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SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

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Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#281
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 rule of sales. If someone is trying to sell you something, you _probably_ don't want it. Eg, they need the sale more than you do. The very fact that they were asking the question is such a huge red flag.

Them needing it more than you doesn't mean you don't need it too. Bought an air mattress recently. Way better than a sleeping bag on the ground, even though I can also manage that.

The most insistent the salesman, the highest odds you got a bad deal.

But we are thread is about corruption (probably with bribes, and stealing the money of people that didn't participate on the transaction), while everybody keeps pretending is a consensual sale.

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that whenever the incentives lead to bad places it isn't True Capitalism (tm).

True capitalism has never been tried. This right now is crony capitalism.

We're living under true capitalism right now. Look at the incentives. I don't see how we could have progressed to anything besides this, this is the natural outcome of the system in place.

American libertarians often imagine some kind of wonderland capitalism where everyone agrees to play by the rules that aren't enforced by anyone. To my knowledge this has never existed as a long-term equilibrium and it can't exist. I've yet to meet anyone who can tell me how their imaginary ideas go up against claims like

1. Encouraging infinite growth with no controls or limits will always lead to monopolism and is a one-way ratchet

2. Power vacuums are always filled (no public government leads to private companies stepping in and taking the dictatorial role, this time without any of the democracy)

3. Power always corrupts

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#283
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 rule of sales. If someone is trying to sell you something, you _probably_ don't want it. Eg, they need the sale more than you do. The very fact that they were asking the question is such a huge red flag.

Them needing it more than you doesn't mean you don't need it too. Bought an air mattress recently. Way better than a sleeping bag on the ground, even though I can also manage that.

See, a positive outcome from investing in inflated stock.

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True capitalism has never been tried. This right now is crony capitalism.

Sounds like no true scotsman. Remember kids: socialism is judged by how it failed in real life, capitalism is judged by how perfect it is in theory

Empirically this isn't true. However you feel about "true" capitalism vs socialism, countries underpinned by capitalism have prospered, even the socialist flavors (China, Scandinavia)...while the countries that have attempted pure socialism have all failed.

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#285
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is funny comparison looking how baseball card markets have gone recently. Which is extreme increases in prices for little logical reasons. Or has baseball massively increased in popularity? (Honest question)

I would guess it’s the same force driving absurd stock valuations — the money supply doubled around COVID and all the new money has to pool up somewhere. Some of it ends up in stocks and real estate, but once those become obviously overvalued it starts pooling up in more fringe investments like trading cards. It’s the same dynamic that created exotic mortgage backed securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis. T…

And on lower end for many it feels that they are out of options. So flipping or speculating on anything they can get their hands on is only way to make it in life now. Pokemon cards is biggest example of this. People camping and literally fighting over in essence scraps for very small amount of product to then just resell it to someone else. Who probably speculate on it themselves or need for it to run some type of other scheme like gambling...

It really is weird market from outside. Like millions of cards waiting to be encapsulated in plastic with tiny label on them naming a number. Depending on number the value can go up multiple times. Each of these paid at least something like 20 dollars...

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#286
post #230
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that how capitalism works in general? Edit: thanks for the downvotes. Defenders of capitalism unite!!! lol. Free market right?

Can this be called "Capitalism" when SpaceX is now a public company?

Public in this context just means publicly listed on a stock exchange.

It does not mean it is state-owned.

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#287
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the inclusion rules are basically "these are the hard limits that specify which stocks are eligible, unless someone really big and lucrative comes along, in which case it's whatever and we'll just adjust the rules to make them eligible"?

Isn’t that how capitalism works in general? Edit: thanks for the downvotes. Defenders of capitalism unite!!! lol. Free market right?

It’s how the world works in general. Bribes and corruption are not unique to capitalism.

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He claimed that he would unearth billions of dollars of government fraud, only to lie about that too. Instead his team cut aid programs and have contributed to an estimated 700,000 deaths so far. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/the-...

[flagged]

> This is a reason why the US is trillions in debt.

Trump's OBBBA will be another reason, expected to add several trillion in the next few years. So yeah, real cuts are probably needed, but the DOGE people aren't achieving that in net.

Re: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

#290
post #10

Good thing there's a strong corporate governance model at SpaceX where the c-suite is fully accountable to an independent board of directors, who could use their majority voting power to remove that c-suite at will. Could you imagine the abuse of power that could happen if one person held over 50% of the voting power at such a company?

Are super shares like Zuckerberg's and Musk a new thing? Genuinely curious if they're a recent invention or something that's quietly happened for a while because it seems like a large inversion of the deal of going public, lose some control of the company in exchange for a large amount of cash but these nonvoting/supervoting share splits seem to completely upend what I understood to be part of the deal for access to…

They were a thing in the previous 20's and the exchanges banned them in like the 40's (you could still have a dual-class corporate structure, you just wouldn't be listed on eg the NYSE), because investors thought that was some bullshit to have someone control a company while owning only a tiny slice of it.

That rule was dropped sometime in the 80s.

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