Central banks’ profligate production of fiat debt liquidity is behind the Gamestop fiasco and stock market valuations completely untethered from underlying economic value. From David Stockman at David Stockman’s Contra Corner via lewrockwell.com:
Today, especially, the “idiots at work” sign should be flying high over Capitol Hill.
We are referring to the boisterous congressional hearings about who is to blame for the crash of GameStop, the alleged nefarious machinations of the hedge funds and Robinhood and the purportedly innocent victims in mom’s basement who thought call options were the greatest new video game since Grand Theft Auto IV.
But among today’s silly foibles, the incessantly repeated idea that the Reddit Mob was a victim of a “pump and dump” scheme surely takes the cake. If these people were stupid enough to think that the value of a company dying in plain sight (i.e. GME) could go from $400 million to $23 billion in less than six months while its reported finances continued to deteriorate, they deserve to loose every dime of the stimmy money they threw into the Robinhood pot.
Still, the fact that the greedy, dimwitted Reddit Mob got its just desserts isn’t the half of it.
What was really on display Thursday in the recently christened (since January 6th) Holy of Holies of American Democracy is the utter cluelessness on both sides of the political aisle with respect to the financial elephant in the room: Namely, that the Fed has transformed Wall Street into a giant, destructive gambling den, which is now sucking a growing share of the populace into the pursuit of instant get-rich speculations that have no chance of panning out.