Category: Business

The New Americans
In a moment of anger, chaos, and disintegration, they gave us hope

Them GameStop and AMC boys. Te salutant!

By now, every sentient American, meaning everyone not completely narcoticized by political propaganda and fear or by prescription drugs, is familiar with the basics of the story: A bunch of small investors, day trader types, banded together on a Reddit thread called WallStreetBets to drive up the prices of two stocks, GameStop and AMC, with the goal of profiting by bankrupting hedge funds that had taken massive short positions in those stocks. As the prices of both stocks increased, the hedge funds were forced to cover their bets, vomiting up billions of dollars to the kids who had banded together to play the markets just like the big boys do, the difference being that they had placed their bets in public, with full transparency, proclaiming the goal of sending AMC and GameStop stock, as they put it, to the moon.

That’s how the game of markets is played, and there is nothing wrong with it, in theory, unless of course you happen to work at AMC or GameStop, which are the companies that some of the big boys were trying to destroy through gamified short-selling. They also happen to be the kinds of companies that day traders on Reddit threads have fond feelings about, whether as consumers of video games and movies or as former or current employees. The particular target of the short squeeze was a fund called Melvin Capital, and as the short bets went south, Melvin had to explain to the people whose money it was investing—who included Mets owner Steve Cohen and the Chicago billionaire Ken Griffin—why billions of their dollars were now running into the sewers, a prospect that Cohen, Griffin, and their peers no doubt found alarming and no doubt also a bit humiliating.

The math was so simple that any child, or unemployed day trader playing the market with the proceeds of their $600 government stimulus check, could understand it. As one tweeter named TSLA1Trillion who boasts the grand total of 83 Twitter followers put it: “Every 12 dollars up. Melvin loses 1 Billion! Game over at 175. $GME.”

Here, in other words, was Occupy Wall Street in action, but maybe a hundred times more effective: ordinary people protesting against the financialization of the U.S. economy by taking collective action to squeeze the short-sellers, saving companies they cared about and saving thousands of jobs belonging to the people who work at those companies, while forcing the suits to disgorge some part of the money they were making by treating the market like a giant video game and squeezing the life out of companies for profit. Give the money back to the people! And hats off to them boyz and girlz willing to show their faith in collective action by putting their measly day-trading accounts on the line. What a perfectly American act. What a demonstration of collective solidarity in action at a time of increasing social atomization and economic suffering, in the dead of winter, in the middle of a pandemic—why, I could just go on and on and on. …

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66% of Voters Believe Insiders Manipulate Stock Market.

With small-trader enthusiasm for GameStop roiling the stock market, most voters say Wall Street insiders manipulate the market, and don’t have much confidence that President Biden will crack down on insiders.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 66% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Wall Street insiders manipulate the stock market to their own advantage. Only 13% of voters disagree, while 22% say they’re not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Opening Shot? OCC ‘Pauses Publication’ of Fair Banking Access Rule

Has Joe Biden fired the first subtle shot in his war on guns by “interfering in the affairs” of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and pausing publication of a new rule designed to protect small businesses “fair access” to bank surfaces?

That’s what The Outdoor Wire is reporting. After the OCC “paused publication” if the new rule, an official with the National Shooting Sports Foundation ripped the move.

“The first salvo in the gun control fight has begun and the Biden Administration has fired the first shot by improperly interfering in the affairs of the OCC which is an independent agency,” National Shooting Sport Foundation’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel Larry Keane.

The OCC put things on hold less than two weeks after NSSF hailed finalizing the rule ending discrimination “by financial service providers against the firearm industry and others.”

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Here’s How Much Money Some Reddit Trolls Cost the Hedge Funds, and It’s Going to Get Worse

The story of some Reddit investors on a board called Wall Street Bets crushing a hedge fund has tapered off as the weekend has carried on, though they are promising to resume their mission when trading opens on Monday. RedState has covered the story extensively, including how they targeted GameStop (among other stocks) after Wall Street got way out over their skis shorting the stock in hopes of profiting off its demise (see Reddit Trolls Beat the Stock Market, and the Elites Are Really, Really Mad).

Whatever your moral opinions on short sellers and hedge funds may be, watching a bunch of internet trolls turn the system on its head was legitimately funny. It was also somewhat cathartic to see elites that have rigged the system in their favor have it used against them. Things got so bad that trading apps moved to shut down trading on the targeted stocks in order to manipulate the markets and protect the positions of the hedge funds.

Now, we are starting to learn just how successful the retail investors on Reddit were, with the standard of success here being how much it hurts the hedge funds, not all the retail investors ultimately making money.

Melvin Capital Management, the hedge fund that has borne the brunt of losses from the soaring stock prices of heavily shorted stocks recently, lost 53% in January, according to people familiar with the firm.

Melvin was founded by Gabe Plotkin, a former star portfolio manager for hedge-fund titan Steven A. Cohen. It started the year with about $12.5 billion and now runs more than $8 billion. The current figure includes $2.75 billion in emergency funds Citadel LLC, its partners and Mr. Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management injected into the hedge fund last Monday.

As part of the deal, they got noncontrolling revenue shares in Melvin for three years. So far, Citadel, its partners and Point72 have lost money on the deal, though the precise scope of the loss was unclear Sunday.

Melvin Capital lost 53% of it’s value in one month. That comes out to about $3.5 billion. Hardly enough to crush the system, but certainly enough to send a message about predatory short selling.

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HIJACKING THE CLOWN CAR:

America, in many ways, has become a clown country.

We lack borders, societal cohesion, shared values, trust in one another, a common culture, and a clear direction for our future.

One could argue that we are more of an economic zone than a nation-state. Multinational corporations park their assets here, and those assets are managed by the ruling class oligarchs to the benefit of the corporate plutocracy and the detriment of the common man. That’s why Walmart can move into your town, sell products at a loss to bankrupt the small businesses, and then jack its prices back up after it successfully kills off the competition.

There’s no system of checks and balances for this pernicious behavior. It’s the “free market” at work, we’re told. If you don’t like it, you can just bootstrap your own multibillion-dollar retail giant.

Politicians are on the other side of the ruling class coin. They are pimped out by their friends in big business in exchange for campaign donation kickbacks, and they pull out all the stops to ensure their pimps get paid. Wall Street, which publicly trades behemoths like Walmart, is the biggest, baddest pimp on the block. Along with securities, Wall Street has been buying and selling our politicians for decades, and everybody knows it. The only time the peasant class—you and I—have a say in any of this, is when the politicians and the plutocrats nearly crash the world economy, and we’re forced to say “yes” to a massive taxpayer-funded bailout to keep their scheme afloat.

The people who are supposed to represent honest, hard working Americans long ago dropped the façade that they are even trying to make our lives better. They represent special interests while they attempt to keep us, the cattle, busy so they can rob us of our milk. It’s been working like a charm.

If America is a clown country, the ruling class on Wall Street, along with their ruling class friends in Washington, are driving the clown car.

Enter Reddit.

You might have noticed that the suits are very upset this week. That’s because anonymous Redditors, while presumably brushing the Cheeto dust off their laptop keyboards, decided to do a little bit of stock speculation.

They had no fancy tools, no quantitative analysis, no Bloomberg terminals, and they’re certainly not members of the elite class who are entitled to engage in such sophisticated business.

What they did have was unbridled rage and disdain for the drivers of the clown car, and when they found a way to exploit them, they hijacked the clown car for themselves and took it for an epic joyride.

Reddit realized that a billionaire member of the Wall Street ruling class had a massive short position on GameStop stock—position that was coming due on Friday—and they decided to stick it to him. They bought thousands of shares of the fledgling stock, driving the price per share up approximately a gazillion percent.

That was bad news for Mr. Moneybags. It was, and perhaps still is, going to cost his fund, Melvin Capital, billions of dollars to cover his short position.

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Biden’s climate executive orders devastated these US workers in a day.

*******

On the morning of Jan. 20, every room of the two-story Stroppel Hotel in Midland, SD, was filled with men and women who work on the Keystone XL pipeline. Most of these union laborers, welders and pipefitters started their day over a cup of coffee in the hotel’s common room before heading out to their jobs.

By 4 p.m., the entire place was cleared out, leaving the historic hotel silent for the first time since owners Laurie and Wally Cox took it over six months ago.

“Our whole world turned upside down with the stroke of a pen,” Laurie said.

She is speaking of President Biden’s executive order, signed on his first day in office, that halted work on the Keystone XL pipeline in South Dakota and immediately eliminated 1,000 union jobs. TC Energy, the company that was developing the project, predicts that more than 10,000 jobs will be lost in 2021 due to the order.

Now Laurie, who holds a master’s degree in social work, sits alone in the vacant hotel while her husband Wally finds work as a millwright hours away. She starts to cry as she recalls how they bought the building in late September and quickly turned it into an affordable and social place for pipeline workers to stay.

Robinhood App Exposes Hedge Funds And Commits Suicide.

The Robinhood App is all in the news. The app has been used by young traders to build portfolios through brokerage fee free trades. The app’s motto is “We’re on a mission to democratize finance for all.” Then the GameStop short squeeze happened and the hedge fund elites were exposed and Robinhood committed suicide.

Most of us who have savings and retirement accounts are in indexed funds. Our funds follow closely along with the returns of the Russell 2000, Nasdaq or S&P. We want our money as safe as possible. But, young folks, who are not risk adverse and can afford to start again, may choose to invest in hedge funds to get higher returns on their investments.

Hedge funds need managers. If Wall Street bankers are considered Masters of the Universe, hedge fund managers are Alpha Masters. Yes, there is a hierarchy.

The Robinhood App was founded in 2014 by former Stanford University roommates and 78% of the app users are under the age of 35. They like to invest in brands they know. Which brings us to GameStop.

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KIMBER STATEMENT ON MONTANA CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY EDITORIAL

TROY, AL, January 27, 2021

Kimber Mfg., Inc. has recently been made aware of opinion articles published respectively in the Sidney Herald (Sidney, Montana) entitled “Being Pro-Gun Also Means Being Pro-Responsibility” and in the Missoulian (Missoula, Montana) entitled “Being Pro-Gun Also Means Being Pro-Responsibility: We must oppose HB102”.

The author of this article, Ryan Busse, is no longer an employee of Kimber and has not worked for Kimber since August of 2020. His statements and opinions expressed regarding the opposition of Montana House Bill 102 are not authorized by or attributable to Kimber. “Kimber is a proud supporter of our Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms,” said Leslie Edelman, CEO and owner of Kimber. “We support organizations that defend these rights, and we are committed to providing the people of this great nation with the finest premium firearms available.”

Hypocritical Jeff Bezos Suddenly Doesn’t Like Voting By Mail – When It’ll Hit His Wallet

Billionaire Jeff Bezos claims that mail-in voting is safe and secure and that its results are valid and unquestionable when it suits his business interests (at The Washington Post and Amazon Web Services), but says that only an in-person election can be “valid, fair and successful” when it comes to his Amazon employees voting on whether to unionize or not.

Hmm. Imagine that.

Employees at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama facility are scheduled to vote on unionization in February, and last week the NLRB ruled that due to an “outbreak” of COVID the election would be conducted by mail ballot. Amazon filed an appeal Jan. 21 asking the NLRB to reconsider its decision, stating that a mail-ballot election would “disenfranchise” workers because of its lack of security, and that the NRLB failed to outline what constituted an “outbreak.” Continue reading “”

Missouri Gun Shop Refuses To Sell Weapons, Ammo To Biden Supporters, And They’re Very Upset

Immediately following Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trigger Firearms & Reloading, in Jefferson City, Missouri, published a statement indicating the company will no longer sell munitions or firearms to his supporters.
“We don’t have guns or ammo for Biden supporters,” the gun store wrote on its Facebook page. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

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Gov. Noem never shut down South Dakota. Their unemployment rate just dropped to 3.0%. That’s lower than it was before the pandemic.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s response to the pandemic was an eminently American response. So of course the liberal media tried to crucify her for it.

But, as they say, you can’t argue with results.

That’s how it’s done, ladies and gents, in my humble opinion.

We are seeing in living color the myriad terrible consequences of draconian lockdown orders. They may not be as easily quantifiable on a chart or graph, but we see them in our neighborhoods and schools and churches every day. People’s lives have been turned upside down and, in many cases, destroyed — not by a virus, but by state governments with authoritarian strategies.

Noem’s strategy, on the other hand, can, I think, can be summed up nicely in this one paragraph from an op-ed she wrote for the Wall Street Journal in December:

Rather than following the pack and mandating harsh rules, South Dakota provides our residents with information about what is happening on the ground in our state—the science, facts and data. Then, we ask all South Dakotans to take personal responsibility for their health, the health of their loved ones, and—in turn—the health of our communities. The state hasn’t issued lockdowns or mask mandates. We haven’t shut down businesses or closed churches. In fact, our state has never even defined what an “essential business” is. That isn’t the government’s role.

Provide free people accurate information and then trust free people to make their own decisions based on their own unique circumstances?

Aero Precision Moves Out of Tacoma In Response to Gun and Ammo Tax

Aero Precision, one of the nation’s leading firearm parts and accessories manufacturers, warned Tacoma, Wash., city officials their proposed punitive gun and ammunition tax would have consequences. Officials passed the proposed increases and instituted the taxes and fees.

Aero Precision answered back. The company and its 800 employees announced plans to expand and grow their manufacturing base in nearby Lakewood, Wash. Instead of investing in more jobs, more infrastructure, and more taxes paid to the City of Tacoma, Aero is literally sending their business elsewhere.

Warning Shots

Despite a recent model of abject failure from nearby Seattle, Tacoma city officials went forward with a proposal in 2019 to implement a tax increase on all firearms and ammunition. The tax increase, including $25 on all firearms and between 2-5 cents on all ammunition, was sold by officials to the public as a windfall, predicted to generate an extra $30,000 a year to “provide public benefit to residents of Tacoma related to gun violence…”

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Central Florida gun owners camping out for ammunition

LAKE MARY, Fla. – People started lining up in front of the door at Academy Sports + Outdoors in Lake Mary as early as 2 a.m. on Monday waiting for the doors to open at 9 a.m.

When FOX 35 News asked several of those in line what they were waiting for, they all answered “ammo.” Many voiced that they are afraid of what new gun laws could come under a new administration.

“I think we all believe Biden is going to take it away from us too,” David Godkin said.

It’s difficult to find ammunition, especially 9mm.  Stores across the country are sold out.  Some gun enthusiasts looking for it know when and where they have the best chances of finding it.

“I just come here on Monday. Tuesday, I go to Buena Vista. Wednesday, I go to East Colonial. Thursday, Buena Vista. Friday, East Colonial. Sunday, I go to Millenia,” Godkin said.

He is an avid hunter and marksman who uses about half of what he buys each week and stockpiles the rest.  Right now, he said Academy Sports will only sell three boxes of ammunition to each customer.  He was about 10th in line and wasn’t able to get exactly what he wanted.

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A Win in the Financial Sector for the Firearms Industry

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a finalized rule Thursday to end discrimination by financial service providers against the firearms industry and more.

The rule will “ensure fair access to banking services provided by large national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies of foreign bank organizations.” In essence, the rule guarantees that fair access to banking is given to all industries based on financial merit, rather than for political reasons.

It effectively protects those in the financial-services industry from pressures levied upon them by special interests groups who stand against the Second Amendment.

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NRA Leaves New York to Reincorporate in Texas, Announces New Strategic Plan

The National Rifle Association of America (“NRA”) today announced it will restructure the Association as a Texas nonprofit to exit what it believes is a corrupt political and regulatory environment in New York. The move will enable long-term, sustainable growth and ensure the NRA’s continued success as the nation’s leading advocate for constitutional freedom – free from the toxic political environment of New York.

The NRA plan, which involves utilizing the protection of the bankruptcy court, has the Association dumping New York and organizing its legal and regulatory matters in an efficient forum. The move comes at a time when the NRA is in its strongest financial condition in years.

The NRA will continue with the forward advancement of the enterprise – confronting anti-Second Amendment activities, promoting firearm safety and training, and advancing public programs across the United States. There will be no immediate changes to the NRA’s operations or workforce.

The Association will seek court approval to reincorporate the Association in the State of Texas – home to more than 400,000 NRA members and site of the 2021 NRA Annual Meeting in Houston.

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And how many were made in the preceding 25, or 125 years that are still working? Kevin O’Brien of weaponsman may have been low when he swagged 600 million guns.

434 Million Firearms Manufactured for Private Ownership over Past 25 Years

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) indicates 434 million firearms were manufactured for private ownership over the last 25 years alone.

Breitbart News spoke with NSSF public affairs director Mark Oliva late Tuesday and he explained that the 434 million firearms were made for “civilian possession.” This means the whopping figure of 434 million includes firearms made in America for Americans and firearms made abroad then imported into America for Americans.

For those who might ask what percentage of firearms are domestically made versus imported, NSSF production figures show six million firearms were made in the U.S. in 2019 and 3.3. million were imported. The NSSF notes:

There are approximately 71.2 million pistol magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, and 79.2 million rifle magazines capable of holding 30 or more rounds in circulation.

They also estimate there are 20 million firearms in private possession which Democrats label “assault weapons.”

The NSSF figures expose what a daunting task President-Elect Joe Biden faces as he takes office pledging to “defeat the NRA” and enact myriad gun controls, nearly all of which could impact every gun owner.

 

From enacting universal background checks, which criminalize private gun sales, to banning the sale and manufacture of “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines, while also taxing said weapons and magazines, where they are already privately owned, Biden’s plans are no respecter of persons.

Additionally, the NSSF estimates there were over 8.4 million first-time gun buyers in 2020 alone. Therefore, no matter who you slice it, plans to place new regulations on guns and gun owners will impact a large and ever-increasing portion of the American population.