What the $HAWK rugpull scandal tells us about the U.S. economy
Illustration by Dylan Hostetter.
Andrew Milhorn, Contributing Writer
Hailey Welch is America’s post-modern, post-meaning sweetheart, also known as “The Hawk Tuah Girl.” The story of “Hawk Tuah,” “Talk Tuah” and Hawk Tuah Coin lay bare the contradictions at the heart of our failing economic system.
More importantly, her story helps to explain how, in a post-capitalist economy, those contradictions cease to even matter at all.
A “rugpull” is something that used to be a crime. In a rugpull, the value of a worthless speculative asset, often a memecoin, NFT or other blockchain asset, is artificially boosted. Large holders — in this case, 95% of the coins value was held by just 10 wallets, according to the CCN website — of the value of Hawk Tuah coin, pulled out mere minutes after the IPO of the crypto, leaving many highly leveraged investors destitute. Similar crypto schemes to Welch have been attempted by members of the Donald Trump administration, resulting in varying levels of success.
We’re in a new economic system, post capitalism, which exists within the contradictions of capitalism, boosting them up to 11. No American companies turn a profit; we don’t make anything, but somehow, the economy, which under post capitalism is conflated totally with the rise and fall of the stock market and quarterly corporate earnings, must continue rising.
For some time now, instead of stocks representing the value of a company to the overall economy, they have come to represent the profitability of a company to shareholders. At this time, stocks and the market also took on the role of just being the American economy.
Under this new economic system, private equity middlemen pump and dump “assets” like housing, schools, public hospitals and medicine — but mainly the land they sit on.
This sort of financial speculation and the manipulation of said speculation has been fundamental to the American economy for longer than any of us can remember — but in 2008, the system broke, leading to one of the worst financial crises in living memory.
The crash left Americans destitute, without homes, 401ks, jobs or enough food to feed their families. The market did this to us, but why? What’s the point?
The point was that the crash instantly caused assets to crater completely in value. This rapid deflation led to rampant inflation of everyday goods, the currency of a nation, a collapse in the value of all property and the loss of domestic labor and manufacturing for lower cost options overseas.
Our elected officials, most of whom did, and still continue to own stock and other speculative financial assets, told us that a rising tide raises all boats and that by giving these investment firms and banks “house money” with which to invest into the crashed economy, these corporations would invest back into the United States, boosting the stock market and fixing the economic crash. The line would go up, leading to prosperity for all.
This speculation drives the stock market because value — conjured or otherwise — justifies itself. Crucially, it must continue to justify itself. Because the stock market is the economy, and crucially, because the stock market is fake, this worked!
America manufactured the appearance of profitability.
Our presidents, our senators and our house representatives allowed large corporations to buy out and consolidate our land, our industry, our banks, and our retailers
It’s 2025 now and you may have noticed everything is getting worse.
Our cost of living is higher than ever. Most Americans cannot afford the groceries they need. A house, an apartment, a decent job with healthcare, a 401k, even salaried employment is inaccessible to many. Our nation was sold off as penny stocks to private equity firms, who then pump valuations and resell.
Post-capitalism is a snake eating itself, a system of insider trading and self-justification that disregards reality and thrives on the contradictions of capitalism.
From the restaurants we eat at to the concert tickets we buy, everything is for sale — and crucially, for subsequent resale.
Post-capitalist speculation has turned our nation into a massive cryptocurrency rugpull. Everything is Hawk Tuah Coin now and there is nothing we can do about it.
In recent weeks, Trump’s economic policy led to another stock market crash. Remember the stories $HAWK and 2008, because it’s about to happen again.
