John,

The stock market is a casino, and Republicans have spent the last century trying to bet all of America’s wealth there.

But there’s an old adage that last week proved true: The house always wins.

When a group of people on Reddit executed a classic hedge fund strategy of pumping up the price of an undervalued stock—in this case, video game retailer GameStop—Wall Street stepped in and clamped down on trading of that stock.

We demand an end to casino capitalism and a congressional investigation into the GameStop fiasco!

Remember: Republicans from George W. Bush to Mitt Romney have proposed betting Social Security’s $2.9 trillion trust fund on the stock market. That’s because the degenerate gamblers on Wall Street see a pile of money invested in something safe and stable—US Treasury bonds—and they’re desperate to gamble with it.

This issue is bigger than Redditors vs. Wall Street. It exposed that the stock market is a casino, and the sooner America stops orienting our entire economy around the bets made by greedy speculators, the better. Over the last 40 years, American companies replaced reliable pension plans with 401ks. These supposed retirement plans were designed as a trojan horse to “prove” that Social Security should be privatized,¹ but instead have demonstrated the value of a secure, reliable investment in the face of the wild swings of the market.

Wall Street shouldn’t be allowed to rig the stock market against individual investors. We demand real Wall Street reforms!

Thanks,

Alex Lawson
Social Security Works