Today In 'What Now': Hamilton Nolan Is Back

Talking to Hamilton about GameStop, unions, yogurt, and more.

Mike Mozart/Open Grid Scheduler/Hamilton Nolan

Hello friends. In a shocking, unexpected twist, I am stepping out from behind the curtain as publisher of Discourse Blog and joining all you amazing readers in What Now Nation and helming this week’s premium newsletters (read: Jack asked me to do this). 

Today’s edition of What Now features an exclusive interview with none other than Hamilton Nolan—labor reporter for In These Times and the Washington Post public editor for the Columbia Journalism Review. He is also a former senior writer for Splinter (RIP) and Gawker (RIP)—and if you can believe it, a pal and confidant. I called him up Saturday to talk about stonks, the labor movement, and of course, yogurt. (Follow Hamilton at @hamiltonnolan.)

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We know that you’re a prolific and highly respected financial analyst. What’s your “take” on this whole GameStop drama? 

Hamilton Nolan: I think my main take is that it's a stupid way to fight Wall Street. Obviously, you can see why it's funny and that's great. And you can see that people are pissed off at Wall Street on some level. And I think that's great, too. But in terms of the actual mechanics of it, the problem is you're not actually beating Wall Street. If hedge funds see that GameStop is going up, they can invest in GameStop too. There's literally thousands and thousands of hedge funds. And so you pick one hedge fund and you're like, "We're going to fuck with this one hedge fund right here." But meanwhile, a thousand other hedge funds are going to jump on what you're doing and make money off what you're doing. I appreciate the sentiment, but I would urge people to channel that sentiment into some kind of political activity that might actually fuck with Wall Street instead of doing this.

Such as?

Well, you know, join DSA—I mean, take the money that you are going to buy GameStop with and donate it to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Those are the people that can actually have a meaningful impact on Wall Street. We need a financial transaction tax, as you might've read about on splinternews.com. 

Oh wow, what a great website. Wish it was still around.
The problem is, this whole thing that they're doing—Wall Street can make money off of this just as easy as anything else. So you're ultimately not fucking with Wall Street. 

Maybe we could fuck with Wall Street with something like taxes.

There you go, great idea.