(Bloomberg) — In New York City, the heart of financial capitalism, there were plenty of signs of excitement about SpaceX\u2019s IPO, which set off a feeding frenzy on Wall Street and turned Elon Musk into the world\u2019s first trillionaire.<\/p>\n
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In front of the Park Avenue headquarters of JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the underwriters of the stock sale, though, some two dozen took to the street to decry the rising income inequality, insiderism and dangerous speculative excess that it seemed to exemplify.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scene is set for wealthy early investors to cash out while leaving retirement savers holding the bag,\u201d said Natalia Renta, associate director of corporate governance and power at Americans for Financial Reform, a group that helped organize the demonstration.<\/p>\n
The gathering was small, and it paled in comparison to the global fury that Musk unleashed last year, when he slashed through the US government as an adviser to President Donald Trump, cutting off foreign aid in the process.<\/p>\n
But it seized on the fault lines building in the economy. Surging stock prices are throwing off unprecedented fortunes and tech companies are plowing hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence that threatens to wipe out even high-paying jobs. Yet at the same time, surging inflation and housing costs are making it harder for many others just to get by.<\/p>\n
The protest also echoed another critique that resonated with denizens of the capitalist set: the case against fast-tracking SpaceX into equity indexes.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the IPO, Nasdaq Inc. changed its rules to cut the time it takes for newly listed, large-cap companies to enter its main index. If added, that would guarantee demand for SpaceX shares by requiring passive index-tracking funds \u2014 which many Americans own \u2014 to buy it.<\/p>\n
Many may prefer not to, given Musk\u2019s right-wing politics and the stratospheric valuation on SpaceX \u2014 a highly speculative, money losing company whose $2 trillion market value is more than 100 times its annual revenue. The stock price largely rides on a wager that the company will take a dominant role in AI and unproven space ventures, like orbiting data centers.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, others assembled an unflattering blow-up figure of Musk in Times Square that criticized his chatbot, Grok, for generating child pornography. Some tourists stopped to gawk or take pictures.<\/p>\n
The event outside JPMorgan\u2019s office on Friday was organized by a group called Stop Funding Billionaires. JPMorgan declined to comment.<\/p>\n
It had a little over 20 people there when it was winding down not long after noon. Jonathan Westin, an organizer, was among the last to leave. To him, the SpaceX IPO epitomized what\u2019s wrong with the economy right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel like we\u2019re in these economic times where we\u2019re just investing regular working-class people\u2019s money into these wild, imaginary dreams of the billionaire class, the AI class, the tech class,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re selling us on a plan that may never come true.\u201d<\/p>\n
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