this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 340 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It was the paid blue checkmark for $8 back in 2022.

Kinda old article info without much current stuff except the lawsuit against the ad trade group.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Still makes me gleeful reading about his stupidity.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It does, until you realise that his monstrous wealth insulates him from any consequences, deflecting them onto the heads of mortals. No matter what he does, he’ll be alright.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago

Not only that, but there are thousands of people insulating him from those consequences. People at Xitter working to keep what functionality they can, despite years of knowing what a shithead Musk is. People who keep the operation of SpaceX separate to make it successful despite his involvement. The Russian and Saudi investors who gave him the money to buy Twitter when he ran his mouth off about it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

He's so insecure though, all the mocking he receives online is pretty satisfying

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I felt a little better reading today how many of his children are conceived IVF or surrogate. I can’t fathom having anyone having sex with him.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

And now we don’t have to!

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

And that's why I never click. At this point getting Rick rolled would be fresher news.

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[–] [email protected] 170 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

please just put the interesting part in the title.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

But then there would be no title.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

This a beautiful story. Bankers get shafted lending money to apex capitalist.

🤌

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Some days ago I read an article here that said that a lot of the money came from Russia and that they are getting exactly what they wanted: chaos

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

No one has ever explained how bankers are losing. They say they've lost money. Yet the only details are Musk has to make payments and put up Tesla stock as collateral. That a no lose for the banks. They don't care if Tesla stock crashes, they are making money from selling it.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If Tesla's stock crashes, then the value the banks could get from selling it is much lower.

If Twitter and Tesla go bankrupt, the banks will have loaned out billions to own something worthless.

At least I would assume that's how it works.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The bankruptcy scenario is correct but the first part isn't: you don't have X shares as collateral that you can liquidate. Instead, you have collateral to cover sum Y.

As long as the collateral contract covers enough stock positions the bank won't lose.

That said all of this is assuming standard contracts. If y bank wrote "0% interest and instead 50% of the revenue growth of Twitter" then this would be an easy way to lose money.

Haven't heard of a stupid banker yet, though, so what would the chances be?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean, the 2008 housing market was done by greedy and stupid bankers.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

Who also made massive profits.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Stupid? It was a masterstroke by them.

They made a fortune, then governments had to throw more money at them or risk a complete economic crash.

After the crash, people were poorer, and credit was cheap, so they came to banks for loans and financed everything more and more, handing even more to the financial sector.

Houses temporarily crashed in price, but the poorest were too risky for banks to lend to, leading to houses being bought up en-mass by people who were already wealthy.

Bankers in 2008 were greedy, yes. But certainly not stupid.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

IMO they should not have been bailed out. For most people the economy has already failed and it should be allowed to crash fully so that it can be rebuilt and restructured in full. That might sound extreme but I don't see many other alternatives. Something has to be sacrificed for the sake of the vast majority of people and the real economy and I think it should be the financial sector.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I mean, I feel like the banks that failed still should have done some research on what they were putting their money into. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_acquired_or_bankrupted_during_the_Great_Recession

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Ah! Thank you for the explanation

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Careful there, bud, you're singing the siren song of bank bailouts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The proletariat is still sore about the ones in 2008. They revealed plain the stratified economic system.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's because when banks make loans, they sell of the debt, but nobody has wanted to buy the debt for Musk's loans. My understanding of this is essentially, if someone takes out a loan of $100 million, the bank will sell that debt to an investor for $101 million, and the investor will make back $102 million once the loan is paid off due to interest. But no investors are confident enough that Musk will pay back his loan so no one is ponying up the dough to buy it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's easy, just give him a AAA credit rating and call it a bond, some pension fund will buy it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Take it a step further, bundle it with a bunch of other subprime loans and then pass it around like a hot potato.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

I remember reading that the banks who loaned him the money haven't been able to sell off the debt.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 weeks ago

The fact that this tweet caused their stock price to dive really shows what a joke the stock market is .

[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 weeks ago

I'm GLAD we don't tax Billionaires like Musk! Imagine if instead of buying a Website for $44BILLION he instead bought kids $44BILLION worth of School Lunch! The HORROR!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Watching Twitter die the slow agonizing cancerous death it deserves makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Is it dying though? It is getting worse and worse but I don't think people are leaving in huge numbers

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

Ugh... it drives me nuts!

Musk had to borrow around $13 billion for his doomed $44 billion acquisition.

Had he spent that ~~$57~~ $44 billion on developing space hardware instead of going insane and squandering it on social media bullshit, he might have done something worthwhile. I mean... fifty seven billion! What even is that much money? He could have had his own space station for that much money! He could fly up there for weekends, just for funzies.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

That $13 billion is part of the $44 billion, you don't add them together.

He spent $31 billion of his own capital, and borrowed $13 billion to cover the rest.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Oh great, I added all the numbers in your comment together and now it's $101 billion?? When will this madness end???

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

With all that money, he could have given every person in the world $12.625 billion!!! It's unfathomable!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

You've bamboozled my attempt to make the same joke at your expense by only mentioning one number in your comment, giving me nothing to add to it. From this point on, I conclude we should only ever mention one number in each comment, for clarity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Oh thank you, my mistake. Still the numbers are huge!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

"own capital" probably more like stocks from Tesla, I doubt any actual money moved

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's why I used the word "capital" instead of "money", but I had a feeling someone still was going to deliberately misunderstand me to try to sound smart.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Well now that you mention it I agree and feel dumb.

Anyways, I'm still right so it means I can double down.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Why didn’t he just spend his own billions to prop up his venture? Oh, because he doesn’t want to pay taxes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I do English, but your math is wrong

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Haha everyone keeps saying that! But it's pretty funny how wrong everyone is about where the mistake was.

The math is just fine, I did the simple addition correctly. It's the reading comprehension that I got wrong, I misunderstood what the sentence was saying.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's not how math works.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

he might have done something worthwhile

No, he wouldn't have. Musk is an incompetent billionaire parasite, even more incompetent than the average billionaire parasite, and would have simply squandered his ill-gotten money on something else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
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