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Intel might be too big to fail

tomshardware.com

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Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#61

Post by fallinditch »

exabrial wrote: post #9

Awesome, I can't wait for me the taxpayer to breathe life into the smoldering shell of a company where the executives and unlimited layers of useless middle management used financial engineering to fool investors about the internal situation while extracting as much money as possible and then bailing out on golden parachutes and landing in soft thick piles of bonuses. Remember when we did this in 2008 under the Obama…

> Just let it fail

I guess that's what they will end up doing but let's pause for a moment and contemplate the fact that they are exploring the options. Intel's strategic importance is recognized and so it's obviously a good idea to explore the potential for making the situation less bad.

For me, this situation highlights the tension between laissez-faire capitalism and systems of economic planning where government interventions can be used to stimulate economies strategically.

I think that in the USA, gov intervention tends to be viewed in ideological terms. Whereas in Europe it's mostly seen as an important economic policy tool. This is a broad generalization of course.

I would like to see more insightful, strategic, long term economic planning. I'm keen on the ideas of Community Economic Development (CED) [1].

If CED is done properly then everyone benefits. The problem is that government bureaucracies have historically been terrible administrators and partners.

The Intel saga points to the need for enlightened change in all these areas: economic policy, civil service effectiveness, community economic development, etc.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_economic_developme...

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#62

Post by datavirtue »

mrweasel wrote: post #35
ksec wrote: post #13

Intel is the closest US has to compete on Foundry. And it doesn't take that much money relatively speaking to help them out. I also think they are not far behind. They wont replace or overthrown TSMC anytime soon. But they should be competitive enough. My only question is do shareholders have enough patients to allow Pat to do the right thing.

> My only question is do shareholders have enough patients Honestly: Screw the shareholders, this is entirely on them and their short term thinking. The stock market is so broken, with it's quarterly mindset. Businesses needed long term thinking and stability. If the shareholders feel that they need to make a profit trading short term, they can go buy f-ing Dogecoin and play the lottery.

I was looking at an overlay of VPU (energy utility ETF) and SPY (S&P500 ETF) and was shocked to see that going back to 2007 both married up exactly until the pandemic when the S&P went to the moon. I think a lot of retail short-term "investors" entered the market and they are all still there trying to get rich trading breakouts. There is precedent for this (1920s and 1990s) but not at this scale and level of ameture.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#63

Post by datavirtue »

wg0 wrote: post #25

On a tangent, why there is a general feeling of decline everywhere from Adobe's frustrated customer base to Boeing to Intel and Google's search returning pages and pages of sponsored ads? What's happening?

Progress. The established norms keep getting rug-pulled. Hopefully we can get the replicators built before we all die off.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#64

Post by PittleyDunkin »

typeofhuman wrote: post #45
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel is a defense asset So nationalize them and remove the waste

Nationalizing it would only increase the waste.

How do you figure? The profit motive isn't a factor when nationalized. Where would the waste come from?

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#65

Post by PittleyDunkin »

naveen99 wrote: post #44
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel is a defense asset So nationalize them and remove the waste

Nationalize and waste removal is an oxymoron.

I think the opposite is true! What bigger waste is there than profit? Schumpeter agrees with me.

It would be different, of course, if intel were the bleeding edge of innovation.... but that hasn't been true for about twenty years. Maybe longer.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#67

Post by piva00 »

mrweasel wrote: post #24

AMD and Intel just switched places, before Ryzen AMD was a failing company, threatening to not one give Intel a near monopoly, but also handing Nvidia a true monopoly. If AMD can be turned around, why can't Intel, a much larger company with more diverse product lines (not as many as previous, but still). It's not even that Intel aren't selling chips, I'd guess that they are still massively outselling AMD. The fact th…

> The type of management which have been prevailing for the past 20 - 25 years aren't going to save companies like Intel and Boing, both companies that should have be thriving, but they've become complacent and forgot about the products, focusing on short term stock value.

Hyperfinancial capitalism is doing much better at destroying capitalism than any communist has ever achieved.

I have no idea what kind of black swan will finally catalise some change, it's getting pretty clear the flavour of capitalism applied from the late-80s/early-90s is cracking...

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#68

Post by stego-tech »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #41
stego-tech wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally my same conclusion since 2008. Hundreds of thousands of people without jobs? Let it fail. No more domestic semiconductor company? Let it fail. No more domestic aerospace company? LET IT FAIL. We keep avoiding making the hard policy decisions by funneling taxpayer money into the hands of the already-wealthy who promise that this time it’ll be different, this time they won’t give it to shareholders and payout…

In other industries that might be ok (though not for the hundreds of thousands of people without jobs), but not this one. It would be like the US military being reliant on other countries, and potentially its main adversary (China), for its most advanced weapons.

If something is critical to National Security or Human Survival, it should be Nationalized. So if Intel, or Boeing, or electric companies, or ISPs, or banks are really that necessary to the American Government that letting them fail would jeopardize our national security, then those entities shouldn’t be publicly-traded or privately-owned enterprises, full-stop.

Unfortunately, that policy is wholly incompatible with the current wealth-extraction and funneling model of the present-day economy, and that’s why it won’t happen until it’s so irreparably broken that the entire global status quo shifts to adjust.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#69

Post by stego-tech »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #37
stego-tech wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally my same conclusion since 2008. Hundreds of thousands of people without jobs? Let it fail. No more domestic semiconductor company? Let it fail. No more domestic aerospace company? LET IT FAIL. We keep avoiding making the hard policy decisions by funneling taxpayer money into the hands of the already-wealthy who promise that this time it’ll be different, this time they won’t give it to shareholders and payout…

You don't want this (likely) scenario: -Intel Fails -Production stops worldwide. (Not just development) -US scrambling to sort out the supply chains -China invades Taiwan -US Fails Intel must be replaced domestically. At least wait until there is another fab within the US mainland.

If that happens, it’s because our Government failed to intervene sooner, and is a damning indictment of Western Capitalism in general.

All the more reason to let Intel (or Boeing, or whoever) fail hardcore while we have time to adapt. Intel falling isn’t going to result in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but it would smack the hell out of politicians and consumers both that globalism, while a nice idea in times of peace, is not compatible with interests like National Security and the growth of the Middle Class.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#70

Post by stego-tech »

naveen99 wrote: post #44
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel is a defense asset So nationalize them and remove the waste

Nationalize and waste removal is an oxymoron.

The IRS is one of the most effective government agencies out there, despite continued lack of funding and political mismanagement. NASA still leads space exploration, despite Congress intervening in its agendas.

The mismanagement and waste come from a Congress more obsessed with its re-election and petty politics than it is actually running a gargantuan empire in a sustainable manner, not the agencies themselves, with one notable exception: the Department of Defense. That is a profoundly mismanaged and exploited department that drains valuable taxpayer money into fantasy boondoggles meant to get people promoted and swindle ever-more income from taxpayers in the process.

At the very least, the government should be the baseline option, with Capitalism competing against it on either efficiency or outcome, ideally both. Instead, what we have are Capitalist companies who game the system to extract more wealth for themselves and from each other, and demand the government cover their own mismanagement under the guise of “National Security.”

They cannot have it both ways. If they’re critical to the security of the country, they cannot exist as private enterprise. If they want maximum profit, then they cannot be of import to the government.

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