Weekly Review

Millions of people bought stock in GameStop, pushing the company’s value up 1,100 percent and leading to billions of dollars in losses for hedge funds that had bet against it.^{1 2} The surge in value began after a post on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, whose members refer to earnings as “tendies” and often celebrate investing success by eating chicken tenders, revealed that Melvin Capital had taken a short position on the retailer.³ “There’s a catharsis to actually making money off their pain a little bit,” said Justin Speak, an evangelical pastor in California.⁴ Trading in the stock was later restricted by TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, and Robinhood, amateur-trading platforms that have been paid tens of millions of dollars by the hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin, who in 2019 purchased the most expensive home in the United States and lost billions of dollars during the GameStop surge.⁵ Multiple billionaires blamed the situation on the stimulus checks that the federal government had sent Americans to help them through the coronavirus pandemic.⁶ “In this case, thanks to primarily government policy, there’s wherewithal among investors, if you want to call them that, with government money being sprayed all over the place,” said “Bond King” Jeffrey Gundlach. An airplane flew over Robinhood’s San Francisco office carrying a banner reading suck my nuts robinhood.⁷ The United States’ position on the global corruption index fell, and members of Scotland’s Parliament announced a vote on an unexplained wealth order, also known as a “McMafia” order, that would require Donald Trump to reveal the sources of his Scottish finances.^{8 9}

On the 72nd anniversary of the Indian constitution, tens of thousands of farmers protested new agricultural laws that benefit corporations by marching in Delhi, pulling apart barricades with tractors and storming the Red Fort, the erstwhile seat of the Mughal Empire; security forces responded with tear gas and cut internet service in parts of the capital.¹⁰ The military of Myanmar deposed the country’s civilian government, declared a one-year state of emergency, and detained Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who in 1999 was named by Time magazine as “one of the children of Gandhi” and later ignored the Rohingya genocide.^{11 12} Facing accusations that he had mismanaged the pandemic, Italy’s prime minister resigned, and the country’s government collapsed for the 65th time in the past seven decades.^{13 14} Poland’s top court upheld a near-total ban on abortions, and the National Assembly of Thailand legalized abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy.^{15 16} The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claimed that religious amulets would ward off the coronavirus, tested positive for COVID-19.¹⁷ In Oregon, medics caught in a snowstorm vaccinated other people trapped in vehicles, preventing the doses from going to waste, and a man accused of attacking a woman with a hammer was released from custody after he invoked the right to see his accuser face-to-face; the woman, who cares for her elderly parents, refused to appear in court without a face mask.^{18 19} Twelve days after being named paramedic of the year, a Florida man named Joshua Colon was arrested for stealing doses of the vaccine; protesters carrying signs with messages such as save your soul turn back now temporarily shut down the vaccination center at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; and the attorney general of Oklahoma was tasked with trying to return $2 million worth of hydroxychloroquine that had been ordered by the state’s governor in April, days after President Trump had endorsed it.^{20 21 22} “Who cares?” asked New York governor Andrew Cuomo after his attorney general released findings demonstrating that the number of COVID-19 deaths attributable to nursing homes had been undercounted.²³ Cuomo also announced that in-person weddings, with attendance of up to 150 people, could resume on the Ides of March.²⁴

It was reported that at least a dozen in-flight errors since May were made by pilots who were rusty because they had been flying less.²⁵ “I felt that my recollection was strong enough,” said one pilot, “but in reality I should have taken some time to review.” Owners of a farm in Lancashire, England, said that they had earned as much as $50,000 by booking goats as guests for Zoom calls, including Lisa, who specializes in “passive-aggressive bleating.”²⁶ A man in Derbent, Russia, was arrested for cooking barbecue over an eternal flame memorializing soldiers who died in World War II.²⁷ A Canadian man killed another man by pushing him in front of an oncoming subway car because he thought the stranger was his landlord, and friends of Mike and Karen Pence believe that the couple, who after leaving the official vice-presidential residence no longer have a permanent address, is couch surfing with various Indiana officials.^{28 29}—Cameron French