Sen. Elizabeth Warren promises probe over GameStop saga
Sen. Elizabeth Warren repeated calls Sunday for the feds to take action on practices that allowed brokerages to abruptly halt trades of GameStop stock last week.
She lambasted rules that enabled brokers like Robinhood to cut off trading, saying on CNN, “That’s not right ... We need a market that is transparent, that is level and that’s open to individual investors. It’s time for the [Securities and Exchange Commission] to get off their duffs and do their jobs,” she continued.
Warren also said the Senate Banking Committee would investigate the Thursday move by Robinhood and other brokerages to stop trades of GameStop as an army of low-profile investors moved to undermine big firms betting against the video game chain — a wild series of events cast by some as a populist uprising against big financial firms.
A brokerage “can’t be trying to help the hedge funds at the same time that it pretends that it’s trying to help individual investors,” Warren said.
Robinhood’s actions during the GameStop saga have been decried across the political spectrum.
A small group of Republicans staged a “re-occupy Wall Street” protest at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan on Sunday.
“These schmucks in Wall Street or Greenwich can do whatever the hell they want to do with no repercussions,” fumed Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republican Club.
