Jon Stewart’s Problem with the Stock Market
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Haven’t seen Jon Stewart in a long time, then I stumbled onto this video:
Link to video -
He’s got a show on Apple TV.
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I don't know if I've gotten smarter or he's gotten dumber, but that diatribe was ignorant populist anti-rich-guy rhetoric masquerading as a reasoned argument against the stock market. Chock full of conspiracy theories about shady back room deals, from a guy representing the political side that has made giggles at conspiracy theorists one of their most common plays in the playbook. And never anything approaching a rational argument for why anybody of any level of wealth shouldn't put their savings to work in the market. Mr Stewart is a force for stupidity, and those who take his message to heart are going to stay at the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder forever.
It would be amusing to watch Mr Stewart immediately doff his thinking cap, should the government take over the stock market entirely, removing it from the evil grips of capitalists. Then everything would be perfect and transparent, just ask Stewart and his writers. Actually don't bother asking them, because they would never talk about the subject again.
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@89th said in Jon Stewart’s Problem with the Stock Market:
I watched it. Honestly, I don't really get his anger. If someone wants to sell a stock for $9.99 and another wants to buy it for $10.00 and they are fine with the fee/process/3rd parties involved, then everyone gets what they want.
Wait until he learns that Visa takes 1-2% of each retail credit car transaction.
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He does have a point about derivatives and the moral hazard they can pose (short term profit of the individuals who create and sell them, followed by widespread pain the creators never personally deal with) and how they contributed to the 2008 crash. But that was the only decent point of the monologue, and it has little to do with whether individual investors should participate in the stock market.
I was amused when he did a fly-by of the phrase "short squeeze" about how Redditors broke the code and totally dominated the game. (Which they didn't.) He didn't explain the term, after having explained everything else in the monologue at a level of detail that assumed the audience to be entirely ignorant. It seemed out of place, and he and his writers almost certainly don't know what a "short squeeze" is.
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He has this weird assumption that stock market ownership concentration is a metric for democratization.
Jeff Bezos net worth is all in equities. The fundamental trends in inequality in the country should be observed directly in stock ownership.
Changing the transactions fees will not change this basic fact.
Obviously the top 10% of households are >80% ownership - that is what it means to be wealthy... own stake in valuable things.
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@Horace said in Jon Stewart’s Problem with the Stock Market:
I was amused when he did a fly-by of the phrase "short squeeze" about how Redditors broke the code and totally dominated the game. (Which they didn't.)
If it wasn't a short squeeze, what was it?
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@Klaus said in Jon Stewart’s Problem with the Stock Market:
@Horace said in Jon Stewart’s Problem with the Stock Market:
I was amused when he did a fly-by of the phrase "short squeeze" about how Redditors broke the code and totally dominated the game. (Which they didn't.)
If it wasn't a short squeeze, what was it?
I meant his claim that they broke the code and dominated the game. Most of the Redditors probably lost money and the stock never rocketed to predicted valuations. But yes there was a short squeeze - I just suspect he and his writers did not know what that means, since it's a more advanced concept than other things in the monologue that he took pains to explain.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in Jon Stewart’s Problem with the Stock Market:
I didn't watch beyond the first 90 seconds, so, help me out here.
Was the clown nose on or off for this?
I don't think there's a line with him, unless he's being interviewed by a straight media type. He was earnestly hamming it up at the clearly antisocial behavior of wealthy manipulators of the stock market, while putting on his shocked face that so few people see through the lies and conspiracies behind it all. I don't remember his act being so predictable and yawn-worthy, but he has aged into that.
Oh, and at one point, when imagining the sort of person who buys into the lies behind the stock market, he pegged them as someone who "just asked questions" about Ivermectin, and who called women "females". Yes, to an indoctrinated leftist, the mere act of calling women "females", is a giggle-worthy offense against virtuous thought.
