Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
Bro, that was all my exact point: Why does that matter to you? What's valuable about a bunch of people enriching elites to hurt a single hedge fund (and let me tell you, all its managers are going to be just fine)? What's populist about that?
Why does it matter to me? Cause I think this Gamestop thing highlights the degree to which individuals of all types will willingly self-destroy their bank accounts as long as you feed them into this wide-spread anti-Wall Street sentiment. Specifically, it's interesting to me how in contrast to the Trump supporters slowly killing themselves with bad policy because of racism, the Gamestop meme seems to be shared across the political spectrum. I'm sure many of those losing money on this thing are Trump supporters, many are Bernie-Bros.

I think it is dangerous that we have this boogeyman created out of 2008 that holds sway over a large majority of the American public. Wall Street greedy and keeps Main street poor. Bernie at least imo attempted to channel this kind of sentiment into policies that were good-ish, sometimes. But at the end of the day the 'adult' in me knows that financial markets do a lot of good work that goes unrecognized, they serve a purpose imperfectly and it is dangerous for the everyday citizen to be enthusiastic or indifferent to the idea of 'burning Wall Street down'.

I harp on the sentiment because I think it is very difficult to have a situation where, yes, wall street fucked up 13 years ago and got bailed out while regular people didn't. And now people see that this flawed institution with the money to resist political reform is continuing to do just fine while the world shakes and moves. And now when the next moment to make a difference comes, is the political response going to be proportional to the issue at hand or will public sentiment demand extreme measures.
We could fund a good chunk of the welfare state (and a more vigilant SEC) off a financial transaction tax, but to me it seems that would be too modest, too boring vs more flashy wealth taxes and other punitive measures.

What's valuable about what just happened...well I think there is a lesson here somewhere. Bad policy in 2008 generated sentiment which then fueled public behavior that was taken advantage of. The inability of government to protect the public pushed people into making ill-informed decisions that only get themselves into further danger. Now the government is unable to bring closure to the sentiment because here it was entirely individuals choice to download Robinhood and partake in such risky behavior and the ones who will going to jail for market manipulation are likely the individuals lionized for trying to stick it to Wall Street. Thus the government is unable to properly bring closure and this feedback continues. The psychology of it all needs to be examined.