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Jason

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1 minute ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

The fact that we give out these loans but get no equity is kinda criminal tbh

 

A loan is not the same thing as an investment.  A lender charges an interest rate or other fees on the loan, and that's how the lender makes a profit off of the deal.  I agree with you that the lender should get equity or control of the company if it fails to repay or otherwise defaults on the loan.  But this already occurs through standard bankruptcy law as far as I know. 

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31 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

 

A loan is not the same thing as an investment.  A lender charges an interest rate or other fees on the loan, and that's how the lender makes a profit off of the deal.  I agree with you that the lender should get equity or control of the company if it fails to repay or otherwise defaults on the loan.  But this already occurs through standard bankruptcy law as far as I know. 

This is what we already do for companies that fail after the government gives loans, and it sucks. We get equity in failure, and merely a repaid subsidized loan from successful companies. If an investment firm did this they'd be out of business because the reward of a successful company is supposed to balance out losses from businesses that don't make it.

 

There's no startup company that can get a loan from a private source that doesn't require equity. This wasn't today's Tesla looking for a short term loan. I mean, shit, it's the justification that capital uses to syphon the surplus value, in that the investors take a cut of profit because they are the "only" ones taking a risk (as workers are paid a mere wage for the risk they take on)

 

If the government was even given just 5% of the shares offered at the IPO and at that price of 17/share and held it to today, they would have doubled their money. Instead, this value is kept in private hands, despite being invested in by the government at the time.

 

And hell, mere months later in May 2010 Toyota got ***2.5%*** of Tesla for $50 million. At this valuation, the government should have had a ***23.25%*** stake in Tesla, if not more as the loan itself made the company more viable and valuable than before.

 

Get the fuck outta here with this paid back the loan bullshit, this is the picking winners and losers bullshit that you libertarians love to wax poetic about, and the taxpayers subsidizing a fucking billionaires private business venture, where the taxpayers took on the nearly half a billion dollar risk and got very little reward in return. We shouldn't be giving no strings attached loans, we should be getting equity in return for taxpayer risk.

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https://slate.com/business/2013/05/tesla-is-worse-than-solyndra-how-the-u-s-government-bungled-its-investment-in-the-car-company-and-cost-taxpayers-at-least-1-billion.html

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When the government’s negotiators started hammering out the details of the Tesla investment in mid-2009, it was obvious to both sides that the feds were in a position to name their terms. Tesla’s management knew that if they couldn’t get the government’s money at 3 or 4 percent interest, their next cheapest source of capital would cost 10 times more, a whopping 30 to 40 percent annually. (That’s according to estimates Tesla made in a regulatory filing, which based its numbers on “venture capital rates of return for companies at a similar stage of development as us.”)

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Personal loans made in 2008 by Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and CEO, provide a telling contrast. Musk received a much higher interest rate (10 percent) from Tesla and, more importantly, the option to convert his $38 million of debt into shares of Tesla stock. That’s exactly what he ended up doing, and the resulting shares are now worth a whopping $1.4 billion—a 3,500 percent return on his investment. By contrast, the Department of Energy earned only $12 million in interest on its $465 million loan—a 2.6 percent return.

 

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30 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

This is what we already do for companies that fail after the government gives loans, and it sucks. We get equity in failure, and merely a repaid subsidized loan from successful companies. If an investment firm did this they'd be out of business because the reward of a successful company is supposed to balance out losses from businesses that don't make it.

 

There's no startup company that can get a loan from a private source that doesn't require equity. This wasn't today's Tesla looking for a short term loan. I mean, shit, it's the justification that capital uses to syphon the surplus value, in that the investors take a cut of profit because they are the "only" ones taking a risk (as workers are paid a mere wage for the risk they take on)

 

If the government was even given just 5% of the shares offered at the IPO and at that price of 17/share and held it to today, they would have doubled their money. Instead, this value is kept in private hands, despite being invested in by the government at the time.

 

And hell, mere months later in May 2010 Toyota got ***2.5%*** of Tesla for $50 million. At this valuation, the government should have had a ***23.25%*** stake in Tesla, if not more as the loan itself made the company more viable and valuable than before.

 

Get the fuck outta here with this paid back the loan bullshit, this is the picking winners and losers bullshit that you libertarians love to wax poetic about, and the taxpayers subsidizing a fucking billionaires private business venture, where the taxpayers took on the nearly half a billion dollar risk and got very little reward in return. We shouldn't be giving no strings attached loans, we should be getting equity in return for taxpayer risk.


Your post presumes that making money is the goal of the government. 

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1 minute ago, sblfilms said:


Your post presumes that making money is the goal of the government. 

The goal should be to not leave the taxpayer on the hook for losses of the inevitable business that fails, like Solyndra. There is a good in the government being able to provide loans! But there is a smart way to do it, and is to the benefit of taxpayers.

 

The way we do it now is privatizing success and making public the loss.

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3 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

The goal should be to not leave the taxpayer on the hook for losses of the inevitable business that fails, like Solyndra. There is a good in the government being able to provide loans! But there is a smart way to do it, and is to the benefit of taxpayers.

 

The way we do it now is privatizing success and making public the loss.

What do you think happens to equity in a business that fails?

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12 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

What do you think happens to equity in a business that fails?

0, just about what we got out of Solyndra, where we're out $500million+

 

The point is you win big, or even moderately, on a couple of good companies (like if we got equity from Tesla) and that makes up for the massive losses (even if we got equity in Solyndra for example)

 

But you'd need a whole lot of paid back wins at 3-4% to make up for even one failure 

 

The difference is similar downsides (taxpayer holding the bag) but far better upsides (taxpayer makes substantial return) when you get equity

 

We shouldn't be socializing the losses and completely privatizing the success

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3 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

0, just about what we got out of Solyndra, where we're out $500million+

 

The point is you win big, or even moderately, on a couple of good companies (like if we got equity from Tesla) and that makes up for the massive losses (even if we got equity in Solyndra for example)

 

But you'd need a whole lot of paid back wins at 3-4% to make up for even one failure 

 

The difference is similar downsides (taxpayer holding the bag) but far better upsides (taxpayer makes substantial return) when you get equity


You are back to approaching this as though the goal is to make money. It isn’t. The government isn’t a private equity firm and that is a good thing. You change the way you approach deals when your goal is profit maximization.

 

The government has a vested interest in domestic economic expansion, in job creation, and the exporting of domestic goods and services. That is why governments lend money.

 

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If the government gave me half a billion dollars I could turn it into a few billion and pay the money back too. 

 

If it's worth the loan then some part of the corporation should be responsive to the public in the form of public ownership stakes that are controlled by the government. 

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Just now, Anathema- said:

If the government gave me half a billion dollars I could turn it into a few billion and pay the money back too. 

 

If it's worth the loan then some part of the corporation should be responsive to the public in the form of partial public ownership stakes.

 

Then it's not a loan.  It's an investment.

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1 minute ago, Anathema- said:

If the government gave me half a billion dollars I could turn it into a few billion and pay the money back too. 

 

If it's worth the loan then some part of the corporation should be responsive to the public in the form of public ownership stakes that are controlled by the government. 


Taking equity devalues the loan

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32 minutes ago, sblfilms said:


You are back to approaching this as though the goal is to make money. It isn’t. The government isn’t a private equity firm and that is a good thing. You change the way you approach deals when your goal is profit maximization.

 

The government has a vested interest in domestic economic expansion, in job creation, and the exporting of domestic goods and services. That is why governments lend money.

 

It's not about making money, it's about mitigating risk. Right now all the risk is held by the public and it isn't mitigated in any way other than the interest to the loan, which over the whole of the program doesn't adequately cover losses.

 

We can just give out grants or wholly forgiveable loans (like the PPP!) if we're not concerned with losses or mitigating risk to taxpayers. And if we don't care about these losses, why not just create a literal government electric car company?! It would accomplish the same goals as you've outlined but without some dude becoming a billionaire in the process! A Tennessee Valley Authority but for electric cars.

 

 

Ultimately I think there is benefit to having the taxpayers get actual return for its investment, when it comes to specific companies and technologies that it invests in

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40 minutes ago, sblfilms said:


Taking equity devalues the loan

 

If you need a loan/investment from the public then value doesn't have much to do with it. If the public gives a loan/investment then the public should have equity. The government isn't a profit generator, being happy with a 2% return is fucked. If it's in our interest to give tesla money then it's in our interest to have a day in corporate governance; they can keep the cash. 

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58 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

 

Then it's not a loan.  It's an investment.

 

18 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK 

But in the case of Tesla and especially Solyndra it was less an investment in the companies themselves and more an investment in advancing the technologies the companies are focused on. 

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15 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

If you need a loan/investment from the public then value doesn't have much to do with it. If the public gives a loan/investment then the public should have equity. The government isn't a profit generator, being happy with a 2% return is fucked. If it's in our interest to give tesla money then it's in our interest to have a day in corporate governance; they can keep the cash. 


Who says they need it? I do deals all the time where I could put up my own cash, but get other people to do so because there is a benefit to me to keep my cash on hand and rent money from somebody else. 

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15 minutes ago, sblfilms said:


Who says they need it? I do deals all the time where I could put up my own cash, but get other people to do so because there is a benefit to me to keep my cash on hand and rent money from somebody else. 

An equity stake would separate those who need it, and are willing to give up something in exchange, and those just looking for a good deal

 

Money talks, bullshit walks

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3 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

An equity stake would separate those who need it, and are willing to give up something in exchange, and those just looking for a good deal


I don’t think turning the federal government solely into the lender of last resort serves to decrease tax payer risk :p 

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30 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

An equity stake would separate those who need it, and are willing to give up something in exchange, and those just looking for a good deal

 

Money talks, bullshit walks

I don’t believe the government should have equity in companies. That’s getting a little to much like the CCP for me. Keep the government out of business, its not their job. 

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3 hours ago, Ricofoley said:

GOP gonna put their faith in states' ability to rewrite a bunch of COBOL code from 1962 to install a new, more complicated (and worse) benefits system in a matter of days. YOLO


Is there any type of literature on this 70% nonsense? As I said previously itt, states have varying caps on UE benefits. Going from 60% to 70% won’t matter if you’ve already hit the cap.

ie: Arizona’s UE cap is $250/week. If you made $1000/week at your previous job, the max you’re going to get from Arizona UE is still $250/week, despite 60% being $600/week. Are they replacing the $600 PUA with a federally funded program that provides the missing income after the cap? What’s the limit on it and how in the f’n world would that even be regulated and distributed properly (I’m asking rhetorically because I know it’s not possible :p )?

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I take a somewhat different -- though no less bleak --view than Mike.

 

The most likely outcome is that the US "muddles" through the "Autumn Crisis of 2020", the elites view that as proof of...something and continue to whistle past the graveyard of political, economic, and social disintegration, the masses simply stop believing in the concept of the "United States", and eventually it just ceases to be. 

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2 minutes ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

I take a somewhat different -- though no less bleak --view than Mike.

 

The most likely outcome is that the US "muddles" through the "Autumn Crisis of 2020", the elites view that as proof of...something and continue to whistle past the graveyard of political, economic, and social disintegration, the masses simply stop believing in the concept of the "United States", and eventually it just ceases to be. 

I think with either case it's absolutely imperative that we eliminate our nuclear stockpile as soon as possible. There won't be a clear successor state a la the USSR and Russia, so we may end up with a few subnational nuclear states, or a totalitarian domestic nuclear state

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28 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I think with either case it's absolutely imperative that we eliminate our nuclear stockpile as soon as possible. There won't be a clear successor state a la the USSR and Russia, so we may end up with a few subnational nuclear states, or a totalitarian domestic nuclear state


Where are most of our nukes located?

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