171–180 of 338 posts
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If Bezos needs an evil villain lair for his secret headquarters, I know a fortress in the American desert with three-foot-thick stone walls, solar and diesel electricity, and its own water facilities, perched on a mountain ridge for maximum visibility 150 miles from anywhere meaningful. Last I saw, it was for sale for $750k.
Does it have enough bathrooms though?
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Such a simple and reassuring answer, why can’t we have that in America?
Just to play devils advocate... this has the potential to cause an absolutely massive liquidity crunch. All debt is an asset - all payments on debt are a positive number in some investment portfolio/banks/etc balance sheets (eg a bond). If everybody stopped paying debts and rent, the financial industry could crash overnight as suddenly nobody has the cash flow to pay each other any more. And that would trickle down i…
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Look, I complain about wealth inequality more than anyone I know. Stock buybacks had A LOT of problems people don't discuss. But this isn't really what ruined the airlines. UAL -- the hardest hit and worst buyback offender -- bought back $1.2Bn in 2015, $2Bn in 2016, $3Bn in 2017, $1.2Bn in 2018, and $3Bn in 2019. That's a total of $10.4Bn. To my knowledge, less than 4% of that was on borrowed money. They returned ro…
>Even if they had that $10.4Bn, they could not get through Coronavirus. Airlines have HIGHLY volatile margins on INSANE amounts of revenue. None of them could withstand a 70% decrease in air traffic for a year. Ignoring Tech industry, most companies on earth could not withstand a 70% drop in revenue. The world we are in today is that everyone is trying to go for Big Revenue and Slim Profit Margin. A side effect from…
How many tech companies have withstood a 70% drop in revenue? BlackBerry comes to mind.
Where is the comment here on billionaire taxes? Literally Amazon is the only company because of which I feel comfortable right now sitting in my house vs. panic buying.
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Which area are you in? Every large retail store is open (so far) in Southern California, with most retailers' inventory being purchased at full retail prices. I am not sure why the retailers don't switch to curbside-pickup model exclusively, instead preferring hordes of customers roaming around every single morning, but from what I hear, Instacart and store-specific delivery programs are overwhelmed.
They are open in Southern California, but running out of basics fast. I noticed a complete lack of certain produce, milk, eggs, bread, as well as the oft meme'd paper products. Every morning I go to the grocery store in my neighborhood looking for toilet paper and every morning there is some new staple nearly out of stock. I still have a few rolls left, and amazon seems to have a few remaining in stock, so things are…
It's partially due to hoarding, partially due to panic buying, and partially due to the lockdown of many schools and businesses, which caused most eating+drinking+related activity to move home, raising household demands on food and toilet paper above normal.
Also, if you're supposed to show your face in public as infrequently as possible, then instead of 10 shopping trips you're better off making 1 shopping trip buying 10x the stuff. Which exacerbates availability.
If this were a Bond movie, Bezos would be cackling in his secret lair about how his viral plan was coming to fruition. Bond (played by Idris Elba) would then cough on Bezos, who would whip out his antidote, which Bond would grab, escape, and release to the world before being killed by Thanos. (Pitch Meeting, call me)
Curse you Bezos for your evil plan to supply us with much needed goods.
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Just to play devils advocate... this has the potential to cause an absolutely massive liquidity crunch. All debt is an asset - all payments on debt are a positive number in some investment portfolio/banks/etc balance sheets (eg a bond). If everybody stopped paying debts and rent, the financial industry could crash overnight as suddenly nobody has the cash flow to pay each other any more. And that would trickle down i…
I agree but I see this as a problem we could fix using financial tools. Rather than letting thousands if not millions of small business and jobs completely gone.
I think the simplest solution is for the fed/government to simply give everybody cash, since the root of the problem is that a lot of people have temporarily lost their incomes due to their jobs being essentially banned in response to the pandemic (eg a lot of people in retail outside of supermarkets/food). Anything that involves nonpayment is extremely risky
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Fantasy-land aside, Bezos is the CEO of the organization that runs the GovCloud AWS region, which is almost certainly designated critical military infrastructure, JEDI-loss aside. I would be astounded if there are many billionaires in the USA who are not this moment already taking chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine in the recommended prophylaxis doses, even outside of those deemed mission-critical by the most powerful or…
I’m a bit confused why would an anti-parasite drug be used now for covid-19