Thread by @doctorow

If there's one thing we've learned during the lockdown, where the stock market soared even as economic activity (making and buying stuff) cratered, it's that the finance economy is totally decoupled from the real economy.

1/

Seen in that light, the Gamestop and other meme-stock/stonks bull runs were just more of the same: the movements of the market's fickle, questing line are based on random chance and manipulation, like the movement of the ball on a roulette wheel.

pluralistic.net/2021/01/28/pay…

2/

It's a casino.

It's a rigged casino.

It's a rigged casino whose existence depends on money-laundering, fraud and other crime.

Which is the only explanation for Your Hometown Deli, a sandwich shop in New Jersey that went public in 2019 and boasts a market cap of $100m.

3/

Your Hometown Deli has grossed a total of $35,000 over the past two years. Its only full-time employees are its officers and directors. At least some of its shareholders are in Macau.

cnbc.com/2021/04/15/the…

4/

Its president is a local high-school principal and wrestling coach with no apparent food prep or retail experience. His shares are worth over $20m and he appears to be part owner of the company that leases a genuinely ugly building to the deli.

5/

The company's VP is a local high-school math teacher. She and her boss are the company's only full-time employees and draw no salary for their work. Neither does the company's chair, who owns or is involved with mulitple Chinese and Hong Kong finance/private equity firms.

6/

Prior to that, the chair was directing companies in New Zealand, during its period as a notorious money-launderer, heavily implicated in the Panama Papers.

7/

All of this came to light because hedge fund manager David Einhorn raised it in a letter to his shareholders as a cautionary tale about the risks to retail investors. But whatever is going on with this $100m convenience store, it has nothing to do with retail investment.

8/

Its shares barely trade at all. It appears that mysterious people, possibly in China and Macau and Hong Kong, decided to park $100m in a convenience store and got a couple local high-school teachers in on the bit.

cnbc.com/2021/04/15/the…

9/

This business with $35,000 in revenue over two years had $600k in expenses in 2020 and $154k in 2019. It also made $2.2m through the sale of its stock.

That's not a story about Redditors pushing the price of Gamestop and AMC through the roof - it's far more sinister-seeming

10/

I have no idea what's going on with this sandwich shop, but I will be awfully surprised if the primary reason for all this financialization has anything at all to do with sandwiches.

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/04/16/whe…