71–80 of 192 posts
Mitt Romney must hate Tesla - it is a textbook example of why governments should sometimes mess with free markets. If the government had not provided this loan Tesla would have gone bankrupt and the US would have lost a significant high-tech asset. 99% of the time the market is more efficient than government, but that other 1% counts for a lot.
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There's something bizarre about griping that they reached profitability from green credits. To clarify, these green credits were voluntarily paid by OTHER CAR COMPANIES like Fiat who did not innovate enough to develop their own green cars. In essence, these credits work similarly to carbon credits or sulfur credits. They are NOT paid by taxpayers or by the government in any way. It was a capitalist regulation in Cali…
they are not free, they are paid by any consumer who directly or indirectly has a relationship with someone who purchases a vehicle from one of the makers who is paying these credits. Voluntary my ass. If they don't pay what happens? Your fined. Its a tax. It is paid by consumers because they buy cars. If anything its California's way of having people in other states fund their initiatives. I guess kudos can go to Mu…
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There's something bizarre about griping that they reached profitability from green credits. To clarify, these green credits were voluntarily paid by OTHER CAR COMPANIES like Fiat who did not innovate enough to develop their own green cars. In essence, these credits work similarly to carbon credits or sulfur credits. They are NOT paid by taxpayers or by the government in any way. It was a capitalist regulation in Cali…
they are not free, they are paid by any consumer who directly or indirectly has a relationship with someone who purchases a vehicle from one of the makers who is paying these credits. Voluntary my ass. If they don't pay what happens? Your fined. Its a tax. It is paid by consumers because they buy cars. If anything its California's way of having people in other states fund their initiatives. I guess kudos can go to Mu…
Sure, it's not voluntary, but then again neither is most of the stuff that producers of things do. The consumer demand is the taskmaster, and thanks to government regulations, so is the public interest, in the form of policies designed to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.
I think unqualified free market advocacy amounts to basically a wish for there to be consumer interest only, without any system for representing public interest that uses any signal other than money. But taken to its extreme, the absence of any system to balance the money signal can lead to things like buying up lakes to dump in, or buying up all the judges in a town, just because you can pay off enough people. In a completely free market, if you are rich enough, you can theoretically buy enough institutions and mercenaries and set up enough corrupt judges to let you kill people for fun.
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Musk had very little to do with PayPal. He built a competing product, X.com, which was acquired by PayPal. Musk then served as CEO and if his interview in "Founders at Work" is any indication, he didn't do much besides piss off Max Levchin before stepping down after a relatively short tenure. I love what Musk has done post PayPal, but no reason to rewrite history here.
>Musk had very little to do with PayPal. That's rather inaccurate. Musk's company was X.com and Thiel/Levchin/Noseks's was called Confinity. They had a 50/50 merger in early 2000, and at first the new company was called X.com. Furthermore, Confinity [1] was doing Palm Pilot payments under the PayPal brand [2] , while X.com was working on internet money transmission over email. Which idea was more useful in the long r…
Regarding the name, PayPal the product -- which included a web app and not just the Palm Pilot product -- launched before the merger. I remember evaluating both x.com and paypal when I was in high school selling computer parts on auction -- at Haggle.com.
Finally, starting your comment with "Sigh, blah blah middlebrow blah blah" just kind of makes you seem.... yeah.
The reason why Tesla is able to pay the Dept of Energy loan early is because of a secondary stock and bonds offering worth about >850+ million. In another words, Tesla is raising funds by generating more debt (from bondholders) and diluting share value (from shareholders), roughly about 3.5 mil out of 40 mil float, and using that money to pay the US govt. TSLA rose on the news despite diluting shareholders is because…
"Make no mistake, this is as much a PR ploy by Tesla to pump up their offering." I don't get your negativity here. The fact that a major green tech company working with government support is able to shift financing over to the private market is, indeed, a remarkable feat and is absolutely something they have a right to crow about. The government, too — it's an example of a progressive system working as designed. As f…
It didn't read as negative.
The subtitle says: "ONLY AMERICAN CAR COMPANY TO HAVE PAID BACK GOVERNMENT" Assuming that's true, I'm not sure whether I should be proud of Tesla, ashamed of our Government, or angered at other car companies. Probably all three...
I'm not an economist, but this is how I understand it. GM paid back it's debt in full, but it paid most of it back in stock. The US government has sold some of it, so it's gotten about half of it's bailout back in cash. But, it still has a ton of GM stock. It's selling the stock slowly to avoid disrupting the market. That being said, the government needs to sell at something like $75/share to make their money back, b…
So they "paid" their debt with something that 1) isn't worth enough to cover their debt and may never be 2) gives the government a financial interest in continuing to keep them afloat.
Pretty nice deal if you can get it.
I don't remember getting a check from tesla nor was I asked permission to loan them money . The whole absurdity of "greater common good"
If you doubt that pollution is bad, that's another story, but you're in the minority and outvoted.
I own Tesla stock and I'm glad to see this. Tesla has been a highly politicized stock... largely because Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin called it a "loser." My hope is that this will help get rid of that stigma and help them with their image and political battle with dealerships in red states, like North Carolina and Texas. This also removes some strings attached to the DOE loan. For instance, Tesla could be acquired (a…
It's crazy to see that a "red" state, you know the champions of free-market and capitalism, would support such laws that restrict any manufacturer from selling directly to consumers. The obstacles being thrown in Tesla's path from the dealership associations fly in the face of capitalism and free enterprise. Before Tesla, I wasn't aware that these types of laws existed.
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> selling each car at a material loss Is that true? I know the company overall would not have turned a profit without the credits but was under the impression that they currently had positive gross margins on the Model S.
Gross margin, and it's tiny without the credits. Tesla's most recent quarter resulted in an operating loss and a net loss. Edit: my bad. Seems the net income was slightly positive last quarter (with regulatory credits included, without them it's a big old negative).