Them he's betting.yhst the economy will crash, basically, and we're okay with that shit.

Why should someone not be able to short some stock? The AI bubble will burst anyway.

Also, he doesn't have one billion dollars, he manages an investment fund that people collectively put a billion dollars (or more) there.

Edit: Redacted a mistaken identity

I'm not sure you understand what this article is or how our markets work.

The simple fact that somebody was able even to bet a billion is insanity that should never be possible to begin with. Nobody should have a billion dollars, let alone have so much that you can just safely bet a billion dollars

He doesn't have a billion dollars. He's a hedge fund manager that manages (at least) a billion dollars collectively of other people's investment money. Its that money he's betting.

Them he’s betting.yhst the economy will crash, basically, and we’re okay with that shit.

No, he's not. He's betting against only two companies: Nvidia and Palantir. He has a relatively small bet against Nvidia ($187.6 million), and HUGE bet against Palantir ($912 million). I'm not sure I'd bet against Nvidia yet, but Palantir is co-founded by Peter Theil, trump's deputy chief of staff which job has a large influence on White House policy. If you ever watched the TV show The West Wing, this would be the Josh Lyman character's job.

We already know trump's favor swings widely and if politics are going against trump (as recent news show) then its not unbelievable that Theil might get the boot or at least trump would punish Theil by killing lucrative government contracts to buy Palantir services.

All of this should be illegal as fuck, and this guy belongs in a jail cell

The point of shorting a stock exists so that the market can express a view that they believe a stock will fail. This is an important "canary in the coal mine" for the rest of the market. The other option is a policy that you can't criticize a company with any meaning and investors continue to put money into failing/risky companies without this important indication of the risk.

Frankly I don't like your idea of jailing someone that says "The emperor has no clothes".