r/technology • u/DontFearTheCreaper • 20h ago

Social Media Tech CEOs who grinned behind Trump at inauguration lose billions in wake of tariffs

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-tariff-bezos-musk-zuckerberg-b2727147.html
62.1k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

170

u/Ashamed-Status-9668 20h ago

"lose billions" - They haven't lost anything other than stock value for stock they will not sell while its down. Nice little perk of being filthy rich is you can let all your investments crash and wait it out since you don't need that money.

-1

u/SaveTheTuaHawk 19h ago

That's not the way it works. To avoid paying taxes, these dicks borrow money against their stock values, because no one pays taxes on borrowed money. Given inherent human greed, they are all leveraged and when stocks go poof, colateral goes poof and banks get nervous and ask for their money back.

19

u/Ashamed-Status-9668 19h ago

Yes, that can happen. Most of them except Elon are not leveraged very much. Elon though is leveraged extremely heavily and if Tesla tanks it will be very bad for him. Most billionaires will weather the storm and if 2008 and covid are any indicators they will gain massive amounts of wealth coming out the other side of this.

6

u/Independent-Cow-4070 19h ago

They have such a large amount of money in stock and assets it doesn’t even matter. Losing $50billion in valuation doesn’t matter all that much when you’re still valued at $250 billion

9

u/sicklyslick 19h ago

That's gonna be assuming they're leveraged up the ass.

Tim Cook is worth 2.5b. I doubt he's borrowing more than mere 10% against his portfolio. The dip won't do anything to them.

Elon might be the only one that's leveraged up the ass. I hope he gets royally fucked

1

u/NewCobbler6933 19h ago

So how exactly do they pay these loans back without a taxable event?