Elon Musk Buys Twitter

[DarkTZeratul]

Interesting. If this was like...a normal person with a normal loan, by this time I imagine they'd have sent collections?

If they're generating interest that suggests Musk is still paying the loans... Just not enough to bring down the principle. Collections only comes in when you fail to pay.

[Endus]

Too big to fail. They learned an important lesson in 2008 and that was they could always externalise these costs to the taxpayer.

I still maintain that any suggestion of "too big to fail" is not an argument for bailouts. It's an argument for nationalization. Congrats, you're too important to the nation to be permitted to fuck around as a private entity. You belong to the federal government now. No, we're not buying the bank/company from you. It's ours now. You can go fuck off now. Git.

[Elegiac]

I still maintain that any suggestion of "too big to fail" is not an argument for bailouts. It's an argument for nationalization. Congrats, you're too important to the nation to be permitted to fuck around as a private entity. You belong to the federal government now. No, we're not buying the bank/company from you. It's ours now. You can go fuck off now. Git.

This is the appropriate and correct response to any critical service. I'd argue the same applies to ISP infrastructure, on that note.

[Jessicka]

I still maintain that any suggestion of "too big to fail" is not an argument for bailouts. It's an argument for nationalization. Congrats, you're too important to the nation to be permitted to fuck around as a private entity. You belong to the federal government now. No, we're not buying the bank/company from you. It's ours now. You can go fuck off now. Git.

Completely agree.

[Edge-]

Remember when boomer was bragging about all of the Unicorns in silicon valley...
When it was banks and VC just investing gambling huge piles of money and yelling snake-eyes! While drunk on $40-a-can wine.

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is now the worst buyout for banks since the financial crisis. https://archive.is/jSzWN
Loans of around $13 billion have remained ‘hung’ for nearly two years, bringing in interest payments but weighing on banks’ balance sheets.

The seven banks involved in the deal, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, lent the money to the billionaire’s holding company to take the social-media platform, now named X, private in October 2022. Banks that provide loans for takeovers generally sell the debt quickly to other investors to get it off their balance sheets, making money on fees.
The banks haven’t been able to offload the debt without incurring major losses—largely because of X’s weak financial performance—leaving the loans stuck on their balance sheets, or “hung” in industry jargon. The resulting write-downs have hobbled the banks’ loan books and, in one case, was a factor that crimped compensation for a bank’s merger department, according to people involved with the deal.

• Are you horribly stupid and guilible?
• Did your family send you to the correct schools?
• Well there's a seven-figure job in banking waiting for you.

https://sfist.com/2024/08/20/elon-mu...ancial-crisis/

WSJ: Elon Musk’s Deal to Buy Twitter Rated Worst Deal for Banks Since the 2008 Financial Crisis

Well when you put it in that context it's even more hilarious.

Remember how we're supposed to believe these highly educated, high-powered bankers are actually Very Smart and not just Giving Loans To Their Buddies and Celebrities They Like?

Really, between this and some of the Deutche Bank stuff it should be painfully apparent that most of our financial institutions are, in fact, run by absolute fucking morons.

[Jessicka]

https://sfist.com/2024/08/20/elon-mu...ancial-crisis/



Well when you put it in that context it's even more hilarious.

Remember how we're supposed to believe these highly educated, high-powered bankers are actually Very Smart and not just Giving Loans To Their Buddies and Celebrities They Like?

Really, between this and some of the Deutche Bank stuff it should be painfully apparent that most of our financial institutions are, in fact, run by absolute fucking morons.

Well when the recruitment process is “I went to school with this guy”, or “this is my nephew”…

[Gorsameth]

https://sfist.com/2024/08/20/elon-mu...ancial-crisis/



Well when you put it in that context it's even more hilarious.

Remember how we're supposed to believe these highly educated, high-powered bankers are actually Very Smart and not just Giving Loans To Their Buddies and Celebrities They Like?

Really, between this and some of the Deutche Bank stuff it should be painfully apparent that most of our financial institutions are, in fact, run by absolute fucking morons.

To be fair to the banks, I don't think many of us expected Musk to fuck things up this badly this quickly lol.

[Milchshake]

To be fair to the banks, I don't think many of us expected Musk to fuck things up this badly this quickly lol.

No need to be fair banks. They consider it tradition to launder money for Nazis and other fascists.

[Gorsameth]

No need to be fair banks. They consider it tradition to launder money for Nazis and other fascists.

yes yes, cheap one liner
any comment on the actual point that no one (or few people) expected him to fuck it up quite this hard?

[Belize]

yes yes, cheap one liner
any comment on the actual point that no one (or few people) expected him to fuck it up quite this hard?

Musk has never actually built any of his companies from the ground up, and his most successful ventures are the ones he has the least to do with. Tesla was on a roll (heh) until Mr.Ego decided he wanted to get personally involved and over-promise about self driving, then make a dogshit fugly truck.

Why would anyone expect him to manage Twitter well? Even from the start the 40 something Billion price tag was ridiculed as being cripplingly overinflated. Honestly Bank-bros being thing fucking stupid is more of an indictment on how worthless the financial sector has gotten over the past years.

[Milchshake]

yes yes, cheap one liner
any comment on the actual point that no one (or few people) expected him to fuck it up quite this hard?

Poor dear, I geuss I'll do your homework for you.

Yes, the first 80 pages of this very thread are 90% of commenters casting doubt and snark on Elmo's ability to pull this off.
The only pro posters are the usual Stupid Voltron posters, and that weirdo conservative lady that deleted her account after spilling a jug of hot tea on herself.

Then there's like 3% of posters that keep reminding people, that Silicon Valley is mostly hype and casino banking. The'yre still coasting on the goodwill from their last innovation, the iPhone from 2008.

[Endus]

Musk has never actually built any of his companies from the ground up, and his most successful ventures are the ones he has the least to do with. Tesla was on a roll (heh) until Mr.Ego decided he wanted to get personally involved and over-promise about self driving, then make a dogshit fugly truck.

Why would anyone expect him to manage Twitter well? Even from the start the 40 something Billion price tag was ridiculed as being cripplingly overinflated. Honestly Bank-bros being thing fucking stupid is more of an indictment on how worthless the financial sector has gotten over the past years.

We're increasingly being shown that billionaire-level wealth mostly boils down to those with enough seed money going all-in on roulette and winning it big a few times in a row. Sure, it's unlikely you'll hit the right number 2-3 times in a row. That first million gives you $35m. The second, $1.225 billion. And right about here, you start thinking you've got a natural talent for seeing the future and knowing what's about to pay off. So you go all-in again, and bam, over $40b. You're a god! So you go for win #4, because it's free money. <Fart noises> Well, that was unexpected. You just lost billions.

Because you never knew fuck-all about shit. You got lucky. Until your luck ran out.

That's Elon. A guy who got lucky early and thought he was a genius who could see the future rather than just a statistical outlier in a game of chance. Who didn't have the good goddamned sense to bow out when he was on top. He's the guy who gets dragged out of the high-roller room by security because he "just needs someone to spot him for one more spin".

[Edge-]

To be fair to the banks, I don't think many of us expected Musk to fuck things up this badly this quickly lol.

That's what those high-powered bankers with Ivy-league degrees and connections who work 100+ hour weeks are supposed to do their due dilligence in estimating risk.

Because even at the time this happened it was an enormous risk. Elon voluntarily started a game of chicken with Twitter and lost. That alone is a monumentally enormous red flag.

Like, this feels hilariously predictable given his trajectory even a few short years back.

I give those asshole bankers no "fairness", their "fairness" is how much they're overpaid to largely just approve god-awful, risky loans to the buddies of their executives.

[Belize]

We're increasingly being shown that billionaire-level wealth mostly boils down to those with enough seed money going all-in on roulette and winning it big a few times in a row. Sure, it's unlikely you'll hit the right number 2-3 times in a row. That first million gives you $35m. The second, $1.225 billion. And right about here, you start thinking you've got a natural talent for seeing the future and knowing what's about to pay off. So you go all-in again, and bam, over $40b. You're a god! So you go for win #4, because it's free money. <Fart noises> Well, that was unexpected. You just lost billions.

Because you never knew fuck-all about shit. You got lucky. Until your luck ran out.

That's Elon. A guy who got lucky early and thought he was a genius who could see the future rather than just a statistical outlier in a game of chance. Who didn't have the good goddamned sense to bow out when he was on top. He's the guy who gets dragged out of the high-roller room by security because he "just needs someone to spot him for one more spin".

This whole process in Trading Card form.

Except he started with like, emeralds instead of sand.

[Elegiac]

yes yes, cheap one liner
any comment on the actual point that no one (or few people) expected him to fuck it up quite this hard?

Sure, I'll comment: it's not a real point because the only people who failed to see this were people who themselves make a habit of shitty and destructive financial decisions.

I've personally known he was full of shit since he acquired Tesla and memory-holed its original owners: owners that I still remember see being featured on the Modern Marvels episode on electric cars, no less. But more generally speaking his Tony Stark shtick had already worn off by the time he was looking into acquiring Twitter and the general consensus outside of tech bros was that it was going to be an astronomical disaster - especially when one remembers that the acquisition was itself only half-serious and something Elmo tried to weasel out of when he realized he might have shitposted his way into a massive financial liability.

The only way this would have worked out is if he took a hands-off approach and just decided to slap his branding over a semi-competent set of developers while trying to figure out a method to actually make the platform sustainable. Which was never going to happen, because Twitter's acquisition was the corporate equivalent of a forum troll being given administrator privileges after complaining about the jannies being biased.

[Paranoid Android]

Musk has never actually built any of his companies from the ground up, and his most successful ventures are the ones he has the least to do with. Tesla was on a roll (heh) until Mr.Ego decided he wanted to get personally involved and over-promise about self driving, then make a dogshit fugly truck.

We're increasingly being shown that billionaire-level wealth mostly boils down to those with enough seed money going all-in on roulette and winning it big a few times in a row. Sure, it's unlikely you'll hit the right number 2-3 times in a row. That first million gives you $35m. The second, $1.225 billion. And right about here, you start thinking you've got a natural talent for seeing the future and knowing what's about to pay off. So you go all-in again, and bam, over $40b. You're a god! So you go for win #4, because it's free money. <Fart noises> Well, that was unexpected. You just lost billions.

Because you never knew fuck-all about shit. You got lucky. Until your luck ran out.

That's Elon. A guy who got lucky early and thought he was a genius who could see the future rather than just a statistical outlier in a game of chance. Who didn't have the good goddamned sense to bow out when he was on top. He's the guy who gets dragged out of the high-roller room by security because he "just needs someone to spot him for one more spin".

As stated above this guy's wealth was built on luck, failing upward and tech shitheads and others thinking he was a genius. All that Tesla stock value is "Elon is a Genius". Always shocked before Elon exposed himself as the dumbest mofo and now after he can basically do anything and it doesn't matter. No consequences.

So now, sadly Elon is rich enough just to buy innovation. Any new tech, the example of AI, is Elon trying to buy his way in. So sadly his stock value is now held up by just being a very rich corporate entity.

This guy really hit the dumb shit lottery.

[Jessicka]

You just lost billions.

But it doesn't matter, because you have zero concept of what those billions would ever look like or be and you're still rich enough and know enough idiots with more that you'll never be short for the next hype train.

Trump is exactly the same.

[Endus]

But it doesn't matter, because you have zero concept of what those billions would ever look like or be and you're still rich enough and know enough idiots with more that you'll never be short for the next hype train.

Trump is exactly the same.

We do provide far, far too much support for the wealthy at risk of losing their fortunes. Limited liability with corporations shouldn't exist; if your company does something ruinous enough to bankrupt it with liability left over, the owners and executives should 100% be pursuable to redress that damage, as individuals. While I agree that bankruptcy shouldn't leave one homeless, I do think it should be adjusted such that you don't get to keep a mansion, if you own one. Downgrading to a 3-bedroom 1.5 baths starter home in a middling suburb should be the expected standard. Etc.

Fucking about should 100% be able to result in you going from billionaire status to having to work as night assistant manager at your local Burger King to pay the bills.

[Rasulis]

Musk's companies that are doing well are the ones that started with little to no competition.

Social media market is one of the most competitive and cutthroat in the world. With two trillion dollars companies with virtually unlimited resources.

[Edge-]

Musk's companies that are doing well are the ones that started with little to no competition.

And, generally, the ones he's basically uninvolved with. IIRC SpaceX has some folks who largely exist to keep him occupied/distracted when he shows up so he doesn't fuck up the things the serious people are working on.

Social media market is one of the most competitive and cutthroat in the world. With two trillion dollars companies with virtually unlimited resources.

Even if they didn't have virtually unlimited resources it wouldn't matter for Twitters trajectory, though.