speed fairly well.
[video:https://youtu.be/wBhK-UrlerA]
Be Well and Be Safe everyone.
Comments
The game is so rigged... and it's not about Dems/Republicans
They are all in this together.
Like JtC said a long time ago, the struggle is vertical.
I didn't really get what he meant at the time. Now I do.
Like everything else nowdays,
It's a gosh dern joke, and a bad one at that. It's one failure after another with no accountability what so ever, but hey, that's the American way is it not?
Instead of doing the people's business, ya know protecting the American people dealing with an out of control pandemic, power outages, lack of food, water turned off, we're trying to figure out how a small investor beat the market. Yep, that's about right.
Stocks and securities are considered property, but they are not taxed. Go figure...
I bet Yellowstone's super volcano will blow sometime in 2022. Yep, that seems about right...
apologies, I'm total cynical Sid today...
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
This article pretty much tells you how crooked WS/Gamestop
and everything related is fixed for the masters/banks
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/02/gamestop-hearing-citadels-ken-gri...
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Good article, thanks for the link
This is who Robinhood is in bed with.
Robinhood has turned out to be a big scam. It's truly disgusting how they use the name Robinhood and totally misrepresent their "mission" as one of helping to level the playing field. What a crock!
I have grown to really despise Vlad Tenev. He lies and smirks and acts like he has not a clue of the consequences of shutting down the short squeeze on Game Stop. He called it "hypothetical" that their shut down of buying shares was what caused the stock to suddenly drop in price, stop the squeeze, and allow the hedge funds to recover. He just smirked and said "hypothetically."
What an asshole!
debt of gratitude to GameStock
They exposed the rot and corruption of WS and their friends. More and more of our rot was exposed during Trump then ever before because he was the president the late United States deserves going forward.
Right now there are 4 million people in Texas alone without food, shelter, water and warmth and there is no federal aid on the ground. Supplies for survival must be flown in if airports are open and get people help right gd now. Let's do it before they lose everything or their lives which so far over 30 people have died in the states involved.
Biden's tenure will show how much power a president really has. Trump did things that didn't upset his masters. Biden won't do anything that does.
Thanks for covering this CZ!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
My sister lives outside Paris Tx & my brother south of Ft. Worth
and the only thing they have going for them is that they both live outside of towns in the countryside which means they have propane heating but both have failing electricity service,on and off all the time.
Although my brother and his wife live in a well insulated mobile home, that old house my sister lives in has very little insulation and high ceilings, so without electricity most of the heat stays up by the ceiling.
That house is nippy inside even if the temperature is in the 50s, I've lived through every season in that house.
The good news today is that her water pipes have thawed out and it was 35 degrees a couple of hours ago. Maybe now I can get somewhere talking my sister into getting solar panels. There are ads in that area offering monthly payments, and I almost had her talked into it during a long heat spell by talking about air conditioners in each window.
Sorry for their ordeals
that even if Texas was caught off guard by the storm there is no reason now why people’s lives are still in danger. But Texas and the country weren’t caught off guard were they? They had months of knowing it was coming and how bad it would get. Fish out of water wrote about the polar vortex at the end of December and he got it right. I posted a link yesterday and it’s worth a read. I also read that some of the newer homes in Texas do not have any insulation at all or even dry wood just cheap material. I saw that in the new houses in California right after I moved there. No insulation and just cheap, thin water. My fridge outlet caught fire and when it was fixed we looked at how much insulation I have. It’s at least 1/2 inch insulation wood. Best way to describe it. A board with it is hammered everywhere in my house and even when it’s below 20 out it rarely gets below 60 inside and the heat off. But new homes in Utah are being built cheap too.
My electric company wants me to put solar up and they are offering good deals. If I stay here I might get some. Not that mine goes off more than once a year or so, but damn it’s mighty inconvenient when it does.
None of their pipes broke I hope? Lots of homes have broken pipes and frozen water inside and the pipes put underground probably broke too because they weren’t placed deep enough. Very sad.
Hope you will keep us updated on your sister and how their recovery goes.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
One thing people should know: Robinhood is *not* on our side
I have watched every interview its smarmy CEO, Vlad Tenev, has given, and he is a shameless liar, and not even a very good one.
For one thing, he claims that the users of the Robinhood App are its "customers" but that is not true.
Robinhood makes its money off of those people, the users of its App. Robinhood's customers are the firms that pay it for the data on what those users are buying and selling (before those trades are executed). Their money is made with "payment for order flow" which means the users of the App are the actual money-making product, once again.
So when Tenev says they took actions to "protect their customers" just keep in mind who that really means.
The old truism comes to mind
once again: "If you aren't paying for the product, then *you* are the product..."
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Yes, exactly, but Robinhood took it to another level
TV shows, for example, sell the audiences's eyeballs to advertisers. The advertisers are the paying customers, the show watchers are what they sell. All "free" media works this way and always has if they want to make any money.
But with Robinhood, this relationship is essentially hidden. They don't tell you that "it's free if you don't mind getting ads shoved in your face." They just tell you it's free, and the fact of how they make money off of your trades is not really disclosed, unless you have a lawyer to dissect the user agreement or know a whole lot about the way these things work.
Which of course most of their users do not, since their target market for the app is all those regular people who are just wanting to buy and sell stocks on their own.
How Robinhood operates is quite predatory in many ways, once you dig into it a bit deeper.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
Babes in woods. Beleivers in Santa Claus. "Everybody gets an award for participating".
Now they face the real world for the first time without the adaptability of children.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Robinhood? Too bad they can't be forced to
change the name to the more accurate Sheriff of Nottingham.