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Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#151

Post by Aurornis »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #94
Aurornis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is poorly written. It’s so desperate to be clever and edgy that it’s hard to get the facts out of it. ChatGPT isn’t really a solution because the source is both low quality and has questionable motives. Going to any of the other good articles on the subject that have been linked in this comment section is much better.

It's actually written quite well, you just have to understand the underlying financial documents and methodology. Things that are hard to read because you lack context is not the same as poor writing.

No it’s not. It’s sarcastic, snarky, sneery content that appeals to a certain group.

The actual subject matter has already been covered well by good writers like Matt Levine, WSJ, and others.

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#152

Post by turtlesdown11 »

Aurornis wrote: post #151
turtlesdown11 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually written quite well, you just have to understand the underlying financial documents and methodology. Things that are hard to read because you lack context is not the same as poor writing.

No it’s not. It’s sarcastic, snarky, sneery content that appeals to a certain group. The actual subject matter has already been covered well by good writers like Matt Levine, WSJ, and others.

> No it’s not. It’s sarcastic, snarky, sneery content that appeals to a certain group.

What on earth does your second sentence have to do with the quality of the writing? Try just a bit to separate your emotions from the text.

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#153

Post by walletdrainer »

epistasis wrote: post #29
totallymike wrote: post #16

Folks in the comments here begging ChatGPT to teach them how to read

The difficulty understanding this piece comes from lack of knowledge about finance and ratings, not from an inability to read. The blog assumes a large amount of financial knowledge which is not common among the HN audience.

This whole blog reeks of WSB, pretty sure the target audience is not people with a large amount of financial knowledge.

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#155

Post by jmalicki »

loeg wrote: post #75
jmalicki wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you just... file for bankruptcy like any other person or corporation?

Yeah but when you come to bankruptcy court with significantly more assets than debt, they aren't going to let you sell the business for pennies. I'm asking how you would believe this vehicle would go broke, which is the usual reason to go to bankruptcy.

Meta may have lots of assets, but the LLC may not. The ability to have one wholly owned LLC go bankrupt by itself is one of the main reasons shell corporations exist.

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#156

Post by turtlesdown11 »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #111
turtlesdown11 wrote: post #50

remember that time Facebook spent $10s of billions on the metaverse?

What's your point with this comment? How can we ever hope for another Bell Labs if we decry companies taking risks on things no one even asked for?

how could we ever deserve another juicero or quibi, right?

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#157

Post by everybodyknows »

Aurornis wrote: post #101
illwrks wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So… ‘vanity’ ratings… what’s the point of them then.

There are a lot of places where the credit ratings are hardcoded (to borrow a term) into funds. There are pension funds and other vehicles that might be bound to only invest in AA rated companies. So if a company drops their AA rating it could force them out of a lot of funds and investment vehicles. This complicated vehicle where the debt and assets are in another LLC isn’t actually tricking anyone in finance. If yo…

> isn’t actually tricking anyone in finance.

Surely the ratings agency people are "in finance"? Or are they in on the game, and sliding their way back to 2008, writing ratings for "deals structured by cows"?

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#158

Post by turtlesdown11 »

rs186 wrote: post #61
totallymike wrote: post #16

Folks in the comments here begging ChatGPT to teach them how to read

It is not the reader's fault if the article is unreadable in the first place. Not to mention that asking help to explain a text is extremely common. I can read English, but I have never read a US supreme court ruling. There are much better ways for me to understand those rulings to me as a non-lawyer.

> I can read English, but I have never read a US supreme court ruling. There are much better ways for me to understand those rulings to me as a non-lawyer.

Having admitted to never having read a SCOTUS ruling, how can you then proclaim there are better ways for you to understand? How could you possibly make that assertion if you've never read a SCOTUS ruling?

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#159

Post by jrflowers »

HN commenters flustered, baffled by the words on the screen: “Why would he say it like that? The phrasing is so foreign, it’s like the author wants me to laugh at it. The only way to understand this is to ask a chat bot what I should think the point is”

Re: Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometry

#160

Post by walletdrainer »

parliament32 wrote: post #88
Aurornis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is poorly written. It’s so desperate to be clever and edgy that it’s hard to get the facts out of it. ChatGPT isn’t really a solution because the source is both low quality and has questionable motives. Going to any of the other good articles on the subject that have been linked in this comment section is much better.

It's well written for its target audience, people who are used to reading financial analyses.

While I’ve seen a plenty of silly reports from big bank analysts, they usually have the advantage of not coming across like complete idiots when saying things like this

> We assign a preliminary A+ rating to the notes, one notch below Meta’s issuer credit rating,

It’s hard to get away with that when the report is attributed to a company and person which don’t seem to exist, hosted on some randos substack. Wording like that works way better when it comes from a sender with an address ending with @bigbank.com

Of course, the latter parts of the post (Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability) do reveal pretty definitively that this is obviously not intended to be a serious report.

As for the content itself? The author tries really hard to turn a whole lot of nothing into something, and horribly misinterprets the GAAP in the process.

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