Can’t stop, won't stop, GameStop (with Congressman Ro Khanna)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When GameStop’s stock skyrocketed early this year, Wall Street was pissed. A group of Redditors had manipulated the stock market—and everyone knows only professional hedge fund managers are allowed to do that! We couldn’t ignore the market news that took the world by storm, so Nick and Goldy called up CA Congressman Ro Khanna to talk about what happened with GameStop, what it means for financial regulations, and what the government’s response signals about a changing tide in our country’s leadership. Congressman Ro Khanna is a Representative of California’s 17th District. Rep. Khanna sits on the House Committees on Agriculture, Armed Services, and Oversight and Reform. He is the Deputy Whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; serves as an Assistant Whip for the Democratic Caucus and is the Democratic Vice Chair of the House Caucus on India and Indian Americans. Twitter: @RoKhanna Show us some love by leaving a rating or a review! RateThisPodcast.com/pitchforkeconomics Further reading: A leading progressive Democrat slams Robinhood’s move to restrict trading on some stocks after Reddit-fueled surge: https://www.businessinsider.com/ro-khanna-slams-robinhood-trading-restriction-reddit-traders-amc-gamestop-2021-1 Lawmakers call for regulation after Robinhood halts trading: https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/lawmakers-want-regulation-after-robinhood-halts-trading/ Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com/ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	A subreddit called Wall Street Betts decided to try to drive up the stock of GameStop.
0:08.0	I think the thing that antagonized people so much is that for once the little guys had
0:12.2	the big guys on the run and powers that the stepped in to stop that.
0:16.9	And you wonder why they stopped them and the clearinghouses still allow the hedge funds
0:21.4	to trade.
0:22.4	As usual, it's just not fair.
0:23.9	Betts' funds manipulate stocks for a living professional.
0:32.9	From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics
0:37.8	with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
0:48.7	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
0:51.9	I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
1:00.9	Today we get to have a really fun conversation with our friend, Rocana, who is a U.S. representative
1:06.8	from California's 17th District, which is Silicon Valley, to talk about the GameStop
1:15.1	debacle and what it means for financial regulation and hopefully we'll also get to connect
1:21.8	that conversation with what's happening in Congress, with the stimulus and generally
1:26.3	with economic policy.
1:28.1	Which is interesting because there are two separate conversations.
1:31.6	There's the COVID stimulus package, which is about the real economy and there's the
1:38.2	GameStop debacle, which is about Wall Street and it's essentially the fake economy, the
1:43.6	financialized, speculative economy that really, as we've seen over the past year, has
1:52.0	no connection whatsoever to the real world in the lives of most people.
1:57.5	Right, and there's really no better example of that than GameStop.
	...

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