Author makes some good points but also comes across as quite aggressive himself. The entire article is just throwing shade on everyone in sight from their choice of clothing to their timing on the fraud boat...
WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
51–60 of 440 posts
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#52> WeWork then used this cash to underprice competitors in the co-working space market, hoping to be able to profit later once it had a strong market position in real estate subletting or ancillary businesses. > This is of course Amazon’s model, which underpriced competitors in retail and eventually came to control the whole market. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. The difference is Amazon saw what the marginal costs coul…
> The subprime crisis is completely unrelated! And if anything it was proof that money-making assets should be scrutinized more.
The subprime mortgage crisis is basically godwin's law for finance. Want to make something look awful? Compare it to CDOs or mortgage-backed securities.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#53Is Adam Neumann - Next Elizabeth Holmes?? I would not be surprised to see SEC involved at some point somehow.
AFAIK he hasn't done anything illegal beyond (allegedly) smuggling drugs across international borders (also i guess the acts OP mentions to stop self-dealing). This was all fairly known, we all thought it was stupid, but no one cared until the IPO revealed the public markets were more skeptical than anticipated.
The way he is portrayed in the media almost looks like he is being prepared/setup to be the scapegoat when the house of cards comes down.
Someone will have to pay for lost billions. I think there is an orange jump suit somewhere being prepared with "adam neumann" name tag on it....
Theranos 2.0
Pop corn is ready.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#54To think how close Wall St was to selling this turd to Investors....
JP Morgan says the company was worth somewhere between 46 -63 Billion, Morgan Stanley estimated 43-104 Billion. Their lease obligations are over $40 Billion and the company loses billions every year. The next recession in Commercial Real Estate space will wipe them out sticking Landlords with billions in losses including upgrading buildings to accommodate them.
If it weren't for SoftBank using money from the Saudis Vision Fund as well as other sovereign funds like Abu Dhabi's, I have no idea if they would/could exist. These funds are going to take a bath unless they can convince someone to buy into it.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#55While the writer is a irritating in how he presents info, he does have good points. WeWork never looked like a real business to me, I thought the IPO as presented was such a great work of fiction. In the end the "business" is renting office space. It's not worth any more than that. At least Uber and Lyft provide something new (calling taxis from phones, I guess you could think of that as not terribly new) but it did…
> At least Uber and Lyft provide something new (calling taxis from phones) It's less than that—they provide the ability to call taxis from an app . You've been able to call taxis from phones for significantly longer, you just had to dial a number. I know this isn't a common way to call taxis everywhere, but it was in some locations. I went to college in a small-ish city called Saratoga Springs. If you wanted a taxi,…
I think what they uniquely provide is actually tracking the cab to your door.
I probably called 3 cabs total before I was aware of uber, and my experience each time was wait for around an hour, even if you had pre-arranged the pickup, and when calling the dispatcher, they would just say the cab was 10 minutes away, no matter what was actually going on.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#56“ There are laws, like Robinson-Patman and the Clayton Act, which, if read properly and enforced, prohibit such conduct. The reason is very basic to capitalism.”
This is critical in this issue. Societies have grown but our legal systems have not. Justice today is conditioned on the interpretation of judges and on the enforcement of some bureaucrats. These are vulnerabilities and they are being exploited.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And then whole blurb on Counterfeit Capitalism - which in essence described capitalism This is my favorite thing. Whenever someone describes something like "Counterfeit Capitalism" or "Crony Capitalism", it's always just describing capitalism.
I feel like this is similar to how Greta Thunberg recently described capitalism as "fairytales of eternal economic growth". That too is just describing capitalism. The way she is attacked by the Right, and what they say in their attacks, really makes it obvious that they know it's not an environmental issue. It has absolutely nothing to do with the environment or climate change. It's neoliberalism and capitalism and…
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Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#58> WeWork then used this cash to underprice competitors in the co-working space market, hoping to be able to profit later once it had a strong market position in real estate subletting or ancillary businesses. > This is of course Amazon’s model, which underpriced competitors in retail and eventually came to control the whole market. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. The difference is Amazon saw what the marginal costs coul…
> The subprime crisis is completely unrelated! And if anything it was proof that money-making assets should be scrutinized more. The subprime mortgage crisis is basically godwin's law for finance. Want to make something look awful? Compare it to CDOs or mortgage-backed securities.
> The subprime mortgage crisis is basically godwin's law for finance.
This is so spot on - I'm 100% going to steal this.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking a jab at clothing generally is so low effort to be actually embarrassing and will invalidate anything else that you are trying to say. IMO.
I'm amazed that the focus is on the author calling a t-shirt "ill-fitting" instead of calling Neumann a liar and a thief. Apparently, Neumann's fashion sense is more defensible than his personal integrity.
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Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#60I maintain that Masayoshi Son and the vision funds are nation-state level money laundering.