Elizabeth Warren Has Also Heard of a Little Thing Called GameStop

Warren, worked up over Robinhood’s tactics of blocking free trade, said, “We need an SEC that has clear rules about market manipulation and then has the backbone to get in and enforce those rules.” Then she got to the real core of the Robinhood issue: the arbitration clause in end-user agreements. When it comes to Robinhood, which is a free service for anyone looking to dabble in investing, the product is not the ability to invest. The product is the user base, and the real customers are the hedge funds. This is likely explained in the user agreement, which not a soul on earth will read. Warren pointed out that the agreement contains an arbitration clause designed to keep Robinhood safe and financially viable, saying, “if it turns out that [it] really did cheat you. It’ll never be made public, there will be very little that you can do about it.”

On Robinhood’s side of it, their claim is that blocking the purchase but not the sale of some stocks was a reaction to market volatility. To that I ask, when is the market not volatile? Warren also wasn’t buying this absolute malarky and alluded that what Robinhood and companies that offer a similar service are doing might be “market manipulation.”

“How do you know who’s manipulating the stock at this point,” she asked. “Are you entirely sure that there aren’t wealthy people on both sides?” Fair point, considering that there is absolutely nothing stopping wealth managers from switching sides because they are not limited to apps like Robinhood. It’s because they fucking have money—which has bought them the time to understand, in-depth, how best to operate a market that deals in imaginary sums of money but somehow controls the entire global economic system.