The GameStop malarkey
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They are talking about nothing else on stock exchanges all over the world. It confirms (as does the current Bitcoin bubble) that, whatever else they are, stock exchanges are a gambler’s paradise.
This is also a case of Left and Right Unite against …. shorters. From today’s Times of London:
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratie congresswoman, said: “This is unacceptable. We now need to know more about Robinhood’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit. As a member of the financial services committee, l’d support a hearing if necessary.”
Her comments, made on Twitter, drew widespread support. Elon Musk, the Tesla boss, responded by saying: “Absolutely.” Nigel Farage, the British politician, said: “Free markets and free speech are under threat.””https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/29/game-j29.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/28/wall-j28.html
Pure capitalist speculation in the market of fictitious capital. Some of these companies were almost in bankruptcy and in March the USA government and the Central or Federal bank pumped money for them because they were having financial difficulties. This is another bubble similar to 2008 that is going to explode. In 1930 the stock market had enormous profits and then the great depression took place and it affected the whole capitalist world. Capital itself is one of the enemies of the capitalist class
On the campaign trail Donald Trump said that he had to be re-elected again otherwise Wall Street was going to crash but it has been the opposite way, it was just another of his television shows wall street is obtaining an enormous profit despite the pandemic, but the reality is that most electronic companies financed and supported Joe Biden instead of supporting Trump
Here is how the “learn” section of the Robinhood app that small investors used to do down the hedge funds defines socialism (but which later banned them). They seem to be “libertarians” of some sort. I suppose they were trying to understand but what’s the crap about Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia which don’t even fit their mixed-up definition?
“Socialism is an economic system under which the means of production are owned by everyone in society rather than by individuals. Historical examples of socialist countries include Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
What are the characteristics of a socialist system?
The primary component of a socialist system is collective ownership. In a socialist system, nobody owns the land, natural resources, or business interests within the country. Instead, the entire population theoretically benefits from any wealth that is created. In most cases, the government would coordinate the activities of the people, which implies a centrally planned command economy.
“A socialist system strives for a classless society, in which the people have similar financial situations. A basic standard of living is usually guaranteed through the government.”
Obviously irony
https://twitter.com/nippymom/status/1355284613719941121?s=21
They have created a new concept known as corporate socialism, I do not know where they got that definition from, but bailing out corporations, or providing money to the capitalists with zero interests is not socialism, it is capitalism bailing out the capitalists, and they are not bailed out by the workers either, the state is the private institution of the capitalist class.
Socialism is not going to be a corporate system or an economic system either, it is going to be a social production. The books titled the Black book of communism says that Nazism was much better than communism, it should say that Nazism is a form adopted by capitalism and that state capitalism is another form adopted by capitalism, but it is not communism or socialism.
The Socialist Party has spent more time explaining what is not socialism. instead of explaining what socialism really is, and part of the confusion has been created by the Leninists and the Bolsheviks.
How was Robinhood free of commission when it came to buying shares?
Because it sold the details of its users trends to the hedge funds. Users of Robinhood were not customers. They were the product.
Hence when the hedge funds found that the “small guy” was hindering its profit-making it used its power over Robinhood to stop trading from the “ordinary” investor.
Another tech company which sells the users details to others – Google – “revised” negative reviews of Robinhood.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-bad-robinhood-reviews-play-store
Just another example of the myth of “High St” capitalism for the “person-in-the-street.” Threats to the Wall St investment giants are a thwarted.
Now the small investor and social media move on to silver
I have a vague recall of some character many years back who tried to buy up all the silver he could so to control supply and the price.
You must be thinking of this:
Those pesky small investors…
https://medium.com/discourse/turns-out-wall-street-isnt-fond-of-the-free-market-da32d445999f
“Funny, isn’t it, how whenever the middle and lower classes begin to establish some sort of financial foothold and flex their power, the richest among us will move as quickly as possible to crush them?”
I hope nobody here is going to suggest that this is part of the struggle against corporate capitalism and that workers should show sympathy for the small investors in their class struggle against the corporates!
Incidentally, this brings out the shortcomings of the term “corporate capitalism” — that it implies there’s not so much wrong with non-corporate capitalism.
In one of his presidential campaigns Eugene Debs said that the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party was that the Republicans stood for capitalism as it is while the Democrats stood for capitalism as it was. It seems that the leftwing of the Democratic Party is trying to revive this.
ALB The primary component of a socialist system is collective ownership. In a socialist system, nobody owns the land, natural resources, or business interests within the country. Instead, the entire population theoretically benefits from any wealth that is created. In most cases, the government would coordinate the activities of the people, which implies a centrally planned command economy.
(emphasis added)Maybe it’s just me but it’s not immediately clear who’s actually saying this.
ALB, capitalism has taken a number of forms. Even in Marx’s time, it transformed from individual private owners to joint-stock companies. We ourselves qualify one form of capitalism – state-capitalism, as different from pure laissez-faire.
And i think we can detect a qualitive difference.
Would any member prefer to live under a capitalism that fails to provide any social protection like free healthcare and free basic education, all provided by the taxes on the employers. Libertarian capitalism would be a regression in social evolution, wouldn’t it?
I think there is a benefit in distinguishing structural varieties of capitalism from superficial appearances. Corporate capitalism versus crony capitalism.
Debs writes a lot about the trusts of his time, a development from cut-throat rivalries between businesses and makes the point that because of the centralisation and coordination of trusts, socialists will not abolish trusts but turn them towards satisfying social needs. A fair point when we understand the vast logistic cooperative nature of all the separate divisions of a transnational enterprise, particularly the food industry who control production and distribution from a foreign field to the fork, but sadly on the basis of pricing and profits.
As for what some call “peoples capitalism”, speculative punts on the stock-market, i consider it the same as when we did old-fashioned football pools and all those “scientific” perms, guesses made to look like method.
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