Never take government money. RIP Intel.
U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
611–620 of 765 posts
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#612Genuine 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?
>Wouldnt it be like 25 years too late, with Intel and its heydays !? wtf? what do you mean, they're like less than 1 year behind TSMC when it comes to leading node
(disclosure Intel Shareholder) I don't think they are one year behind. I think it is more than one year and for a long time they have not been closing in.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
...thats how the US Constitution works. Congress passes laws (CHIPS Act) and the executive branch is empowered to carry them out - in this case the Secretary of Commerce and Commerce Dept. One can argue whether it stretches the intent of the law, nothing wrong with debate. But as of now, I don't think any judge or court has contested in the interpretation of the language.
> as of now, I don't think any judge or court has contested in the interpretation of the language Who has standing to sue here? The best I could see is a shareholder lawsuit, but that will take years. Meanwhile, this administration is getting slapped down by courts across the country, including a SCOTUS willing to overturn precedent to curry his favour.
Congress, if they cared.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well as much as you don't like it, companies this big failing is terrible for the economy and in this case, national security to a degree. I'm of the thinking that when your company gets to a certain size we'd be well off nationalizing. Apple has more money than some nation states. Something that huge has the potential to affect global politics. There's lots of other reasons too, but this isn't like letting the corne…
When a company “fails” it does not disappear in a puff of smoke. It goes into bankruptcy and is sold in parts. Some of those parts are perfectly functioning divisions which will continue to function but they will be owned by someone else.
I would rather have Intel go bankrupt, sell profitable pieces to private buyers, and if there are any pieces that are not profitable but crucial to national interests, create a company out of them and have the government buy them. This way you are not propping up a dysfunctional behemoth.
Things must die in order for new better things to take their place. This applies to companies as well.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>Also, “unitary executive” doesn’t mean overriding other branches I feel we're headed for a No True Scotsman fallacy. The Trump Regime and Roberts court endorse the unitary executive theory, and they are happily overriding Article 1 powers and violating laws like the Administrative Procedures Act based on this theory's farcical and ahistorical logic. If the theory wasn't giving him more power (like firing non-politic…
The "unitary executive theory" is just a pejorative label for Article II, Section 1, Clause 1: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." Alexander Hamilton talks about it in Federalist 70: "I rarely met with an intelligent man from any of the States, who did not admit, as the result of experience, that the UNITY of the executive of this State was one of the best of the distinguishing features of our constitution." (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp).
Nobody called it a "theory" until FDR appointees ginned up a fourth branch of government in the 20th century. Then, they needed a label for what actually existed in the constitution to distinguish it from the shit they just made up. But most of the people who use the phrase "unitary executive theory" also think "emanations from penumbras" is constitutional law...
Also, the APA doesn't apply to the President, and it wouldn't be constitutional for it to do so.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
TSMC gets their machines from ASML who licenses their technology from the Department of Energy. The US will be OK.
If (or when) China invades Taiwan we will be better off than Taiwan but I wouldn't call us "OK" at that point. That will be a major disruption. It will take decades for the US to get where Taiwan is now in semiconductor manufacturing, if ever. It's not just about building the most advanced chip factory. It's about re-aligning the entire nation's value system and culture to allow such development to happen in the firs…
> It's about re-aligning the entire nation's value system and culture to allow such development to happen in the first place.
It's taken about 8 years to realign the US from a democracy to a fascist regime, something that was nearly unthinkable. This isn't a hard problem with the right propaganda and manipulation.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US - we've already gotten TSMC to open several fabs.
> We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US The very subsidies Intel now has to pay with shares for? How is that a subsidy? Companies now and in the future would be very concerned before taking any US subsidies because the terms can always change after the fact.
Are we so sure Intel sees this as a bad thing? The US now has even more reason to prop them up.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#618In 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 government took 79.9% of AIG in that bailout - which was the biggest of the "too big to fail" bailouts from the past. People seem to forget that the owners of these companies that were bailed out got almost completely wiped out and instead focus on management compensation (which famously stayed high).
One challenge with the government taking large ownership in private companies is that it creates an opportunity to offload the ownership later, and that offloading might happen during a different presidential administration from the one that acquired it, and the offloading process can also be an opportunity to enrich someone else.
One example that comes to mind is the current Fannie Freddie Mac.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bailouts aren't following some rules of fairness, they're for specific reasons like preventing greater economic problems (2008) or national security (probably Intel). You might disagree that those are the best ways to address those risks but that's why we elect the government to make those decisions and act on them instead of letting the country collapse - which is arguably more important than social services which w…
Is like the country is not already collapsing due to lack of social services compared to the supposed enemy which already has higher lifespan while having 10x lower gdp per capita.
The US is not “collapsing” and we have plenty of social services.
Our lifespan is lower because we’re fat.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#620Incredible how fast Trump is changing political culture - wasn't so long ago that protectionism, economic coercion, military-civilian fusion, state owned enterprise s was denigrated as 'communism' and hence beyond the pail. He's even mooted the possibility of redirecting tariff revenue directly to the people, an act of Chavez-esque socialism which would have been unthinkable a year ago. Anything can happen with this administration, I suspect that is the reason why the American people elected him