As GameStop Stalls, Will Regulators Start?

Bloomberg’s Matt Levine continues to be a tremendous source of insight into the GameStop saga, but one possible response to what has happened, which is set out in one of his must-read articles on this stock’s excellent adventure/bogus journey (take your pick) and buried within the following not-to-be-taken-literally passage, should be treated with caution:

We have discussed before the sort of creaky U.S. rules around who can buy what sorts of risky investments, and I have proposed a simple standard. I call it the “Certificate of Dumb Investment.” Under this standard, anyone can buy diversified low-fee mutual funds to their heart’s content, but to buy dumb stuff—private placements but sure let’s say also volatile meme stocks—you have to go down to the local office of the Securities and Exchange Commission and sign a form saying that you know that what you’re doing is dumb, you know you will probably lose all your money, and you forfeit forever any right to complain. Then you can do whatever dumb thing you want.

Click on the link embedded in Levine’s text to see where he expands (in an article written in 2018) on how his Certificate of Dumb Investment regime would work. Some of this, I reckon (I cannot imagine why) contains just a touch, well, perhaps more than a touch, of hyperbole: “Then you take the form to an SEC employee, who slaps you hard across the face and says ‘really???’ And if you reply ‘yes really’ then she gives you the certificate.”

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