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Josh Marshall

28 Jan, 7 tweets, 2 min read

I’m seeing say the GameStop carnival shows the need for financial market regulation. I’m not sure that’s quite right. And bear in mind I think we already know we need more financial market regulation. The argument was strong before this. This seems a bit different.

2/ part of the motivation here seems to have been that running up the value of GameStop was itself absurd, since it appears to be a dying company. It was funny. Yes hedge funds were shorting it. But the absurdity of it seems to have been part of the attraction.

3/ We have seen powerfully in recent years how the dark mojo of internet chat boards can spill over into real life. Mainly that’s been in politics but into other parts of the culture as well. Here we have a chat board gag/scheme suddenly threatening real havoc in ...

4/ financial markets. What we saw in politics half a dozen years ago were now seeing in equities markets. I know I’m painting with a broad brush here. Smart investors can run against an exposed position. But this to me is the bigger story. Much as memelords invasion of ...

5/ of politics was wildly destabilizing, this makes financial markets themselves seem absurd. If some group of a Reddit board can put pressure on the national financial markets during a protracted financial crisis the whole thing seems flimsy, like a joke, deeply vulnerable.

6/ Maybe you already think financial markets are an absurd joke. And maybe you’re right. But this seems like a bit more than a tulipomania or market disequilibrium. It becomes part of the crisis of institutions and institutional solidity that has brought the whole ...

7/ country to the brink.

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Josh Marshall

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