James GleickI’m seeing lots of schadenfreude about the guy “losing” $200 billion. It benefits no one. A better way would be to tax the megabillionaires fairly: i.e., returning the bulk of their wealth to the society that made them rich in the first place.
Rob Wolfe@JamesGleick this is one of those cases where the "money' is vaporized. There is nobody else that is having their wealth increased by that amount.
Am I correct in thinking that?
Am I correct in thinking that?
Dmitry Mazin@robwolfe @JamesGleick twitter’s pre-sale shareholders did well, but James’ original point is very apt
@dmitry @JamesGleick
this has nothing to do with Twitter shares, that was a minor thing.
The 200B is mostly the cratering of #TSLA and my understanding of that is that it is value that vaporized, not that was transferred to someone else.
this has nothing to do with Twitter shares, that was a minor thing.
The 200B is mostly the cratering of #TSLA and my understanding of that is that it is value that vaporized, not that was transferred to someone else.
Steffen Christensen@robwolfe @dmitry @JamesGleick Understanding what happens to that value is nontrivial.
One take is it wasn't worth that to begin with, as asset value of stock shares aren't "real wealth" until the stock is sold, like the value of housing assets.
Another is that since you can borrow and take out loans against share value, it does have value, indeed at par, and that par value is now extinguished.
@robwolfe @dmitry @JamesGleick
A third is that per the System of National Accounts, stocks have value only when derivative expenditures arise in the real economy, so when you sell them, or use some value to buy equipment, or a stock buy-back happens. Their value is split between the real-world margin fraction taken by brokers (appearing in the System), secondary household and business consumption, and concrete asset purchases as capital creating demand.
A third is that per the System of National Accounts, stocks have value only when derivative expenditures arise in the real economy, so when you sell them, or use some value to buy equipment, or a stock buy-back happens. Their value is split between the real-world margin fraction taken by brokers (appearing in the System), secondary household and business consumption, and concrete asset purchases as capital creating demand.
@robwolfe @dmitry @JamesGleick None of these is entirely satisfying, although I am increasingly partial to the "money only counts when it appears in the real economy" take. That's the self-consistent one that allows ponzi schemes, crypto, and stocks to exist in one unified system without special pleading.
@Wikisteff @dmitry @JamesGleick and since we know that he did exactly that in order to finance the Twitter purchase, that is where it gets "real".
do I have that correct"
do I have that correct"
@robwolfe @dmitry @JamesGleick In the System of National Accounts framework, assets were sold for assets, which were used to buy assets. Nothing changed in the real economy until Musk started laying people off and stopped paying for server space.
However, in an assets-are-moneylike accounting, he sold assets (money) to buy a new asset (Twitter), which he badly mishandled and so his other assets (Tesla stock) collapsed in value (loss of investor confidence).