As you’ve probably heard by now, shares of GameStop, the video game retailer, have surged approximately a gazillion percent in the past six months, spiking sharply in the last several days. You might wonder why that happened, given that most people don’t go to the store to buy video games anymore, particularly during a pandemic, and the short answer is that a gaggle of small-time traders, many of them posters on the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets, decided it would be both funny and a bit of cosmic retribution for them to drive up the price of GameStop’s shares, screwing over the hedge fund managers who’d bet the company’s stock was going to drop precipitously.

Obviously, that didn’t end up happening! Whereas in late 2020, a share of GameStop was worth just $18.84, at one point on Thursday, it was going for more than $500. (Later, its trading was restricted by apps like Robinhood and Interactive Brokers, and shares fell to around $240.) That turned out to be extremely bad for the firms who’d shorted the company and literally ended up losing billions of dollars. As Bloomberg put it, “it’s a humbling turnaround for the hedge fund titans, who in 2020 staged a comeback by pouncing on the wild markets caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But that crisis helped push thousands if not millions of retail traders into the U.S. stock market, creating a new force that for now the professionals seem powerless to combat.”

Given that most hedge fund managers are constitutionally incapable of being humbled, though, they’re pretty irate right now! No one comes between them and their money, especially not some amateur-hour Redditors who are supposed to have no idea what they’re doing, not beating them at their own game! The natural order of the universe is supposed to be that hedge fund managers are rich and all-powerful and people posting on Reddit are peons whose lives hedge fund managers could buy and sell millions of times over, not…whatever this is! Fuck!

So yeah, the hedge fund managers are pissed and when they get pissed they rip out their Bloomberg terminals and throw them through the wall of their $27 million penthouses and then yell for their maids to come clean everything up and also to make them a sandwich. Alternatively, they go on CNBC to complain that this is bullshit and unfair and not the way any of this is supposed to work. Hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman happens to know what we’re talking about:

“The reason the market is doing what it’s doing is people are sitting at home getting their checks from the government, okay, and this fair share is a bullshit concept,” Cooperman shouted on the business network earlier today. “It’s just a way of attacking wealthy people. It’s inappropriate and we all gotta work together and pull together.”

While Cooperman does not appear to have been affected by the GameStop carnage, at least in a meaningful way, he’s basically the perfect person to show up on TV and scream about how wealthy people are being attacked. If you’re unfamiliar with the guy, he’s long been known for going apeshit when people suggest that the über-wealthy aren’t paying their fair share, or when politicians express anything less than total respect for the “job creators” of the world. During the Obama years, he claimed that the 44th president’s decision to call Wall Street executives “fat cat bankers” right after the financial crisis was encouraging “class warfare” and that Obama’s “tone” was “cleaving a widening gulf…between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them,” i.e. the benevolent rich. During the 2020 Democratic primary, he sparred with Elizabeth Warren over her supposedly “shitting on” the American dream and for being mean to the 0.000001%. And after the Democratic primary race came down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, he claimed that Sanders was “a bigger threat [to the stock market] than the coronavirus.” Yes, the coronavirus. (Later, he went on CNBC and cried, claiming he’d been so antagonistic about 2020 because he cares so much about America.)

Anyway, Cooperman predicts this will “end in tears,” though if you’ve got silk tissues to wipe your nose with and a yacht on which to rest your weary head, you’ll probably end up fine.

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Call her crazy but Nancy Pelosi doesn’t think someone who’s claimed school shootings are hoaxes should sit on eduction committees

Weird, we know!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on House Republicans to remove freshman Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from the Education and Labor Committee, citing her past comments dismissive of school-shooting victims. “What could they be thinking?” Pelosi said of the Republican leaders on Thursday. “It’s absolutely appalling.” Pelosi criticized Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and other top GOP members for rewarding Greene with a role in overseeing education policy. Greene in the past has said that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut was a hoax created to enable the government to infringe on gun-ownership rights.

The Georgia Republican has also disparaged students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed by a gunman in 2018. Her past comments on social media suggest support for executing Democrats, including Pelosi, CNN reported.

Echoing Pelosi’s comments was Education Committee chairman Bobby Scott, who said in a statement: “Republicans have appointed someone to this committee who claimed that the killing of 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. McCarthy must explain how someone with this background represents the Republican party on education issues.” Asked about Greene’s comments, a spokesperson for McCarthy said the House minority leader “plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them,” which would sound appropriate if she had, like, borrowed a colleague’s stapler and not given it back, as opposed to having claimed a shooting that killed more than two dozen people was an inside job. 

Just in case anyone was laboring under the impression that the GOP was anti-insurrection

That of course is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, either just before or just after his friendly lunch with America’s would-be dictator.

Elsewhere!

Coronavirus variant sweeps South Africa, exhibiting “terrifying” dominance (Washington Post)

Novavax vaccine protects against coronavirus in variant hot spots but proved less effective against strain in South Africa (Washington Post)

“Brazen, entitled, dangerous”: D.C. judge jails man photographed in Pelosi’s office (Washington Post)

The GameStop Reckoning Was a Long Time Coming (NYT)

Beyond Reddit, day traders turn social media platforms into squawk boxes (Reuters)

Apple CEO links Facebook’s business model to real-world violence (CNBC)

Ray Dalio Calls Bitcoin “One Hell of an Invention,” Considers It for New Funds (Bloomberg)

Jim Jordan won’t run for Ohio Senate seat (Politico)

Hungarian basketball team breaks acrobatic dunking world record (NYP)

Subway’s tuna doesn’t actually have tuna in it, suit claims (NYP)

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