The French Revolution of Finance 2.0
If you’re on social media, watching the news, or even strolling around campus, you’ve probably heard at least one mention of “Wall Street” or “GameStop” this week. To put it succinctly, hedge funds were betting on GameStop($GME) going out of business soon. They purchased tens of millions of dollars of stock options reflecting this mentality and announced it to the world. A Reddit community aptly named “WallStreetBets” took particular offense to this, and declared war.
The sheer demand for the stock skyrocketed prices over 700% of the original value in a matter of days. After they made their bet, the hedge funds realized too late that they could face losses totaling in the billions of dollars and began to panic. When the amateur investors of WallStreetBets figured this out, they doubled down and screamed to buy more.
The masses rallied behind them in the name of messing with corporate investors. Their message was clear: they are tired of Wall Street running the place. This display of counter-power is not only impressive, but also textbook. Castell writes, “in all known societies, counter-power exists under different forms and with variable intensity, as one of the few natural laws of society, asserts that wherever is domination, there is resistance to domination… In recent years, in parallel with the growing crisis of political legitimacy, we have witnessed the growth of social movements opposed to what they often define as global capitalism.” The community is exerting its own form of counter-power by hitting the banks where it hurts: their own bank accounts. And when the firms began to panic, they even colluded to shut down platforms where you could buy and sell the stock. Millions of users have been protesting to the US government to investigate them for market manipulation.
This issue also stems from the accessibility of data. Eloquently put, “some companies restrict access to their data entirely; others sell the privilege of access for a fee…” (Boyd Crawford 673) This is exactly what was happening in the case of the hedge funds. They have been extracting huge amounts of information about stock trading, allowing them to act unfairly on it. With the long-standing theorization that hedge funds have been manipulating the market from the very beginning, this is their way of raising awareness and protesting the very heart of global capitalism. Much like the French at the end of the 18th century, the small community of WallstreetBets has also had enough of their oppressive dictators, and is stepping in to make its mark.
