this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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musk was mouthing off in an official enough way that he got trapped into buying it. He lost tens of billions. It was basically a money pit and he has drove it to even more of a money loser.
He has unlimited money. I am pretty sure he doesn't really care.
Except he doesn't really have unlimited money. Like most rich bastards he had assets - aka, hypothetical money (investments). They take out loans using that hypothetical money as collateral, and then have to pay that money back over time, which they can do by earning dividends (hypothetical money increases that they can access without penalties) or selling hypothetical money for real money (possibly with penalties).
Musk borrowed an enormous amount of money, which saddled the loaners with hypothetical money that began to decrease in value, and were this unable to profit by selling it for actual money. They therefore have to trust that Musk will repay these loans or else sell them at a loss to some other dumb bastard.
Or be forced to sell assets to pay his debts.
Doesn't seem like he lost much, like you would expect by buying one of the biggest social platform in the world he got even richer and more relevant (enough to get a sit in the white house)
Well he does get investors. Like the openai thing he is leading a group of investors and as other folks point out loans. so he does spread the losses out to other folks. Honestly this destroys the economy really. Its one of my arguments for higher taxes for the rich in a progressive way that should keep having brackets till you get to the highest. It means making more money takes more ability as it becomes a harder and harder thing to do. Makes sure the best are messing around at those levels or keeps those levels from happening to begin with.