17 February 2021
The House Financial Services Committee will convene a hearing tomorrow on "recent market volatility involving GameStop stock and other stocks" to continue the whodunnit of the current state of financial markets, especially U.S. stocks.
What's happening: Chair Maxine Waters will question the CEOs of Reddit, Robinhood, Citadel Securities, Melvin Capital and Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty or u/DeepF--kingValue.
- She will "examine the recent activity around GameStop (GME) stock and other impacted stocks with a focus on short selling, online trading platforms, gamification and their systemic impact on our capital markets and retail investors."
Between the lines: Waters has made clear who she believes the villains to be in this story, noting in a Jan. 28 press release that "[h]edge funds have a long history of predatory conduct and that conduct is entirely indefensible. Private funds preying on the pension funds of hard working Americans must be stopped."
Reality check: It's unclear how the hedge funds' speculative activity and predatory conduct hurt anyone besides their clients.
- Most of the retail traders, including Gill, made money as a result of the hedge funds' short positions.
- Even after the huge losses that GameStop shares suffered in the past two weeks, the stock remains nearly three times higher than its price at the beginning of the year and is more than 10 times higher than where it traded a year ago.
- The volatility in GameStop and other "meme" stocks was largely contained to those stocks, while the overall market saw volatility decline and major indexes rise to record highs.
The big picture: That could mean the culprits for the excesses and wild swings in the market are elsewhere, and central bankers have spent the past week doing their best to keep eyes from looking in their direction.
What they're saying: St. Louis Fed president James Bullard became the latest central banker to insist that, in fact, there is no bubble. “You do see speculative frenzies from time to time in markets, and that’s part of the process.”
- European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde last week sought to distance central banks from the discussion, arguing that market frenzies and inequality were "clearly ... not for central banks to address."
- Fed chair Jerome Powell has outright denied that there's any sort of connection between central banks drowning markets in liquidity and bubble conditions.
- And on Monday Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who oversees a central bank that is the single largest stock holder in the country, chimed in: “Optimism over the global economic outlook and steady vaccine roll-outs may be behind the recent surge in stock prices.”
This is despite essentially all of Wall Street, most former central bankers and their own research refuting such claims.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.
