WASHINGTON, D.C. — Several Ohio lawmakers who sit on key financial services committees are playing a direct role in responding to the recent stock market story involving GameStop.
Back in January, the stock price for GameStop, a video game store, exploded thanks to amateur investors communicating on social media. It caught traditional Wall Street investors off guard and prompted a stock market standoff of sorts.
On Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing about it that lasted for hours and was filled with a lot of financial jargon that may not sound familiar.
Ohio Congressman Steve Stivers (R, OH-15), who took part in the hearing, summed it up like this.
“I thought yesterday was more of a sideshow than really a hearing that delved deep into the issues that deserve to be explored,” Stivers said in a Skype interview with Spectrum News on Friday morning.
Lawmakers have been trying to figure out what role the government should play in making sure another financial roller coaster ride like the GameStop saga doesn’t happen again.
“There are some really fundamental underlying issues that Congress needs to take action on,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R, OH-8) said in a Skype interview on Wednesday.
Davidson said there are questions over how do-it-yourself trading apps like Robinhood operate and whether guardrails should be installed to prevent future tug of wars between hedge funds and amateur investors.
But he worries Congress may lose interest in such a dense topic, like it did in 2019 when discussing Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra.
“So I hope we don’t miss the moment here to fix some policy because, unless we do, the same kind of problem could happen again,” Davidson said.
Democrats are mainly concerned about the stock market being unfair to everyday Americans who aren’t big-time investors.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) now chairs the powerful Senate Banking and Housing Committee and plans to hold his own GameStop hearing.
“I will go into this hearing when we do it in two or three weeks looking to see both sides and what they, in essence, are doing in terms of ‘gamifying’ Wall Street rather than using it as an investment to produce jobs, to help people’s wages, to create businesses,” Brown said in a virtual interview on Thursday.
