Beyond Meat shares erased a gain of 112% on Wednesday, capping a turbulent run for the latest company to be swept up in the revival of a meme-stock frenzy that’s repeatedly emptied the pockets of day traders.

The struggling maker of plant-based burgers began the session by surging as high as $7.69, extending a week-long spike that had pushed the price up more than 1,300%. But then it gave back the gains to tumble more than 27% before ending down 1%.

The momentum may have been fueled by day traders trying to snap up shares to squeeze shortsellers who had bet against the company. Some 64% of the shares available for trading had been sold short as of the end of last month. Then on Monday, Roundhill Investments said it added Beyond Meat to its Roundhill Meme Stock ETF, a big sign that meme-stocks had returned. Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, said it all shows “froth in the market is still extremely high.” —David E. Rovella

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The Federal Reserve has shown other US regulators outlines of a revised plan that would dramatically relax a Biden-era bank capital proposal for Wall Street’s largest lenders. Some officials have calculated that the terms of the Fed’s plan would lead to an increase of between about 3% and 7% in aggregate for most big banks.

The move would likely be cheered by Wall Street banks that lobbied against the initial US version of the proposal, dubbed Basel III Endgame. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman—picked by President Donald Trump for the role earlier this year—is now taking the lead in crafting the new measure. The whole debate of course stems from Wall Street’s near-destruction of the global financial system in 2008, and efforts by governments and regulators to keep it from happening again. 

Speaking of the financial crisis, some 17 years later another subprime lender has gone under. PrimaLend Capital Partners filed for bankruptcy after months of negotiations with creditors, a sign of stress in a sector catering to low-income consumers—and perhaps another canary in the broader economic coal mine. 

The Plano, Texas-based provider of financing to auto dealerships focused on subprime borrowers said it was pursuing a sale of the business in bankruptcy court and would continue to fund and service loans to its own borrowers. PrimaLend’s filing comes weeks after the bankruptcy of one such “buy here, pay here” dealership, Tricolor Holdings, and as lower-income Americans fall behind on car loans at the highest rate in decades. 

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon sought to warn Americans in a marathon speech on the Senate floor of what he says is Trump’s “tightening authoritarian grip on the country,” the Associated Press reported. Republicans meanwhile have criticized Merkley’s fellow Democrats for holding up a federal spending deal in what is fast-becoming one of the longest government shutdowns in US history.

The Democratic leadership has demanded Republicans agree to lift a deadline that will see millions of Americans priced out of health coverage. The GOP in response is demanding the government reopen first before they negotiate over the Affordable Care Act cutoff. In response, the Democrats said they do not believe the Republicans will keep their word.

It turns out that when Trump promised he wouldn’t damage the East Wing of the White House to build his ballroom (without permission from preservationists), he was not telling the truth. Trump is tearing the whole wing down, and in its place, Nia-Malika Henderson writes in Bloomberg Opinion, attaching a “billionaires’ ballroom” to what was once considered the “People’s House.”

Having already dressed up the Oval Office with accoutrement arguably befitting a Trump hotel, the ballroom will stand as a “garish monument to one man’s taste for gold-plated everything, from meaningless crests to seals and bric-a-brac,” Henderson writes. The pictures of a digger tearing into the White House are nothing less than shocking, she adds, “a symbol of Trump’s disregard for American institutions and values.”

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