I know what WallStreetBets is doing seems pretty hilarious, but they’re just reinventing pyramid schemes.
Short squeezes can also be a good strategy—it’s made WallStreetBets a lot of money!—but going after short-sellers as a general matter isn’t good. Markets need them. Short sellers were the ones ringing the alarm bell about Enron and the housing bubble.
GameStop, like Hertz back in April, is an especially ironic bubble: everyone knows that it can’t last, but they just want to show that they can make it happen for the lulz (and make some money in the meantime).

Thinking you’re in on the con is the easiest way to get conned.
Remember, this is a populist revolt against Wall Street … led by people who can afford to drop $50,000 in options on crazy bets

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More from @ObsoleteDogma

15 Jan
Our minoritarian government aids and abets Republican extremism ft.com/content/cabfd2…
The way the system is biased towards Republicans—gerrymandering, the Senate, & the Electoral College all overrepresent rural/exurban voters who strongly lean GOP—is what Daniel Ziblatt calls “constitutional welfare.”

It short-circuits the reform process. economist.com/united-states/…
Republicans have lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections, a feat of futility unmatched in our history.

But instead of inspiring some soul-searching about how the party can win back the suburbs, Republicans have been busy spreading Trump’s Big Lie.
Read 4 tweets
14 Jan
There’s *a lot* to like in Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package, but $415 billion more for vaccines, testing, and tracing would have the most ridiculous ROI.

It’s literally impossible to spend too much on this. statnews.com/2021/01/14/bid… Image
The Biden plan not only includes bigger checks—increasing them to $2,000—but also better- targeted checks that include adult dependents
The Biden plan will also have bigger and expanded UI, probably the most important thing right now other than the vaccine, and important boosts to the tax-credit safety net—the Child Tax Credit & EITC—that will hopefully become permanent
Read 4 tweets
7 Jan
I'm 36 years old. The two other times in my lifetime that a Republican administration committed serious crimes—Iran-Contra and torture—nothing happened. We looked forwards, not back, etc.

It's not good enough. How will elites learn there are consequences if there never are any?
Democrats need to impeach Trump again, and they need to impeach him today. Inciting a coup, no matter how pitiful it might have been, is as bright as bright red lines get. If Democrats *don't do anything* in response, then Republicans will try it again.
The President told his supporters to march on the Capitol and "show strength," they broke in, and tried to stop the counting of votes to overturn the results of the election. And Democratic leaders want to do ... nothing? I try not to curse here, but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
Read 6 tweets
2 Dec 20
Bitcoiners are taking a victory lap because its price is back to where it was three years ago. This supposedly proves that it's a better store of value than other assets that don't regularly experience extreme volatility.
It's worth pointing out, though, that the original pro-bitcoin arguments people were making years ago—either that it was a superior payment system, or that it would actually replace fiat currencies—haven't and won't come true.
If bitcoin really was going to change the world, it'd be in the middle of exponential growth right now. Instead, the number of transactions it's used for each day hasn't increased in the last three years.
Read 6 tweets
19 Nov 20
If Joe Biden picks Janet Yellen as his Treasury Secretary, she will be the only person to have ever held all three of the most important economic policymaking positions in government: Fed Chair, CEA Chair, and Treasury Secretary.
G. William Miller is the only person right now to have been both Fed Chair & Treasury Secretary. Both Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke were CEA Chair before becoming Fed Chair.

Nobody has done the trifecta, though. At least not yet...
I like to imagine that Janet Yellen and her husband George Akerlof debate which of them has a more impressive CV. First female Fed Chair, and potentially the first female Treasury Secretary too vs the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Just an insane power couple.
Read 6 tweets
13 Nov 20
It's probably not too surprising, but it's still striking how much US & UK politics have mirrored each other the last 40 years: laissez-faire with Reagan & Thatcher, Third Way-ism with Clinton & Blair, right-wing nationalism with Trump & Brexit...
... and left-wing populism as a possible antidote to that right-wing nationalism with Bernie & Corbyn, both of whom were old-school socialists who resisted their parties' moves to the center in the 90s & found their parties coming back to them in 2016
The similarities broke down with the 2020 Democratic primaries, though. Instead of Bernie taking over the Dems like Corbyn did with Labour, Biden and the more moderate wing of the party did—and we were lucky they did
Read 15 tweets

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