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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

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Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#281
post #199

In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening. On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is…

What bothers me is the double standard. When the public asks for fully publicly-owned railways, universal healthcare, or any basic social safety assurances—“socialism”. When a megacorporation struggles, immediately to the rescue.

It’s not a double standard, you just don’t understand the standard.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this so weird coming from the US. The US government has a history of writing no-strings-attached blank cheques to people/companies just so avoid the stigma of government control in public companies. I wonder how the markets will react, will stocks go up because people will assume Intel's going to be a government mandated champion or will they go down because of the negative connotations government control bring…

Name one literal no-strings-attached blank cheque to a large company in the last 20 years

Any cost-plus defense or aerospace contract.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.

And now China knows the US expects this and it also knows the US does not expect to stop China, so China knows that it can expect the US to do very little. It's game theory turtles all the way down... Edit: I think it's a misconception that China cares much about fabs in Taiwan. It wants unification.

It also means that China can expect the destruction of Taiwan's fabs to hurt the US less than China.

Combine that with the US's ability to unilaterally destroy Taiwan's fabs, and it sways the calculation a bit

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#284
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can this be any good for Intel? Why is the stock value bumping 6%?

Because the government having a financial interest in Intel’s success is expected by the market to result in the government acting in Intel’s interest, in order to profit.

They also have a national security interest as well.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#287
post #273
post #199

In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening. On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is…

I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.

Chip manufacturing is too important for the US. We can’t be completely dependent on Taiwan. Nothing against Taiwan, it’s one attack away from being obliterated by China.

No company is going to come out of someone’s garage and build a chip fab.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#288
post #199

In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening. On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is…

I think it's a good choice for Intel as they are one of the very few who own fabs and fabs are extremely valuable pieces of equipment. Just because of 3 consecutive annual CPU "bugs" in essence, they should not shut down forever. Try try again.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#289
post #164
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind

GF is a few nodes behind. Micron doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot. TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity

> TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity

I mean, they might if Intel were allowed to fail.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#290

Genuine question- How does Govt picking winners and losers going to help? Intel is no Too big to fail Bank. Why save Intel of all chip manufacturers? Wouldnt it be like 25 years too late, with Intel and its heydays !? Would Govt now ensure parity by investing in "marquee" entities across different industrial domains?

I don't expect a good reason given the history of this Administration, but a reason in my mind to save Intel is there's only 3 license holders for x86 CPUs. Intel, AMD (American), and VIA (Taiwanese). A dead Intel leaves a single American company that is able to make x86 processors, and a monopoly for actually good x86 CPUs. But somehow I suspect there's no logical reason for this besides lining the pockets of those…

Why would the ISA matter to the government? I could see this being about Intel's physical manufacturing capabilities, but the ISA should be pretty irrelevant. Recompile what code you can, run the rest via qemu-user-static.
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