RUSH: Hey, folks, welcome to — psst, psst — welcome to Radio Free America. Don’t shout that. Don’t want to call attention to what’s going on here. It might become our new call sign, our new identifier. We’re one of the few remaining places, apparently, where the truth can be told, and for how long, we don’t know.
Let me go over some things here just to set the table, give you some things that are gonna shake out today that we’re gonna be talking about. There’s a fascinating thing — it is the most fascinating thing that’s going on out there a long time. Have you heard the story? Do you know the details of what’s going with GameStop?
Folks, it’s not just political now. The elites are bent out of shape that a bunch of average, ordinary users have figured out how to make themselves billionaires using – (interruption) I’m gonna explain it. I’m gonna take the time necessary to explain this. You’re damn right. I’ve been studying it all morning. And the best thing I can tell you is that whatever you think is going on in politics — the Washington establishment, the deep state, what have you — it’s the same thing in finance. There are those who are allowed to make all of the money and those of you who aren’t.
And if you figure out how to make a lot of money and if you’re like Donald Trump and you figure out how to get elected, you figure out how to beat the deep state, they’re gonna come out and they’re gonna wipe you out; they’re gonna destroy you. That’s what’s happening with GameStop. A bunch of people on Reddit figured out how to game the system. They figured out how to turn the system into a profit-making device for themselves.
In the process, they are harming the intended winners in this financial circumstance, and that would be the hedge funds out there. The hedge funds are supposed to be the ones making a lot of money, and they’re not. And they’re begging other hedge funds to bail them out. So, yes, I’m going to explain this. It’s not gonna take a long time, but folks, it’s fascinating. And the reason that it is fascinating is now it’s not just politics.
Now they’re not just calling us racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes in a way to control us, in a way to shame us. Now they’re actually making it clear to anybody who has the ability to notice that you’re not allowed to use the stock market the way they do. You’re not allowed to profit. You’re not allowed to make the kind of money they do.
The elites — now, I have attempted to explain this over the course of many busy years here on the EIB Network. The notion of being an elite, of being a member of the deep state, the Washington establishment, what is it? It’s many things. Among those many things are perks. And the perks are the ability to guarantee your kids’ financial future, the ability to guarantee yourself a financial future, the ability to guarantee yourself a position of some power, depending on who you are in the establishment, the club of elites, whatever you want to call it.
And it extends to far more than just political things. It’s like the Never Trumpers. The Never Trumpers fashion themselves as elites. The Never Trumpers, they played the dutiful losers, lost with honor. The Never Trumpers, the Republicans who hated Donald Trump ’cause he came in and screwed up their position as accepted elites. So they had to fire back at him. And they had a role to play, and for that role, they were rewarded. Banks lent them money or financiers bankrolled their stupid little magazines that nobody read and their cruises and all that, and they were guaranteed a financial foundation. And Trump came in and threatened all of that. He had to go.
But this GameStop business now makes this something that is understandable beyond the political world, and that is its value. It’s not just political anymore. It’s not just that you can’t think for yourself on issues and matters of politics. You know, everything is rigged in favor of the elites, and this has come along and upset that rigging. You know, if everything doesn’t benefit the establishment, then it has to be censored, right? Your speech, your attitude, if it doesn’t benefit the establishment, it’s gotta be censored. It’s gotta be canceled. It’s gotta be silenced.
Well, now with this GameStop story and the revelations contained in it, the elites, the same people that were hell-bent on getting rid of Donald Trump, the same people are now trying to tell you what you can and can’t do with your money. Not only what you can and can’t think, but it’s now what you can and can’t do with your money.
So yes, Mr. Snerdley, I will explain this as the program unfolds. Look. It’s more detailed. Let me give you a couple paragraphs as a stopgap until we get into it as the program unfolds. Some hedge fund managers shorted GameStop’s — now, what is GameStop? What the hell is it? GameStop is a company. This has not been widely explained because the elites don’t take the time to explain this. But let me tell you what it is. GameStop is a company that sells physical copies of video games in dying malls. I mean, they’re an out-of-fashion company. It’s another thing that ticks off the elites. This company is way behind the times. They’re selling physical copies of video games next to all the other dying stores in malls.
But right now GameStop has become the most highly traded asset in the United States. GameStop’s stock price was $4 last summer, $20 at the end 2020, is now worth close to $300. And here is a passage from an elitist publication describing it.
“Essentially, many normal-ish people have made a huge bet against gigantic [hedge funds] financial institutions and are currently winning. In practice this means we are seeing one of the -” and here is the rub of it, folks. “We are seeing one of the largest wealth transfers from the financial ruling class to the middle and middle-upper classes in recent memory.” And it’s not been authorized, you see. It’s just happening within the normal ebb and flow of the market. Some normalish people figured out how to earn a hell of a lot of money using the establishment’s own methods against them.
This is all about “short squeezing” and “short selling,” and if you don’t know what those terms are, hang on, because I will explain those as the program unfolds. But the key to this is the reason why this is a story, the reason why you’re watching — and you know what else is funny?
Snerdley had to ask me, “Are you gonna explain it?” ’cause you’ve been watching cable news, and the people in charge of explaining it don’t know what they’re talking about, right? (interruption) Because they only know the establishment view of finance. They only know the elite view, because they think of themselves as elites.
But the key to this is what has happened: We are seeing one of the largest wealth transfers from the financial ruling class to the middle and upper classes in recent memory, and it’s not authorized. Sometimes the upper class authorizes a transfer of wealth with certain new policies, certain new regulations. This is totally unauthorized. This came about because of the understanding of the system and how to game it by normal people.
Right here it is in this story: “Many normal people” have made a huge bet against them, and they’re winning, and because this has been a massive transfer of wealth, it is understandably the only thing anybody’s talking about ’cause it’s unauthorized. “A group of Reddit users who grew up playing video games from GameStop,” that’s how old they are, “decided to beat Wall Street at its own game.”
They got together, banded together, and began buying GameStop stocks. That drove the price up. Other regular traders saw the price increase; they began buying, and some real momentum was created. But now the hedge fund guys who sold short are losing their shirts. The hedge fund guys, the elites had planned to sell GameStop short. That means they are counting on GameStop losing money. They only win if GameStop loses.
Well, the GameStop stock price was $4 last summer, $20 at the end of 2020, $40 two weeks ago. It was worth $100 on Monday and Tuesday, and today it’s $300. The hedge funds are taking it in the shorts. I mean, big time they are. They’re being wiped out to a certain extent, and they don’t like it. These normal people have figured out a way to do it, and they don’t like it.
So, if you are an elite hedge fund and your position is that you are selling short on GameStop and their stock price has gone from four bucks to 300, you are losing your shirt. You’re losing your pants, you’re losing your underwear, you’re losing your scrotum. You’re losing everything out there. So there is, ladies and gentlemen, an app called Robinhood.
Robinhood bills themselves as “democratizing finance for all.” Securities by Robinhood Financial, Crypto by Robinhood Crypto. That’s the app that people are using to bring about this transfer of wealth. So the elites are leaning on Robinhood like Google and so forth leaned on other news organizations to censor conservatives, to wipe them out, to not give them a forum.
The same thing has happened. That’s what’s amazing to me about the story: The educational value it has, the informative value it has. It’s not just your political opinions and your political thoughts that are under scrutiny and are essentially being censored. No. Now it’s the way that you invest your money. Oh, yeah! And I can’t…
You know, the circumstance here is such a valuable teaching moment. So we will get into this. There’s a little bit more detail to this that I will explain as the program unfolds. Now, the other regular traders that saw these price increases, they began buying. Some real momentum was created. Now the hedge fund guys that sold short are losing their shorts and everything.
Like I just explained to you, they’re shutting down trades in GameStop in order to protect the elites. They’re even getting blocked on social media. But when you design and use a system to benefit yourself, don’t complain when it gets used against you, and that is what’s happening here with GameStop. Folks, it’s not some obscure thing involving what young kids are doing.
The teachable moment here is how this censorship that we are experiencing from tech media, the tech oligarchs, is not confined to your political thoughts. It’s not limited to who you vote for and who your political friends and enemies are. No, no, no. It extends to money: How you earn it, how much you earn, how much you’re not permitted to earn. It’s not just politics when we’re talking about this leftist attempt at unity.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, this GameStop thing all started with some random guys on a message board on Reddit. That message board on Reddit is called WallStreetBets. They discovered that there was a massive short selling of GameStop by hedge funds. “Short selling,” again, is where you’re betting on the stock price to go down. You have to have the money in a short sell.
You have to have the money and put it up to back up your “short.” You just can’t go in and bet that it’s gonna go down and then not put up any money. Like, a regular trade you can bet it’s gonna go up without putting up any money. But a short sell, you have to put up the money. It leaves your back pocket. It leaves your account. So these hedge funds were betting big on GameStop losing value.
These random guys on the message board on Reddit discovered this massive short selling — and when you discover it, you can thwart it by betting on the stock price to go up. So they started to buy it, and that raises the price. Enough of them bought the stock that it started going way up. The hedge funds could not buy shares to cover their short positions.
It’s when people selling short do not have the money to cover what they are betting will happen. You’ve got to fully expose your position on the short sell — and if you can’t, you’re being “short squeezed.” That’s the term. That’s the definition of it. So at this point the hedge funds went to the media and said, “These little guys are not playing fair. These little guys…”
And they sort of characterized them as a bunch of hayseed hicks, renegades doing damage. It’s exactly what they say about conservatives in the realm of politics, that they’re unfair, that they’re stupid. “They don’t know what they’re talking about! They have to be shut up. They have to be silenced.” The same thing was played here in terms of these Reddit users. It went to the point where the hedge funds were losing some billions of dollars; they were needing bailouts by other hedge funds.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And, lo and behold, Robinhood has his shut down trading of GameStop. Lo and behold, just like they shut down Parler, just like they shut down any other conservative attempt at free speech on the World Wide Web, so has the big hedge fund people have come along, “Stockbroker Service Robinhood Shut Down in the Midst of Trading GameStop.”
Now, here’s the simplest way to understand it in terms of dollars and cents. This is from the article the New York Post did on this: “Discord, a communication tool similar to Slack, said it pulled a server associated with r/WallStreetBets -” that’s on Reddit “– for continuing to allow ‘hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings. The server has been on our Trust & Safety team’s radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community Guidelines, including hate speech.'”
So they’re accusing these people, these normal people who were engaging in buying GameStop because it was going up in value, they have now accused them of the same things they have now accused you of engaging in on social media, hate and discriminatory content after being warned to stop it. You have been given guidelines that you are violating if you are using this server. You’re engaging in hate speech. You’re glorifying violence. You’re spreading misinformation. This is being used to justify shutting down trades in GameStop, trades that show it gaining money.
The reason this is bad for the hedge fund guys is that they were selling future options, which means that they have to now buy the stock that they thought they would get for $4 a share at $4,000 a share. That’s how much this stock has gone up since the summer and basically in the past week. So they’re having to buy this stock — they thought they were gonna be able to buy it at four bucks a share. Now it’s costing them their future options $4,000. Maybe 400 a share. But regardless, it’s a tremendous amount of money that they don’t have or they don’t want you to think they have. They’re asking to be bailed out. If it’s $400 or 4,000, it doesn’t matter, it is a huge amount of money that they didn’t expect to have to come up with.
They expected to be getting away with selling short at four bucks a share and cleaning up. And now Robinhood’s been shut down for allowing trades. It’s identical. And the thing is, this is the elites moving in to control what they want everybody to believe is a free market. The elites in the Democrat Party, they want everybody to believe there’s a free market in speech, there’s a free market in political opinion, we got a First Amendment, you can say what you believe, you can think what you want to think, but you can’t. If you disagree with them, if you violate what they agree with, what they think, if you are in opposition to them, they shut you down. They make it impossible for you to get traction beyond your own oral cavity, your own voice, your own mouth.
Now they’re showing that the same thing is gonna happen with money. If you go out there and you find a way in the system they run to earn big money and cause them to lose big, oh, are they gonna come after you. And they are coming after these people. And all they are, by definition, normal people on Reddit. Normal people who saw this big, gigantic short sell of a company that was actually starting to make money, so they drove the stock price up, which is fair and free and totally legal to do. But they’re gonna be published. They’re gonna be shut down, they’re gonna be maligned, they’re gonna be call racists, bigots, they’re gonna be called people engaging in hate speech, ’cause that’s how you shame them. That’s how you get people to shut up. Nobody wants to be a racist. Nobody wants to be somebody who hates. Nobody wants to be accused of any of this.
Republicans have proven it’s not worth fighting back, so this is what they’re now engaging in, in the realm of money. And so you see, folks, strip this all down, put Donald Trump back in the mix and you’ll see why he had to be destroyed. It wasn’t just his political agenda. Donald Trump was enabling average, ordinary Americans to do well financially. They were benefiting from a tremendously growth economy. The first three years of Trump’s administration before the virus hit, look at what he had done. The unemployment numbers for African-Americans, Hispanics, and women. And look at the amount of money that they were earning, the wages were increasing left and right.
The whole thing is exactly 180 degrees out of phase. Donald Trump caused these people to panic exactly like the panic we’re seeing in the financial markets here, and he also demonstrated that it was about money as well. If people became more financially self-reliant, if people became more financially secure, then they needed less and less government. They needed less and less assistance.
This is impermissible. He had to go. And of course the Republicans in the establishment, such as the Never Trumpers and the Romneys of the world, the Cindy McCains and these people, they have a position in the establishment. They are to lose with honor and they do that now and then, occasionally win. When they win, they don’t really do anything with it, right? When they win they almost act like they need to be forgiven and start talking about power sharing and stuff like that.
So, folks, it’s a gold mine of information. It’s 400 bucks a share, I thought, not 4,000. Four hundred bucks a share that the hedge fund guys now have to come up with when they were expecting four bucks a share. So, anyway, this is — well, what is it gonna mean?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Short sellers “are sitting on estimated losses of $70.87 billion” from their short positions on the United States and companies therein” on the stock market so far this year, $70.87 billion. The vast majority of that was chalked up during this GameStop business: $70 billion and climbing — $70 billion the hedge funds have got to come up with in cash if they want to maintain their positions.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT|
RUSH: We got Ryan here in Wichita, who was part of the Reddit group that was driving the price up on GameStop. How are you doing, sir? Great to have you here on the program.
CALLER: I’m doing great, Rush. Great to talk to you. I’ve been listening to you since I was a little kid. My dad had me listening to you as a little kid. Now I’m 41 years old and —
RUSH: Let me ask you: How surprised were you when you heard me discussing GameStop today?
CALLER: I turned the on radio on my drive to work, and I’m like, “I gotta call Rush,” and I called about 30 times and got through — and, like, “Today’s my day.”
RUSH: There it is.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Okay. So tell us. What’s the scoop?
CALLER: Okay, the scoop is I got involved about a week ago. I kind of found out… I’m big into Bitcoin. I’m on the Bitcoin page on Reddit, and they were talking about WallStreetBets. I get over to WallStreetBets; I joined the group, did a lot of reading, a lot of research. I found out about the GameStop deal, looked into it, saw the short position. I kind of understood what was gonna happen. I got in last Wednesday around $38.
RUSH: K, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now this is important for people that don’t follow this stuff. You got in at $38 a share.
RUSH: Exactly. Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and —
CALLER: And Robinhood, yes.
RUSH: — and Robinhood all suspended trading in GameStop.
CALLER: They didn’t suspend. They would let you sell but it they would not let you buy, which is why the price has plummeted this morning. All the while, I guarantee you the hedge funds are shorting the thing to death ’cause they can do whatever they want.
RUSH: So you are living, breathing, testifying evidence that the stock market is rigged for the big boys —
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: — just like the political market is rigged for the American left.
CALLER: Absolutely. It just reaffirmed something. My dad has been telling me for a long time that it’s been rigged for the big boys, and this morning… I’ve been trading stocks since I was 17 years old. My grandma left me money in her will when she passed away, and I put it in the stock market, and I’ve been playing ever since. I’ve done well over the years, but today I sold everything. I sold everything. There’s cash in the account, and I don’t know what I want to do.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I’m just gonna pull it.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — who thought they were in control of the game.
CALLER: Just as you were saying, it’s a big transfer of wealth, and that’s not the game. The game is the big boys get bigger and the middle class stays poor forever. That’s the game.
RUSH: Or static, one or the other. Exactly. You’ve nailed it there. So here’s a guy playing the game. Here’s a guy who got in at $38 a share. Now the users of the apps are not being allowed to buy GameStop. It’s been shut down by TD Ameritrade, Schwab, and Robinhood.
Those are the three ways that you had of buying stock — going long, going short, however you wanted to do it. So he sold everything today and got out after realizing he had topped everything. He wasn’t gonna be able to anything because they were now limiting his upward expansion, mobility.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Aberdeen, South Dakota, Ryan. Great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, mega dittos, Rush. Thank you for taking my call today.
RUSH: You bet, sir. Great to have you here with us.
CALLER: I thought your explanation of short selling and its relationship to the GameStop situation was brilliant. But I was kind of hoping to be able to attempt to expound on it a little bit.
RUSH: Sure. Go ahead. Does this mean you really didn’t think it was brilliant, you’re just saying that to soften me up for what you want to say that you think I should have said and didn’t?
CALLER: (laughing) Well, the important thing to remember about short selling is that essentially it’s a promise to borrow against current stock price —
RUSH: Exactly. And you’ve gotta have the money for it.
CALLER: — future stock price. The day traders know that every outstanding margin call out there is a promise to buy. So what happens when you have a lot of margin calls, a lot of promise to buy, there’s anticipation that on the strength of those margin call purchases, the stock price will go up. My point in bringing this up is simply that what happened to those hedge fund managers, the big, elite boys in Wall Street —
RUSH: Yep.
RUSH: Exactly. There was no way to avoid the short squeeze. It was gonna happen by virtue of the Reddit guys continuing to drive the stock price up.
CALLER: But if it wouldn’t have been the WallStreetBets, Reddit guys, it would have been someone else. There are hundreds of thousands of day traders out there that practically do it for a living.
RUSH: Okay, true. That part is true. But the Reddit people are the ones that did it. I didn’t mean to impugn anyone else nor praise the Reddit guys. They’re simply the guys that did it, made it happen.
Related Links