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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

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Someone's garage" is a straw man. There must be people here who could, with adequate funding, build a smallish but viable chip manufacturing company.

It is not a straw man. There is no amount of scrappy cleverness that gets you from zero to manufacturing cutting-edge chips without shitloads of capital investment, years/decades of R&D, a huge manufacturing workforce, and big contracts. There's no such thing as starting small and scaling in that business.

You don't think $8.9B would do it?

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

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is using tax money to prop up uncompetitive companies good for national security? Wouldn't it be better to replace them with competitive companies? It's super hard to be successful when your own government in backing the competition.

You can't build a new Intel. That would take decades. These aren't startups. They are massive fucking machines that can't just be disassembled and put back together by someone else. So the idea is to control them and get them back on track to better serve the collective interest.

You do that by letting them fail.

You let them fail because that ensures that everyone else in the economy fixes their shit and stays competitive. America developed more world class successes, by getting out of the way and letting badly run firms fail.

Especially since NVIDIA is a competitor.

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

#493

i remember when this happened during an actual crisis, in 2008, republicans all over cried on the radio day after day, arguing that it's socialiasm. But now, crickets!!

Everybody lives on their own personal reality nowadays, but for me the internet has been incredibly loud about it.

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

#494

Everyone is talking about "bailouts" and "owning a company that the government funds." This isn't about that at all. This is about the breakdown of the rule of law, a unitary executive bypassing all other branches of government and demanding a private enterprise give itself over to the government. If you don't think there was an "or else" as part of this deal, you're largely mistaken. If you don't think that there wi…

Unfortunately, this ship sailed quite some time ago. For example, after the 2008 financial crisis, the Senate rejected a proposed bailout of GM. But Bush approved it anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_2008%E2%80%9320...

> However, it had been argued that the Treasury lacked the statutory authority to direct TARP funds to the automakers, since TARP is limited to "financial institutions" under Section 102 of the TARP. It was also argued that providing TARP funds to automaker's financing operations, such as GMAC, runs counter to the intent of Congress for limiting TARP funds to true "financial institutions".[79] On December 19, 2008, President Bush used his executive authority to declare that TARP funds may be spent on any program he personally deems necessary to avert the financial crisis, and declared Section 102 to be nonbinding.

Also, “unitary executive” doesn’t mean overriding other branches. It just means that whatever powers the executive branch does or does not have are exercised by the President, just like the 535 members of Congress exercise all the powers of Congress, and the 9 Justices exercise all of the powers of the Supreme Court. It means that executive branch employees don’t have independent powers, just as House staffers and Supreme Court law clerks don’t have independent powers.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._70 (“Federalist No. 70 emphasizes the unitary structure of the executive. The strong executive must be unitary, Hamilton says, because ‘unity is conducive to energy...[d]ecision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number.’”).

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

#495

Everyone is talking about "bailouts" and "owning a company that the government funds." This isn't about that at all. This is about the breakdown of the rule of law, a unitary executive bypassing all other branches of government and demanding a private enterprise give itself over to the government. If you don't think there was an "or else" as part of this deal, you're largely mistaken. If you don't think that there wi…

Trump was explicit about the "or else" part. He said publicly that Intel did it because "[the CEO] wanted to keep his job," a reference to Trump's earlier pressure for him to be fired due to his vulnerability to pressure from the CCP.

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism would be worker ownership. This is simply state ownership of what's seen as a strategic business. It's an abandonment of market dogmatism, but not a step towards any of the many ideologies or positions where markets have a smaller role.

So by that logic, state provided healthcare is not socialism. But a labor union providing health insurance is socialism. Can we get some of that state owned health care :-p

> So by that logic, state provided healthcare is not socialism.

Well, it's not. It's only socialism if the state decides to provide it for everybody.

A state-owned corporation isn't necessarily socialism.

(And yeah, you say it like if it's a bad word...)

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

#497
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The CHIPS grants had clawback provisions, which carry risk. This transaction removes that risk, so it's very good news for Intel. > The existing claw-back and profit-sharing provisions associated with the government’s previously dispersed $2.2 billion grant to Intel under the CHIPS Act will be eliminated to create permanency of capital as the company advances its U.S. investment plans.

How those 2 billions compare with 10% of Intel?

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a generalizable problem. There just aren't many companies that would be in a comparable situation to Intel. Intel is: * Critical to national security * An advanced, industry that's extremely hard to spin up * Essentially, one of two companies in it's industry. Very few other companies meet all of those criteria.

What beats Boeing or Apple then so as to put Intel over the top of these guys?

Intel wanted the 9 billion in CHIP Act money that was being withheld and was willing to make a deal for 10% equity in order to get it.

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

#499

Everyone is talking about "bailouts" and "owning a company that the government funds." This isn't about that at all. This is about the breakdown of the rule of law, a unitary executive bypassing all other branches of government and demanding a private enterprise give itself over to the government. If you don't think there was an "or else" as part of this deal, you're largely mistaken. If you don't think that there wi…

Why would the government need to "demand" to buy a piece of a publicly-traded company? Is 10% of Intel more than what is being traded in the public market?

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

#500
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…

The heavily criticized auto bailout was precisely this way and actually turned a profit once the government sold its stake. This is different and I can’t imagine the government will ever sell its stake.
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