A Snapshot of the Week Ended January 29, 2021:
In itself, a short squeeze amid a falling market is an amazing phenomenon. Yet, what has captivated the public audience was how an assembly of retail investors with the aid of the Reddit platform has tricked a bunch of Wall Street professionals who shorted a number of stocks which did not justify soaring market capitalization, (especially GameStop), into losing billions of dollars. The mission was to stick it to the institutions. While the drama highlights the existence of a deep political divide between boomers and millennials, rich and poor, elite and commoners, it has a lot more to do with the role of libertarianism in society. Liberty is not about choosing between good and evil. It’s about choosing between variants of good. Without responsibility, liberty can be a dangerous item. I do not have an answer as to how this can be justly resolved; but I do believe that it’s politically solvable because people can surely agree that actions which harm others should not be permissible. It’s unrealistic to think that last week’s extraordinary saga will break the stock market or the capitalistic system. The SEC will definitely investigate and punish whoever, if the process is deemed to be criminal. However, if not, I don’t think that the SEC can stop it or regulate it. The point is that there is nothing illegal about having the same opinion.
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By Hubert Marleau
By Hubert Marleau