By Seva Galant
Correspondent
Time and time again, the American government has failed its people. It is often siding with cronies and corporations while ignoring the average citizen. Without fail, the government has been incapable of rising to a performative standard of protecting the working class.
In recent times, this has come in many forms — whether it’s a stimulus bill that buys out major corporations and fails to provide proper funds for average citizens, failing to raise minimum wages that match the current level of production or refusing to alleviate debt caused by market crashes. None of these acts, however, are more egregious than the open manipulation of the United States Stock Exchange.
Proving the worthlessness of the government seems to be the only consistent benchmark our representatives are concerned with meeting. The American people have thus become accustomed to the inadequacy, ineptitude and dissonance happening within our administrative offices. This is why most of us were only teetering on the edge of anger and instead remaining primarily discontent. However, when the government, major hedge funds and big money within the country outwardly cut down on the American people’s ability to make money in the “free market,” the line has finally been crossed, spat on and disrespected.
It seems that the American government has one job: making working people suffer. This is the straw that will break the camel’s back and send us into protest.
GME, GameStop, is a stock that was majorly shorted by hedge funds. Shorting means that those hedge funds make money on the stock going down. In protest and in solidarity, a Reddit forum, r/WallStreetBets, collectively invested in that stock, bringing the price up tremendously.
This is completely legal.
As a result, the short positions that Wall Street had placed on GME were “squeezed.” That means the money they put into lowering the stock was being pushed back against by Wall Street Bets, causing them to lose upwards of $10 billion. This was done legally and as a meme by reddit users.
Then the hedge funds overstepped.
First, they resorted to banning the Wall Street Bets Discord channel for “hate speech,” a false claim. They came for the Reddit forum as well, however Wall Street Bets was able to make the forum private fast enough that they could protect themselves from being banned, too. r/WallStreetBets has been made public again.
These major hedge funds resorted to blatant market manipulation — stopping the buying of the stock, suspending trading repeatedly, and feeding lies to the American people through major news networks like CNBC. Major interactive brokers were used against the American people to stop online trading.
Now, they are calling for regulation on the accessibility of open trading. They are calling on the SEC to investigate the forums. They are calling on the administrative powers of the NASDAQ to regulate trading for GME in addition to other r/WallStreetBets picks like KOSS, SNDL, NOK and more which have been manipulated in a similar fashion as GameStop’s stock.
When we ask for a government stimulus package in the face of a pandemic, they are slow, petty and frugal. They care much more about big money than the American citizen.
When there are protests for civil justice, they do nothing, letting the people fend for themselves.
But when big money takes a loss, they immediately intervene. They immediately come to the rescue of a select few who profit off of our misfortune.
The government, big money and interactive brokers have all chosen to directly oppose and crush the working people.
I know where I stand.
To consider this anything less than a class war is an egregious error.
Those same gamblers who caused the 2008 Market Crash had their strategies used against them the same way we did all those years ago. When it happens to us, all we’re left to do is pray and hope we can recover. When it happens to them, they get to turn off the game and protect themselves.
This is the last straw.
