Is income inequality unjust, and if so, where is the injustice?

It's my understanding that the reason why Gamestop is causing all this trouble is because teh hedge funds have shorted more stocks then there are, and when they come due they basically need to buy them all and then some.

I don't know if any other stocks that's in that situation.
No, apparently that isn't a problem at all. The problem is they shorted the stocks at like $5-10 and tried to make them go lower, but they've balloned so high that they can't afford to pay what they owe. They would literally be paying 20x or more what they sold them for at this point. Even if they liquidate their entirety of their assets, they don't have the liquidity to pay for the stocks at the current price.
 
Well, that's kind of teh same thing, but from the perspective of the hedge funds going bankrupt instead of the one of the r/tards at WSB knowing they got them by the balls.

Having to buy back a majority of teh stock means the "diamond hands" have the advantage. Even if the stock drops, if they still need to buy after they exhaust the one from the regular stock holders and only the r/tards have some left the price goes up again. Hence teh fucking insane fluactuations today (400-100-200-400-200).

Tomorrow and next week is going to be insane.
 
According to RobinHood, they couldn't cover the costs of the trading. The same with Public and WeBull and others, although it was the financial firms covering them in those cases and not them directly. Once they secured funding, they opened up buying again for the selected stocks.

That said, their risk management was VERY selective and the lawsuit filed against RobinHood might still be justified.
 
Yeah, it's shaky ground, but market manipulation is such a squishy charge they open up all the hedge funds to it as well. It really does sound like "Fuck you, the rich have theirs, you stay poor".
 
I admit at first glance I was thinking "reddit silver" (awards) and not, like, Hunt brothers shenanigans.

--Patrick
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Why should it be illegal?
I'm not sure what her argument is; I should have just found an article about Wells Fargo exiting the student loan business, as that was the part I found interesting. It just raised big red flags in my mind that a major financial institution would be dropping student loans completely, and illustrates that it was an area of finance that was very unhealthy. Most likely because it was predatory and was going through unsustainable growth because of that.

It's possible that she thinks it should be illegal because the public is paying a lot of attention to student debt right now. If/when the government passes a debt-forgiveness law that won't apply to WF's privately held debts, and this sell-off allows Wells Fargo to maintain a better public image, while Firstmark (which probably has roughly the same people benefiting financially from it) gets to be as abusive as they want about collecting the debt. It also likely enables all sorts of barely legal financial acrobatics.

Any time I hear people defend a financial practice as "that's the normal way of doing it", instead of explaining why it's beneficial to allow the practice, I just assume that it's unethical.
 
This isn't anything special to student loans. Our mortgage was sold. The only thing that changed for us was who we send our money to. It's a complete non-issue and I don't see what about it could possibly be illegal as long as they don't try to change the terms of your loan.

Why Banks Sell Loans They Make
“Most lenders sell loans due to liquidity reasons, meaning they don’t want the loans in their balance sheet,” says Cristina Zorrilla, assistant vice president of mortgage pricing and investor relations with Navy Federal Credit Union. “They sell loans so they can lend to more borrowers.”
It looks like Wells Fargo just made a business decision for the health of the company.
San Francisco banking giant Wells Fargo has sold off its $10 billion private student loan portfolio as it looks to shed costs amid a directive under CEO Charlie Scharf to cut billions in expenses and retrench the lender into its core businesses. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021.
Wells Fargo is also getting out of the international wealth-management business.
 
The biggest issue I find is when they change billing systems. Especially when you go from a place with an easy online interface to one that was made in the 90s.
 
This isn't anything special to student loans. Our mortgage was sold. The only thing that changed for us was who we send our money to. It's a complete non-issue and I don't see what about it could possibly be illegal as long as they don't try to change the terms of your loan.

Why Banks Sell Loans They Make


It looks like Wells Fargo just made a business decision for the health of the company.


Wells Fargo is also getting out of the international wealth-management business.
I think you could argue that the ability to sell debt makes predatory lending more likely, especially on something like student loans, which are among the only debts that can't be defaulted on.
 
My mortgage went from Equitable to Washington Mutual to Chase Financial. The last two were because WaMu got swallowed up by Chase.
 
I think the OP is making the argument that if a loan company goes under or something, the debt should die with them instead of being able to lateral it off to someone else before they go under? I'm not sure.

--Patrick
 
I think you could argue that the ability to sell debt makes predatory lending more likely, especially on something like student loans, which are among the only debts that can't be defaulted on.
It's really more that selling and combining debts into securities is one of the things that lead to the 2008 economic crash.

Banks had bad loans they felt they couldn't collect on > they combined and sold those loans to "debt management" companies (i.e. loan collectors) for pennies on the dollar > those securities were bad bets because not enough people could pay those loans to actually make them profitable. Toss in the fact that most banks already repossessed the only thing of real value these people had (their homes) and you get the one-two punch of a housing market crash and debt crisis... and we're headed for one again, if we don't start letting banks and companies die when their bets go sour.
 
I think you could argue that the ability to sell debt makes predatory lending more likely, especially on something like student loans, which are among the only debts that can't be defaulted on.
You could also argue that forcing banks to hold all debts until they are paid off could make many banks less willing to give loans to higher risk people (younger, less wealthy, less white, less male). I mean, us (white) ladies will still have our (white) fathers and husbands to co-sign for us, but most poor and/or brown people will have no other choice than to go to loan sharks. Just like the good old days!

If the problem is predatory lending, then crack down on predatory lending.
 
I've rarely seen someone so openly calling for The Purge.
Does that guy not realize that if society owes me nothing, I don't owe society anything either?
How does he imagine people are supposed to be able to create their own power and gas again? Other than, you know, taking it by force?
 
I've rarely seen someone so openly calling for The Purge.
Does that guy not realize that if society owes me nothing, I don't owe society anything either?
How does he imagine people are supposed to be able to create their own power and gas again? Other than, you know, taking it by force?
He's talking about having a generator and extra tanks of gas on hand for emergencies.
 
He's talking about having a generator and extra tanks of gas on hand for emergencies.
I know. But he's not saying "Be Prepared!", he's saying "when something happens, make a game plan to Get Yours, and screw everybody else". His call there can just straight-up be taken to mean "it's a free for all! Nobody owes anybody anything! Take what you can get!"
And in the same mentality, be very surprised if other people actually band together, and come and take your food/elektricity away. Those bastards!
 

figmentPez

Staff member
He's talking about having a generator and extra tanks of gas on hand for emergencies.
And he talked about it in a completely unreasonable manner. He can say "I didn't mean it like that..." all day long, and it won't change what he actually said. Like a racist who didn't mean the "joke" about hanging black people to be offensive, or the abusive parent who didn't mean their child to feel worthless after being berated mercilessly, they're just plain wrong about what they actually said. His entire statement is highly prejudiced, including both classism and ableism, and entirely framed around denying that human rights and social responsibilities exist.

Governments do owe a level of care to their citizens, businesses do owe a standard of care to their customers, people have moral and ethical responsibilities to each other. Hoping to be kept from freezing to death is not "expecting a handout". There are people who don't have options and are not "lazy" because they didn't do anything. Yes, he does give a few token words to "those in need" but he also says "the weak will parish [sic]", and says nothing about caring for those in need. Taken literally, his message seems to be that those in need should perish because freeloaders ruined it for everyone.

Language matters. I can't judge what he "meant" to say, only the message that he actually sent out. A message which is literally wrong, and morally abhorrent.
 
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