Monthly Archives: February 2021

The GameStop saga, for all the havoc it has caused to the global markets, is not just a tale of idealistic individual investors humiliating a bunch of arrogant hedge funds even if the tides turned on Tuesday, with a plunge in GameStops shares. For one, it feels like an unannounced sequel to the 6 January riots on Capitol Hill: both have featured a horde of angry, foul-mouthed social media addicts laying siege to the most sacred institutions of the deeply despised establishment.

However, while the Washington rioters were universally condemned, those leading the virtual crusade on Wall Street have fared much better. Having defended the stocks of musty, struggling companies against greedy hedge funds, they have garnered some sympathy across the political aisle.

The main lesson of the two riots, for the digital counterculture at least, seems clear. Today, the true shamans of the anti-establishment rebellion ought to master the arts of trading stock options and derivatives, not those of climbing walls and waving Confederate flags. The revolution may be livestreamed, tweeted and televised but its probably still a good idea to back up that Excel spreadsheet.

That the GameStop crusade seems dignified is partly a function of the hedge fund industrys rather controversial to put it mildly reputation. There is, however, another, less obvious reason for its acclaim in the public sphere: many of us are enchanted by the rhetoric of democratisation that has accompanied the rise of cheap online brokerage platforms.

One such platform Robinhood has provided the crucial digital infrastructure behind the GameStop rebellion, allowing ordinary people to buy shares in companies for small amounts of cash on their phones. Its own mission, repeated by its founders almost ad nauseam over the past few years, has been to democratise finance.

At first, it may seem just a natural outgrowth of the lofty mission embraced by index funds like Vanguard in the early 1970s. Back then, the idea was to create safe financial instruments that would make it trivially easy and cheap for ordinary people to invest into the stock market without having to accumulate much insider knowledge or expertise.

Robinhood, however, doesnt fashion itself as just another boring and utterly forgettable brokerage firm from Wall Street. Rather, it wants to be seen as a revolutionary, disruptive force out of Silicon Valley. Being seen as just such a digital platform does wonders to ones valuation: the benchmark being Amazon, not some unknown mutual fund.

Robinhoods rhetoric of democratisation is thus to be seen in a somewhat different light. Its heritage points towards the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and WeWork rather than Vanguard or BlackRock. All these digital firms promised to democratise one thing or another transportation, accommodation, office space and to do it fast.

Soon, this nascent industry, with its sweet promise of democracy as a service, couldnt quite contain itself: the global quest for democratising dog walking, babysitting, juice making and laundry-folding was on. This was pursued with the help of venture capitalists and various institutional investors who, squeezed by the low-interest rate legacy of the global financial crisis, were increasingly out of ideas on where to park their money.

This, however, wasnt the whole story: the drive to democratise everything was also fuelled by such unflinching beacons of liberal democracy as the government of Saudi Arabia. By partnering with Japans SoftBank, it bankrolled this myth, pouring billions into the likes of Uber and WeWork.

This huge influx of money, combined with genuinely new business models that rendered certain previously chargeable services nominally free, created an illusion of progress and social mobility. Many digital platforms were either heavily subsidised by their deep-pocketed backers or charged nothing at all; the lost revenue was to be made up by monetising more advanced related services and user data.

The inevitable process of democratisation touted by all the platforms as evidence of their own socially progressive nature, was often the result of simple arithmetic. In cases like WeWork, the maths did not even add up. Whether Robinhood, which has now raised an extra $3.4bn, will be luckier remains to be seen.

For most of these companies, the sweet promises of democratisation have made such maths irrelevant, at least in the short term. This explains how the tech industry has emerged as the leading purveyor of populism around the globe.

This may seem an overstatement. While we tend to reserve the dreaded P word for the Bannons, the Orbns and the Erdoans of this world, can we think of Bezos or Zuckerberg and the stock-trading Robinhood army in those terms?

We can and we should. With everyones eyes fixed on Trump-style populism primitive, toxic, nativist we have completely missed the platforms role in the emergence of another, rather distinct type of populism: sophisticated, cosmopolitan, urbane. Originating in Silicon Valley, this platform populism has advanced by disrupting hidden, reactionary forces that stand in the way of progress and democratisation all by unleashing the powers of digital technologies.

Platform populism is propelled by the almost conspiratorial insistence that the world isnt what it seems. The incumbent firms taxis, hotels, hedge funds have changed the rules of the game in such a way as to favour their own interests. Only by disrupting them can one hope to harvest all the benefits made possible by digital technologies. To that end, the platforms promise to unleash the forces of capitalism in order to civilise these savage remnants of the earlier, pre-digital civilisation.

Much of the rigidity of the pre-digital incumbents is a result of the regulations imposed by democratic (even if capitalist) states. However, in the topsy-turvy universe of platform populism, resisting democratic regulations by subjecting them to the sustained economic pressure of capitalist competition is incontrovertible evidence of democratisation. Hence the resistance from some of them to legislation designed to get them to treat their gig economy workers as actual employees.

That much in the rhetoric of platform populism is fake and that its ultimate winners will be the likes of SoftBank and Saudi Arabia doesnt matter either. Platform populism, featuring no coherent political ideology of its own, is all about process, not outcomes. The goal is to prove that, for all the machinations of government bureaucrats with their pesky regulations, our individual agency is still alive and kicking. Its definitely not to deploy that agency to accomplish any particular long-term political agenda.

Thus, many of the angry crusaders taking on the hedge fund industry are certainly aware that their own gains are temporary and fleeting. But who could deny them the pleasure of reaffirming their own agency by sticking it to the man, all while knowing that the only long-term gains of this process would accrue to other hedge funds and asset managers, such as BlackRock, which is estimated to have made billions on the GamesStop rush? Far from deepening democracy, platform populism turns into a farcical yet highly profitable theatre performance.

Evgeny Morozov is the founder of the Syllabus, and the author of several books on technology and politics

Originally posted here:

Why the GameStop affair is a perfect example of 'platform populism' - The Guardian

Since shortly after the outbreak of Covid-19, two theories about the pandemics likely impact have been circulating. One lets call it the bread thesis maintains that the crisis will reinstate respect for seriousness and competence. It will remind everyone that the nations of the world are interdependent and that the politics of expertise puts food on the table and keeps the diners alive.

The other lets call it the circuses thesis suggests that, with borders tightening, economic and social turmoil exacerbating old inequalities and anger over lockdowns rising and being directed at elites, the pandemic will benefit populists stirring culture wars.

The big political question this decade will be which thesis is more accurate. Enter Michael Burleigh, a British historian and recently the inaugural Engelsberg Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics. From his lectures in that post, Burleigh has composed Populism: Before and After the Pandemic. This slim book ranges across many of the subjects of his previous works 20th-century Germany, decolonisation and the Cold War, the decline of the West, the uses and abuses of history but concludes with reflections on Covid-19 and what comes next.

It sits at the juncture of three current publishing trends: globetrotting think-pieces on Covid-19 (Ivan Krastevs Is It Tomorrow Yet?, Fareed Zakarias Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, Slavoj ieks Pandemic!), populism explainers (Anne Applebaums Twilight of Democracy, Michael Sandels The Tyranny of Merit) and explorations of post-imperial identity (Sathnam Sangheras Empireland, Robert Tombss This Sovereign Isle). Readers looking to understand the transformations brought about by the virus should start with Krastevs effort, but Burleighs book is a spirited, readable and thought-provoking tour through the forces defining our age. Populism only gets to the pandemic in its pessimistic conclusion, a short epilogue that follows three discrete but interlocking essays.

[see also:The fall of the Roman republic is a warning about todays degenerate populists]

Burleigh begins with an account of the recent populist wave and how elite interests have ultimately become the progenitors and beneficiaries of movements purporting to rally the masses against the rich and powerful. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has written that populism is a thin ideology which can bind itself on to other political traditions (nationalism, socialism, conservatism, even liberalism) and Burleigh examines its many different international forms in that spirit, neither demonising populist support nor wrapping it up in sentimental odes to real people.

The second essay compares the post-imperial experiences of Britain and Russia. While Burleigh does not labour the parallels, he notes an important similarity. In both countries the carapace of empire obscured the nation underneath the Russian Soviet republic had no formal capital nor a communist party of its own, as England today has no parliament of its own and the retreat of empire is prompting new reckonings with that underlying identity.

The third essay takes in Poland, Hungary, China, South Africa, Britain and the US to show how history is being politicised in order to unify populations, or to divide them into rooted patriots wedded to myths versus elite cosmopolitan subversives. All of which resonates in the wake of the statue wars in 2020 and the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC where the Confederate flag was held aloft within its walls for the first time ever.

Populism displays Burleighs eye for enlivening and memorable aperus, anecdotes and factoids. He compares the similarities between different forms of populism to the Habsburg jaw in portraiture, and Norman Englands supranational, Francophone aristocrats to Davos man in armour. The Chinese Communist Party, he informs us, once produced a boxed DVD set for its cadres on what Mikhail Gorbachev did wrong in the last days of the Soviet Union. By 2007, 20 years after Ronald Reagan abolished balanced reporting rules for broadcasters, 91 per cent of US radio stations had a conservative bias. Emmanuel Macron based his listening tour following the yellow vests protests of 2019 on a similar exercise by Pierre Poujade, the original French populist.

This mastery of the past helps with predicting the future. Burleigh sees Vladimir Putin, who, after a referendum last summer, can now stay in office until 2036, adopting a form of back-seat power akin to that of Deng Xiaoping in 1980s China. In the shortening of global supply chains due to the pandemic he sees similarities to the breakdown of large-scale tile and glass production in the late Roman empire. And in Brexit and the quandaries about Englishness he sees a risk that Britain will follow Russia in resolving its post-imperial identity by forging a new one defined sharply and antagonistically in opposition to Europe. That a bureaucratic dispute over vaccines between the EU and a post-Brexit Britain has so quickly degenerated into a culture war and merged with emotive debates about the future of the union lends weight to that argument.

[see also:The Big Squeeze: How financial populism sent the stock market on a wild ride]

All of which brings him out at the pandemic-era epilogue. Burleigh gives the case for the bread thesis ample space, citing the chaotic scenes after Indias populist prime minister Narendra Modi announced a national curfew with four hours notice, forcing millions of Indians to travel back to their home villages in scenes that resembled the chaos of partition in 1947. Such misgovernment, he notes, naming instances in Italy, Brazil, Britain, Russia and elsewhere, shows the limits of populist rule Donald Trumps election defeat being a prime example.

Yet the books conclusion sides with the circuses thesis. Culture wars are bubbling even during lockdowns. Protracted economic downturns will come when emergency fiscal support is pulled and bankruptcies and unemployment soar. Unlike after the financial crisis of 2008, there will be no popular patience with further austerity, writes Burleigh. Any signs that economic inequalities are not being addressed this time will not be so passively received He cites France, where a combination of previous socio-economic grievances, the economic blow of the pandemic, waning patience with lockdowns and a search for scapegoats could put Marine Le Pen back on track to attack Macron as the incarnated representative of the global rich exploiting the couches populaires. Recent events support this. The storming of the Capitol spoke to the enduring disruptiveness of Trumpism. The vaccine nationalism rising in Europe hardly augurs a new age of enlightened international cooperation. In France, a recent poll put a Macron-Le Pen run-off in next years presidential election at 52 per cent to 48.

The message of Populism is not entirely pessimistic. Burleigh argues for a more robust defence of liberal democracy, a confrontation with the forces of inequality and division, and a scepticism about the notion that we are slaves to historical precedent. But, as his compelling book argues on its detours through time and space, there is also a case for realism about what the coming period of turmoil might bring. Bread does not always beat circuses.

Populism: Before and After the PandemicMichael BurleighHurst, 10.99, 152pp

Link:

Populism in the pandemic age - New Statesman

The debate around the farm laws and the agitation to scrap them serves a copybook case for those studying politics of populism. History repeats itself, but it shouldnt be allowed to in such a grotesque manner. Right since Independence, the Congress party has always chosen safe ways over hard and politically courageous decisions. As the ruling party, it played to the gallery to avoid political reverses. As the opposition, it has always fished in troubled waters, riding piggyback on popular sentiments. For Indias GOP, low-hanging fruits have always proved to be too tempting to remember its long-term vision for the future of India!

The Congress partys populist politics has proved to be extremely costly to the nation. The three important issues that are routinely referred to as core issues of the BJP are a testimony to this. Regardless of the expressed constitutional mandate, successive Congress governments refrained from nullifying Article 370, enacting a common civil code and preventing the silent invasion of Bangladeshi infiltrators into Assam. While the Congress used all these three issues as a protective shield around its vote bank, they were in fact laying red carpets to multiple threats to the very unity and integrity of India.

An important factor common to these three issues was Muslims in India. Sadly, Congress leaders have viewed Muslims only from the perspective of losses and gains in elections. For them, Jammu and Kashmir was more of a Muslim-majority province and hence a showcase item to be cited as a living example of Indias commitment to secularism. The party was always hell-bent on exhibiting secularism than being truly secular. At the cost of J&Ks progress on the human development front, the Congress allowed secessionist elements to thrive under Article 370.

It turned a Nelsons eye to many things, from repeated terrorist attacks to injustice in Ladakh and from mindless corruption to denial of constitutional safeguards to women and marginalised communities there. The Shah Bano case was the pinnacle of its politics of populism through minority appeasement. Rajiv Gandhis decision to amend the Constitution in order to undo the impact of the Supreme Court judgment further emboldened obscurantist elements in the Muslim community. In effect, justice to Muslim women facing acute vulnerability due to the retrograde practice of triple talaq continued to remain a chimera. To secure its own vote bank, the Congress committed the sin of making the lives of Muslim women even more insecure. Similarly, the IMDT act enacted during former PM Indira Gandhis second tenure gave the illegal migration of Bangladeshis more fillip instead of preventing it.

Again, the example of Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, introduced by Rajiv Gandhi, is equally educative. Later, the TADA was used and abused but it continued as a law. During the investigations into the 1993 Mumbai blasts, this Act proved to be very effective. However, in the face of a campaign by certain sections in society, TADA came to be portrayed as an anti-minority law and hence the Narasimha Rao regime meekly gave in to the pressures and repealed the act. Later, when the Vajpayee government decided to bring the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in 2002, the NDA government was compelled to call a joint sessionsomething that happened only very few times in Indias parliamentary historyof both the Houses to get the law passed.

All these examples show how the Congress lacked courage of conviction in abiding by the guiding principles of the Constitution. Now, while actively supporting forces of manufactured unrest on the farm bills, the GOP and other opposition parties are doing a great disservice to parliamentary democracy. How can a group of a few hundred stubborn agitators pressurise the government to undo what Parliament has passed? If we allow this to happen, it would amount to stifling the voices emanating from the very temple of democracy! The government has been engaging with the agitators patiently and peacefully. It is time that the Congress and opposition parties shun populism and instead prepare the agitators so that wiser counsel prevails.

While doing so, they may do well in recalling what Edmund Burke had said almost 250 years ago: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. (Speech to the Electors of Bristol, November 3, 1774)

VinaySahasrabuddhe(vinays57@gmail.com)President, ICCR, andBJP Rajya Sabha MP

More:

The Congress Partys politics of populism - The New Indian Express

For those who flirted with parts of the ex-presidents populist message, there is a straightforward line of defense: While Trump obviously failed, real Trumpism was never tried.

The problem was the deeply flawed, unhinged and amoral champion of the populist cause, but not the cause itself, which continues to be relevant. As my AEI colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty writes, political conditions will continue to call for a Trumpist response for some time.

Trumps idiosyncrasies surely go a long way toward accounting for the wholesale failure of his policy agenda, as well as for his disgraceful departure from office. But conservatives have to confront the possibility that populism itself was an important component of the failureand indeed that any populist politics carries the seeds of policy failure.

The proposition will not sit easily with those who, in the wake of the Trump disaster, are seeking to rehabilitate the term. According to the American Compass Oren Cass, for example, theres a way in which populism also means taking seriously the concerns that people have, understanding that they will not all express them in the same terms a Beltway debate might.

But populism has a commonly agreed-upon definition: Namely, it is a type of politics that pits good and pure-hearted ordinary people against a self-serving, out-of-touch elite. As such, populism is inherently divisive as it singles out specific groups as distinct from the people (elites, immigrants, bankers, journalists). It is anti-pluralist as it treats the people as a homogenous entity. Finally, it has a penchant for authoritarianism: If one takes Trumps I am your voice seriously, why should there be any limits to the power of the presidency?

Moreover, through its Manichean nature, populism introduces passions into politicsas opposed to an interplay between interests and abstract principles. And passions are only rarely useful for threading the needle on public policy. In fact, if stirring passions becomes the aim of politics, policy outcomes take a back seat. Neither the border wall, nor the Muslim ban, nor any other of the ex-presidents signature policy ideas were instrumental to achieving any real-world objectives, such as helping those who helped to elect him. Instead, their sole purpose was to keep the audience engaged and emotionally invested in the populist spectacle.

Furthermore, the debate on the future role of populism within the Republican party ought not to be limited to lessons from the Trump era. The bigger picture is not an encouraging one. For every Israel under Benjamin Netanyahus leadership, there is a Hungary under Viktor Orbn, suffering from brain drain and dismantling its democratic institutionsor an India under Narendra Modi, gripped by social unrest and economic dysfunction.

In the GOP alone, recent manifestations go from Pat Buchanan through Sarah Palin and the Tea Party to Trump. Instead of yielding a governing strategy, the partys attempts to embrace populism were akin to efforts to ride a tigerbefore being eaten by it, like Eric Cantor or Lindsey Graham. Perhaps the tiger could be tamed, as the former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May hoped with her efforts to reshape the Tories as a party of responsible nationalismonly to see herself be overrun by ever more extreme fringes.

It should not be too much to ask those who wish to keep populism as a lasting hallmark of conservative and Republican politics to address populisms real-world record, instead of retreating to a purely abstract defense of politics that would supposedly take the concerns of working-class Americans more seriously than the Beltway elites. Yet, much like Soviet elites of the 1970s and the 1980s, who were not keen to defend the track record of real socialism, the high priests of populism today are keen to sell us a promise of an idealized populism to come, instead of accepting accountability for any of the mess that real populism of the past decade helped create.

There are important policy conversations to be had on the political rightand the leftabout subjects such as immigration or industrial policy. But with its appeal to passions and grievance, populism is the worst possible vehicle for policy change.

In Denmark, the left-of-center government of Mette Frederiksen is seeking without much ado to drive the number of asylum claims to zero, following years of restrictive immigration policy by Social Democrats. Any number of conservative, right-wing, or free-market-friendly governmentsnot least the Reagan administration in the United States or Margaret Thatchers government in the U.K.have provided assistance to specific industries or protected them from foreign competition. Whatever one thinks of the merits of such policies, populism and the pursuit of the substantive agenda advocated by those who want the GOP to be a party of the working class are perfectly separable.

If anything, populism makes thoughtful conversations on immigration, industrial policy, or social safety nets essentially impossible. On both sides of the Atlantic, the combination of the divisive us-versus-them rhetoric of populism on the political right with demands to curb immigration has been a surefire way to attract racists. And combining populism with an expansive view of the states role in the economy has been a one-way ticket to irresponsible, short-sighted economic policy mixesas the legacy of economic populism in Latin America demonstrates.

By all means, let us judge each policy idea on its merits and leave no stone unturned. Yet insofar as insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, to seek to perpetuate the GOPs populism in the wake of the Trump disaster would be positively insane.

Dalibor Rohac is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C. Follow him on Twitter @DaliborRohac.

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The Problems With Populism Go Well Beyond Donald Trump - The Dispatch

Just as the disastrous digestion process of the Brexit referendum has become the best vaccine against anti-EU populism, so could the assault on the US Capitol become the mirror in which populists in Europe and other parts of the world see their reflections from now on, each time they try to impose their discourse of delegitimising institutions.

Such an American impact would be nothing new. With all its problems and limitations, US democracy has always stood as a beacon for all people around the world who wished to live in freedom and equality under the rule of law. When the French people gave the American people the Statue of Liberty in 1886, marking the first centenary of US independence, it was not just a gesture of recognition, but also a conscious transferral of the flame of freedom for preservation in a safe place while the old continent waited for better times.

As its designer, sculptor Frdric Auguste Bartholdi, said to the promoter of the initiative, French jurist and politician douard Laboulaye, I will endeavour to glorify the Republic over there, until the day we rediscover it among ourselves. But, far from being glorified, the Republic came close to being lost.

Democracy is contagious, as is populism. Until now, the US populist contagion reaching Europe has run along two lines: an indirect one, based on imitation; and a direct one, stemming from cooperation, with support from the US, especially via the activism of Steve Bannon and the financing of Brexit and European far-right parties (see, for example, the establishment of US far-right movement QAnon in Germany, and the Trumpism of Spains Vox on George Soros).

These two types of influence have come together in the use of social media and alternative media, with the result that the followers of populist movements reinforce their sense of grievance with the system and immunise themselves against the facts.

The Washington riots will have a significant impact on the worst of the populists in our midst.

But, now we have seen a mob assaulting the US Congress, this could change. From now on, each time someone attempts to set themselves up as the sole spokesperson of the people, urges protesters to occupy institutions, undermines the role of the courts as supreme arbiters of the law, or conceals their defeats behind baseless claims of electoral fraud, everyone will know how the story ends: your country out of the European Union, a clown in disguise at the parliamentary platform, violence in the streets, institutions in disrepute, and an illiberal democracy with reduced rights.

From now on, citizens will understand much more clearly why it is said that democracies die bit by bit, until they suddenly succumb and it is too late; understand that they must take a stand against each small violation of institutional independence, demagogical outburst by their leaders, incendiary and hate-filled speeches by political representatives, imposter journalists, fake media outlets, and disinformation campaigns that nurture and encourage populists.

Undoubtedly, these effects will be felt on both sides of the political spectrum. Even though the Trump phenomenon can be likened to the nationalist populism of the far right, left-wing populisms are also populisms. And, in all likelihood, the population will sharpen its eyes and recognise that, though the issues are different (religion, immigration, or the economy), the methods for gaining power are the same.

Beyond empowering European democrats and weakening forces that aspire to take power by assault, the Washington riots, added to Trumps exit, will have a significant impact on the worst of the populists in our midst those who have already reached power in Poland and Hungary, bolstered by Trumps United States both as an example and in policy terms.

For other EU member states and their institutions, the events in Washington are an important reminder that, from the dawn of time, the heavens have been breached first by assaulting public institutions and undermining the rule of law. After all, the Statue of Liberty holds a torch in her right hand, and a tablet of laws in her left. There is no liberty outside the law, only within be it in Washington, Paris, or Warsaw.

The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. ECFR publications only represent the views of its individual authors.

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The other contagion: Why the US Capitol attack is a warning to populists - European Council on Foreign Relations

Alternative LendingDigital BankingSavings and Investment

Stock market mania isnt new or innovative but, nonetheless, the future of investing for both retail and institutional money is set for rapid change as more and more participants come online.

Weekly Leading Article

Its a strange situation that unites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jnr. to a common cause.

Just one month in, irony looks set to be the best performing asset class in 2021, surpassing puppies' 500 per cent bull-run in 2020 when demand for pedigree pooches skyrocketed under lockdown.

Last week Robinhood, not exactly true to its folkloric namesake, shut off market access to retail investors in favour, according to six million Reddit users, of Wall Street's evil hedge funds.

What transpired? Was it collusion? What does it mean for the future of investing in the stock market? Was it all just a tad overblown?

No doubt, much of the activities on Wall Street last week, that saw an army of Reddit users push the price of a battered analogue business heavily shorted by professionals sky-high, were due to a combination of lockdown boredom, speculative greed and vitriolic desire to stick it to The Man. But, something more profound was at work too.

The power of the crowd, helped by lower barriers to entry to invest in the stock market and the giddying power of social media brought about a huge rise in the price of GameStop as well as a number of other stonks (stocks). It also pushed some formerly powerful hedge funds to hurry out of short positions in these companies and away with a bloody nose. It would be short-sighted to expect this to be the end of the story.

Robinhood, the biggest, most deep-pocketed and most well-known name in the digital wealth sub-sector of fintech, acted for unknown reasons when irritating its users, half of whom had piled into GameStop, but no doubt it did so because it had to.

The contagion was not just felt in the US. Freetrade in the UK, which provides a similar level of market access for UK-based investors had to put in a weekend of hard graft to work to off-set issues it had with providing US market access to its customers owing to its FX partner bank.

If there is a long term trend of greater and greater dominance of the retail investor in markets underway this is both a good thing in terms of fulfilling fintechs promise to democratise financial services but also carries the risk of uncharted populism that might well end in Trumpian catastrophe, not least for those investors bidding up the share price of a failing company that will ultimately crash.

Principally this is the kind of un-checked animal spirits that encourages people to bet using money they cant afford to lose. Decades of regulation have been driven by a belief in theneed to protect the retail market and encourage sensible practices. But in the age of the Reddit forum, much of it clearly needs updating.

More retail investors could spell long-lasting positive change, however. Shareholders also hold sway over companies values, future direction and executive compensation via voting rights. Traditionally, fund managers have voted on behalf of their retail and institutional clients at company AGMs but if the last week has shown us anything, its thatsocial medias populist power can quickly galvanise behind a cause. This could lead to meaningful positive change in areas such as climate change and persecution of minoritiesbut as the politics of the past five years or so have shown, populismcan also lead to chaos.

The AltFi Leader is a new weekly view for 2021 from our editorial team. Wed love to hear your ideas, thoughts, feedback and constructive criticism.editorial@altfi.com

Read more here:

The AltFi view on Gamestonk: Populism is coming to fintech - AltFi

The American public has given President Biden favorable reviews since he took office last month, and the policies that he is hurrying to put in place appear broadly popular, according to polls.

And notably, as he signs a wave of executive actions and pushes a major $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, Mr. Biden is facing muted opposition from Republicans so far a reflection of the partys weakened position as it juggles two increasingly divided factions.

I think that Republicans have found Biden to be much more progressive than they thought he was going to be, but I think were too busy trying to kill each other to really focus on it, said Sarah Chamberlain, the president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group of centrist Republicans that includes more than 60 members of the House and Senate.

This week, the Houses G.O.P. caucus met to discuss the fate of two lawmakers representing opposite ends of the partys identity: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chambers No. 3 Republican. Ms. Greene is one of the chambers most fervent loyalists to former President Donald J. Trump, while Ms. Cheney is pushing to unlink the party from his brand of populism.

The result of the meeting on Wednesday was a kind of stalemate, with the Republican leadership allowing Ms. Greene to keep her committee assignments despite a history of offensive and conspiracy-minded statements, and Ms. Cheney comfortably retaining her top position against a mutiny from Trump allies. On Thursday, the entire House voted to strip Ms. Greene of her committee positions over widespread G.O.P. opposition.

This intraparty division gives Mr. Biden the upper hand as he pushes his legislative agenda forward, said Doug Schwartz, the director of polling at Quinnipiac University, which released a nationwide poll on Wednesday. Hes advocating policies that have solid support in the public, so Republicans are in more of a defensive posture, as theyre opposing popular policies, Mr. Schwartz said.

The publics dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the United States remains high: Roughly seven in 10 said they were unhappy with the way things were going, according to the Quinnipiac poll. But optimism is on the rise, and many are attaching their hopes to the new president. When asked about the coming four years under Mr. Biden, 61 percent of Americans described themselves as optimistic.

In a Monmouth University poll released last week, 42 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the right direction considerably less than half, but still more than in any Monmouth poll going back to 2013.

The Quinnipiac survey found that more than two-thirds of Americans supported Mr. Bidens coronavirus relief package, with wide majorities also backing certain key elements including a permanent increase to a $15 minimum wage and a round of $1,400 stimulus checks to individuals. On the question of the stimulus payments, even 64 percent of Republicans supported them.

On a range of other Biden policies, the poll found widespread support: rejoining the Paris climate accord, opening a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and ending Mr. Trumps ban on travel from some predominantly Muslim countries.

The New Washington

Feb. 5, 2021, 9:20 p.m. ET

It bears mentioning that pollsters across the country undercounted support for Mr. Trump in November for the second straight time; until survey researchers complete a full post-mortem analysis of 2020 polling, it will be impossible to rule out the possibility that some polls may still be missing a share of his supporters.

Still, in general, the smart Republicans are trying to pick their battles, said Robert Cahaly, a Republican pollster in Georgia who has worked with candidates in both the partys populist wing and its establishment.

Mr. Biden, for his part, will be looking to capitalize on Republicans compromised position. In the end, America wanted a president that was more empathetic, but people do not want a president that looks weak, Mr. Cahaly said.

But he and other Republican strategists cautioned that if Mr. Biden moved too hastily on legislation that was seen as left-leaning, he could face a backlash from some of the disaffected Republicans who supported him in November. Ms. Chamberlain said that if Mr. Bidens environmental policies were perceived as harming the economy, he could find himself in a hole. I think you let them pass laws left and right, and then you expose them for what they are, Ms. Chamberlain said of her suggested strategy for Republicans.

Americans are not holding their breath for a new dawn of bipartisanship. Just 21 percent of respondents in the Monmouth poll said they were highly confident that Mr. Biden would be able to persuade lawmakers in Washington to work together more. Another 39 percent were somewhat confident.

While Mr. Biden receives favorable job reviews over all, 16 percent of Americans in both the Monmouth and Quinnipiac polls said they hadnt made up their minds. Many of these people are onetime G.O.P. voters who lost faith in the party under Mr. Trump and are waiting to see how Mr. Biden governs, said the longtime Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Basically, the approval numbers on Biden are the disapproval on Trump, Mr. Ayres said. But the disapproval numbers on Biden are lower than the approval number on Trump which suggests there are some people who are hanging back to see what he does.

And there is evidence that those who are hanging back are giving him the benefit of the doubt. In an Associated Press/NORC poll released on Thursday, in which respondents were pushed to give an answer, his approval rose to 61 percent. Thirty-eight percent disapproved.

Opinions of the Republican Party, meanwhile, are much darker.

In the Quinnipiac poll, 64 percent of Americans said the G.O.P. was moving in the wrong direction, including an overwhelming 70 percent of independents and 30 percent of Republican partisans, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

The partys rank and file is now heavily tilted toward the Trump faithful. The Trump base is so big as a share of the party because so many of my type of Republicans have left the party, said Ms. Chamberlain, the head of the centrist group. But they want to come back to the party.

These staunch pro-Trump Republicans express deep frustration with their representation in Washington. Most G.O.P. voters continue to think the vote in November was rigged, echoing Mr. Trumps false claims, and many are irritated that legislators in Washington were not able to keep him in power.

Partly as a result, only 50 percent of Republicans said they were satisfied with G.O.P. lawmakers in Washington, according to the Quinnipiac poll. Thats down from 83 percent among Republican voters nationwide in a Quinnipiac survey a year ago.

Two people can both look at the same house and dislike it, but for different reasons, Mr. Cahaly said. Theres just an element of Republicans that want their old party back and hate the new populism. Then there are Republicans who like the idea of this being a working persons party and wish the old Republicans would just go be Democrats. This fight is going to take place in primaries, in town halls. This party is in a little bit of a civil war.

See the rest here:

Bidens Policies Are Popular. What Does That Mean for Republicans? - The New York Times

TipRanks

Weve got a full month of 2021 behind us now, and a few trends are coming clearer. The coronavirus crisis may still be with us, but as vaccination programs expand, the end is in sight. With President Trump out of the picture, and the Democrats holding both Houses of Congress and the White House, politics is looking more predictable. And both of those developments bode well for an economic recovery this year. Looking back, at the year that was, we can also see some trends that stayed firm despite the pandemic, the shutdowns, and the supercharged election season. One of the most important is the ongoing rollout of 5G networking technology. These new networks bring with them a fuller realization of the promises inherent in the digital world. Faster connections, lower latency, higher online capacity, clearer signals all will strongly enhance the capabilities of the networked world. And it wont just be mundane things like telecommuting or remote offices that will benefit 5G will allow Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles to further develop their potential. There is even talk of medical applications, of remotely located doctors performing surgery via digitally controlled microsurgical tools. And these are just the possibilities that we can see from now. Who know what the future will really bring? To this end, we pulled up TipRanks database to learn more about three exciting plays in the 5G space. According to the Street, we are likely to see further interesting developments in the next few years as this technology takes over. Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) The first 5G name were looking at, Skyworks, is a semiconductor chip manufacturer that brought in $3.4 billion in total revenues for FY2020. Skyworks, which is a prime supplier of chips for Apples iPhone series, saw a massive 68% year-over-year increase in 1QFY21 revenues the top line reached $1.51 billion, a company record, and also much higher than analysts had forecast. Much of Skyworks fiscal Q1 sales success came after Apple launched the 5G-capable iPhone 12 line. Strong sales in the popular handset device meant that profits trickled down the supply line and Skyworks channels a disproportionate share of its business to Apple. In fact, Apple orders accounted for 70% of Skyworks revenue in the recent quarter. iPhone wasnt the only 5G handset on the receiving end of Skyworks chips, however the company is also an important supplier to Koreas Samsung and Chinas Xiaomi, and has seen demand rise as these companies also launch 5G-capable smartphones. Finally, Skyworks supplies semiconductor chip components to the wireless infrastructure sector, specifically to the small cell transmission units which are important in the propagation network of wireless signals. As the wireless providers switch to 5G transmission, Skyworks has seen orders for its products increase. In his note on Skyworks for Benchmark, 5-star analyst Ruben Roy writes: SWKS significantly beat consensus estimates and provided March quarter guidance that is also well ahead of consensus estimates as 5G related mobile revenue and broad-based segment revenue continued to accelerate In addition to continued strength of design win momentum and customer activity, we are encouraged with SWKS confident tone relative to the overall demand environment and content increase opportunities. In line with his comments, Roy rates SWKS a Buy along with a $215 price target. At current levels, this implies an upside of 20% for the coming year. (To watch Roys track record, click here) Roy is broadly in line with the rest of Wall Street, which has assigned SWKS 13 Buy ratings and 7 Holds over the past three month -- and sees the stock growing about 15% over the next 12 months, to a target price of $205.69.(See SWKS stock analysis on TipRanks) Qorvo, Inc. (QRVO) Qorvos chief products are chipsets used in the construction of radio frequency transmission systems that power wifi and broadband communication networks. The connection of this niche to 5G is clear as network providers upgrade their RF hardware to 5G, they also upgrade the semiconductor chips that control the systems. This chip maker has a solid niche, but it is not resting on its laurels. Qorvo is actively developing a range of new products specifically for 5G systems and deployment. This 5G radio frequency product portfolio includes phase shifters, switches, and integrated modules, and contains both infrastructure and mobile products. Qorvo posted $3.24 billion in total revenues for fiscal 2020. That revenue represents a 4.8% year-over-year increase and the companys sales have been accelerating in fiscal 2021. The most recent quarterly report, for the second fiscal quarter, showed $1.06 billion in revenues, a 31% yoy increase. Rajvindra Gill, 5-star analyst with Needham, is bullish on Qorvos prospects, noting: Qorvo reported strong sales and gross margins as 5G momentum rolls into CY21 on atypical seasonality... The company is planning for 500M 5G handsets to be manufactured in 2021, with an incremental $5-7 of content/unit from 4G to 5G. Management believes that ultra-wideband adoption will be a key growth driver in for smartphones going forward..." To this end, Gill puts a $220 price target on QRVO shares, suggesting room for 31% upside in 2021. Accordingly, he rates the stock a Buy. (To watch Gills track record, click here) What do other analysts have to say? 13 Buys and and 6 Holds add up to a Moderate Buy analyst consensus. Given the $192.28 average price target, shares could climb ~15% from current levels. (See QRVO stock analysis on TipRanks) Telefonakiebolaget LM Ericsson (ERIC) From chipsets, well move on to handsets. Ericsson, the Swedish telecom giant has long been a leader in mobile tech, and is well known for its infrastructure and software that make possible IP networking, broadband, cable TV, and other telecom services. Ericsson is the largest European telecom company, and the largest 2G/3G/4G infrastructure provider outside of China. But that is all in the background. Ericsson is also a leader in the rollout of Europes growing 5G networks. Ericsson is involved in 5G rollout in 17 countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and its product line includes infrastructure base units and handsets, giving the company an interest in all aspects of the new 5G networks. Ericssons revenue performance in 2020 was not notably distressed by the corona crisis. Yes, the top line dipped in Q1, but that was in line with the companys historical pattern of rising revenue from Q1 through Q4. While the companys 1H20 revenues showed small yoy declines, the 2H20 gains were higher. In Q3, the $6.48 billion top line was up 8.7% yoy, and Q4s $8.08 billion revenue was up 17% from the prior year. The companys shares have also performed well during the corona year, and show a 12 month gain of 64%. Raymond James 5-star analyst Simon Leopold bluntly assigns Ericssons recent gains to its participation in 5G rollouts. Japan's awaited 5G roll-out has started. Share gains continue as Ericsson benefits from challenges facing its biggest competitors and more operators embrace 5G it seems obvious that Ericsson should be gaining market share... Competitor Nokia shunned the Chinese 5G projects, citing profitability challenges, yet Ericsson appears to be profiting in the challenging region. Leopold rates this stock an Outperform (i.e. Buy), and his $15 price target implies an upside potential of ~14% for the year ahead. (To watch Leopolds track record, click here) The Raymond James analyst, while bullish on ERIC, is actually less so than the Wall Street consensus. The stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating, based on a unanimous 5 reviews, and the $16.50 average price target indicates 25% growth potential from the share price of $13.19. (See ERIC stock analysis on TipRanks) To find good ideas for 5G stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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How wealth inequality, populism have impacted stock market - Yahoo Finance

LONDON (Reuters) - Robinhoods army of small retail investors may have failed to storm the silver market, but the online brokers devotees certainly gave it an almighty shake.

Freshly smelted silver bars at the KGHM Copper and Precious Metals smelter and processing plant in Glogow, Poland, May 10, 2013. REUTERS/Peter Andrews/File Photo

The spot silver price surged by 20% between last Thursday and Monday this week, briefly hitting an eight-year high of $30.03 an ounce.

An increase in the margin required to trade silver on the CME exchange has curbed animal spirits and the metal has fallen back to $27.12, though a collective stampede for physical metal continues to deplete retail supplies of bars and coins.

The crowd has found that squeezing a commodity market such as silver is a very different proposition from cornering a short-seller in an individual stock such as GameStop. Particularly when the targeted big short doesnt exist.

Theyll probably be back again, though, in silver or the next big thing.

Crowd surges organised through social media regularly rock Chinese commodity markets and the strategy is starting to catch on in the West, even if this particular silver squeeze seems to be fizzling out.

The rallying call for an attack on the silver market came on Thursday in the form of a post on the r/wallstreetbets Reddit message board, the same one used to spark frenzied buying of GameStop and other shares shorted by hedge funds.

The post urged investors to buy physical silver via exchange-traded fund (ETF) iShares Silver Trust SLV, the shares of which represent ounces of silver sitting in vaults.

Retail investors heeded the call and snapped up 37 million ounces worth of shares in the next 24 hours, with others rushing to their local bullion dealers.

But who is the biggest short?

Not the hedge funds that were targeted by Reddit traders in the stock market. The fund community has been net long of the CME silver contract since the middle of 2019.

Ironically, the silver squeeze may have benefited the very funds that have come in for vilification for shorting stocks.

That counterintuitive outcome seems to have sapped morale among the core Reddit crowd, with many questioning whom they are supposed to be squeezing.

Chasing the big silver short has sucked the Robinhood stocks army into a whole different world of precious metals conspiracy theory and radical populism.

This is a world populated by those who believe that Wall Street is in cahoots with the U.S. government to keep the price of gold and silver artificially suppressed to protect the existing economic order.

Big banks have made big fortunes by manipulating the silver market for decades, said the #SilverSqueeze Manifesto.

This is a movement to help level the playing field between everyday people and the billionaires who control the big financial institutions that control the money, and thus control us, it said, adding that the silver market is the Achilles heel of the old system, and its time has come.

This belief that the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are using futures short positions to suppress the price of physical metal has been around a long time.

It is based on a binary world view that paper transactions contradict physical reality.

Commodity markets operate more holistically than that, however, with transactions in the futures market often deriving from the need to hedge holdings of the physical commodity.

The Reddit crowd may have bought up 37 million ounces of silver in one day last week, but at the end of December there were another 33,608 tonnes of the stuff sitting in London vaults, according to the London Bullion Market Association.

Thats more than a billion ounces valued at $28.6 billion. That stockpile is continuously being borrowed, lent, bought and sold as banks interact with the industrial supply chain and the investment sector. Given its value, all of it will be hedged.

The biggest short on the CME silver contract is not the hedge fund community but the 52,750 contracts held in the producer/merchant/processor/user category.

The big paper short, in other words, is a big physical long. Squeeze it too hard and industrial quantities of silver may be coming your way.

While the Robinhood armys energies seem spent for now, the ability of the crowd to move prices, even in markets as globally deep as silver, has been amply demonstrated. And some early movers on the silver squeeze will have made large profits.

Chinese retail investors have been using the same mass effect for many years, coordinating surges in WeChat rooms.

The crowd moves from one hot market to the next, using its strength in numbers to generate a giant momentum machine. The target is often less important than the potential to catch a moving trend.

The Zhengzhou ferro-silicon contract was squeezed in 2019 simply because retail traders had been pushed out of the bigger steel market by exchange margin increases.

Shanghai copper has been crowd-shorted a couple of times in the past few years, in one instance in a collective battle of strength against a major fund long position.

Social media facilitates the same bewildering mix of mutual exhortation, snippets of genuine information and lots of wild rumour-mongering, as is evident in the #SilverSqueeze meme.

The phenomenon is spreading. In South Korea theyre called ants. In Thailand theyre called moths. Theres a lot of people in this world of low interest rates looking to make a fast buck in the markets.

Chinese regulators have been battling the problem for years. The first line of defence is to increase trading fees, the second is to issue increasingly strident government warnings and the third is to intervene directly, either by suspending some types of trade or mobilising a team of state-owned banks to crush the crowd.

CMEs margin hike and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellens pending meeting with regulators to discuss recent market volatility conform to the standard Chinese operating procedure of how to deal with speculative excess.

Western regulators will need to catch up fast with their Chinese counterparts because the retail army is likely to resurface with new tactics.

Reddits Wall Street Bets community (...) has set a shining example that other movements can follow, according to #SqueezeSilver Manifestos anonymous author.

A dedicated army of everyday people can leverage their collective skills and resources (...) to alter deeply entrenched power dynamics and level the playing field.

Small investors from Shanghai to Seattle may well agree.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

Go here to see the original:

Column: Populist crowd fails to breach the silver fortress for now - Reuters

Europe's populists have seen their polling numbers dip since the coronavirus emerged on the continent, but as the economic impact of lockdowns and restrictions starts to be felt in earnest, widening income disparity, they could see a revival, some analysts forecast.

Others argue that won't happen, if incumbent governments and establishment parties can restore public faith in their competence, cushion lower-income and rural populations from economic misery, and get their countries back on track working again soon.

The populist challenge is dimming, they say, pointing to former U.S. President Donald Trump's November election loss on the other side of the Atlantic. "One reason is their trademark scorn for expertise, which enthuses a minority of voters but unsettles many more who are worried about their health and livelihoods," according to Tony Barber, Europe editor of the Financial Times.

While acknowledging that the populists have not had a "good" pandemic, Matthew Goodwin, a political scientist and visiting fellow at Britain's Chatham House research group, believes political turbulence generally lies downstream of crises and the Great Lockdown will have seismic effects that are hard to foresee.

"Emerging evidence shows it looks fairly certain the Great Lockdown will actually exacerbate divides in our society that began to sharpen a few decades ago, and were then worsened by the Great Recession," he said.

The European Union isn't helping to head off a possible revival in political populism on the continent, which recruits partly on the basis of euro-skepticism. Logistical missteps and hidebound bureaucracy have marred the EU's vaccine rollout, prompting rising public frustration with the pace of inoculations and adding to anxiety about a grim northern hemisphere winter ahead. Some commentators see this as a gift for populists with the low-paid, the unskilled and those in insecure jobs hit the hardest by prolonged lockdowns.

The EU's struggle to secure enough early doses to make headway in the inoculation of the bloc's 446 million people has put the bloc front and center of widespread anger. Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was framing prematurely the bloc's vaccine procurement strategy as a "European success story."

The 62-year-old German, French President Emmanuel Macron's pick for the top job at the EC, had maintained that Brussels should take the lead in negotiating and procuring vaccine supplies for all 27 member states. She had the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who called a halt to negotiations already under way between vaccine developer AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish firm, and Germany's health minister, along with his counterparts in France, Italy and the Netherlands.

Von der Leyen, supported by Merkel, argued a collective approach would work better as it would avoid vaccine nationalism and competition among member states. Negotiating as a bloc would provide more leverage to haggle over pricing with the pharmaceutical giants.

But an overriding motivation was to show how well the EU could do. That would overshadow the bloc's lack of solidarity at the start of the pandemic, when calls for help from Italy, the first country to suffer the full force of the virus, were rebuffed, and member states competed for supplies of personal protective equipment and shut borders without consulting each other.

Some of the problems in the rollout have been country-specific but there are mounting doubts about the EU's collective approach to procurement and distribution. Go-it-alone Britain has vaccinated more than 13% of its adults so far while the EU average is barely nudging 2%, with the gap growing.

British regulatory authorities were quicker to approve vaccines and signed contracts with manufacturers three months before the EU. As a result, Britain has not been impacted as much as the EU by production delays and difficulties. On January 22, the EU reacted with fury when AstraZeneca disclosed it would have to reduce by around two-thirds doses expected over the next two months because of production difficulties.

"There are no signs that the vaccination rate in the EU is accelerating, unlike in the U.K. and U.S., where daily vaccination rates have increased substantially in the past few weeks," according to Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based research group. "Part of the explanation is that the EU ordered too few vaccines too late. It was slow to order the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, even when it became the front-runner and its efficacy had been documented."

The Bruegel director has also faulted the EU for not thinking ahead and crafting a strategy to increase vaccine production by mobilizing other manufacturers to help to do so. He cautioned it is "impossible to say how things would have gone if there had not been joint EU action."

Nonetheless, the EU's logistical missteps are drawing fire.

Markus Soeder, the premier of the German state of Bavaria, and a contender to succeed Merkel when she quits in September, said the "operational responsibility" for the "more than unsatisfactory" situation rests with Brussels. "The decision was made in what I think is a typical, normal, bureaucratic EU procedure," he added.

Von der Leyen was the subject of a scathing article Sunday by Germany's leading magazine Der Spiegel, which said the vaccine rollout "might ultimately turn out to be the greatest disaster of her political career."

With lockdown frustration building the Netherlands experienced three days of riots last week after the government introduced a nighttime curfew and with anger building over the snail-like pace of inoculation, populists see a political opening. Some had aligned themselves with anti-vaccine skeptics but are moving away from that position and focusing now on the issue of EU competence.

France's Marine Le Pen, the euro-skeptic far-right leader, has seen her popularity surge. A poll last week showed her trailing Macron by just 52% to 48%. Macron faces a tough reelection bid next year.

Originally posted here:

Europe's Populists Ready to Seize on COVID Vaccination Bungle - Voice of America