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
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u/a-base 20h ago

Much like the 2008 housing crisis in the US, these things tend to work out very well for billionaires - at a cost to the poor, lower- and middle- class.

  • Their losses are just theoretical, it's not like they have to cash out their stocks or sell assets and take any real loss.
  • Even with these 'losses' they are still billionaires and can access cash in numerous ways. They can quite comfortably ride out any period of instability.
  • More likely than riding it out, they'll use it to their advantage. With markets crashing they are perfectly positioned to swoop in, scoop up anything they like, and make out like bandits.

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u/latortillablanca 19h ago

Thank you. This headline and article—which i actually read— is clickbait appealing to the worst of us. Of course we want elon to fail and bezos to suck and zuckerBORG to crawl back to the hole from whence he came. But this article had a chance to inform the point you made—which is super fucking important for working class voters to understand—and instead appealed to our smugness and sanctimony and need to feel like we are giving a fuck yoh to these schmucks.

They likely developed the tariff plan from the jump… this isnt a negative consequence. These people are not stupid. Its a step in a comprehensive plan, decades in the making.

Do not let up.

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u/linkfan66 19h ago

Musk lost $21B in 48 hours, I don't see how he's able to recoup it easier than just simply having his stock go up?

Also, stocks aren't going back up for a long fucking time, hard to buy the dip if 'the dip' caused a 30% drop in your net worth.

This conspiracy doesn't make sensenwith the fact that all these CEO's have 80% of their worth tied to a single stock, and that there's nothing to gain by deliberately crashing your stock.

There's a reason why Musk was literally crying over his stock plummeting lol. You can't seriously convince me Elon is loving this drop right now.

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u/ProfessorXWheelchair 18h ago

it’s easy to buy the dip if losing 30% of your net worth means you still have billions of fucking dollars

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u/linkfan66 18h ago

Yeah, but that would entail selling off their other stocks to buy the dip, as none of them were able to sell at the top... the same stocks who just saw a HUGE decline in value.

Your logic just makes zero sense. So if Tesla fell 80% and Elon lost 60% of his net worth, you'd genuinely think that's some master plan and that he'd be excited to buy the market dip?

And what if stocks don't rebound because we're now in a recession and all countries hate us? Again, broken logic.

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u/teh_fizz 17h ago

I think the point is they can handle the loss for a very long time. They literally can wait it out. At one point, they want things to go back up, and if they can't do that naturally then they manipulate the market as normal.

It's absolutely why the rest of the world needs to come together and act towards them.

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u/linkfan66 17h ago

I think the point is they can handle the loss for a very long time. They literally can wait it out.

Yes you're right, but again, flawed logic. Just because they CAN doesn't mean it's in their best interest.

Every single billionaire on the Forbes top 10 tracker lost 1% minimum of their net worth today alone, with Zuck, Elon and Buffet each losing 3-5% net worth in 8 hours, that's not even including yesterday's huge drop.

Outside of Buffet who's a fund manager and anticipated events like these, Mark, Elon, Larry and the others all didn't sell any of their shares at the top, and are all getting fucked because of it.

Some billionaires on the sideline will profit for sure, but ffs my guy it's really hard to argue that the top billionaires who all have their net worth tied to a single stock are somehow extremely happy over a 10% drop in net worth in 40 hours.

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u/AnAttemptReason 12h ago

They don't care, 1 billion dollars is infinite money, you litteraly can't spend it faster than it will make you more money in a reasonable amount of time. 

Beyond that its just a tool to get whatever you want, be that political power, or competing for a high score or the biggest private yacht. 

Elon was happy to trade waste multi-billion dollars for Twitter because now he can use it to control narratives and push his own political goals.

They don't love in the same world as you and I and are unmoved from the consequences.

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u/linkfan66 11h ago

They don't care, 1 billion dollars is infinite money, you litteraly can't spend it faster than it will make you more money in a reasonable amount of time. 

If that logic were true, they'd all stop giving shit the moment the became multi billionaires. Instead of preparing for presentations and earning calls, they could be at the beach....so I call bullshit how suddenly billions of dollars of losses means nothing to them, while they're all claiming for billions of more dollars in gains at the same time and refusing to retire. The logic just makes no sense.

Elon was happy to trade waste multi-billion dollars for Twitter because now he can use it to control narratives and push his own political goals.

And that bet paid off ten fold when it helped Trump win the presidency and helped push Tesla stock up 100% in a few months, netting him hundreds of billions. Obviously it crashed after because he flew too close to the sun, but it was a purchase that paid off at the time, so not sure if that's a good example.

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u/AnAttemptReason 11h ago

If that logic were true, they'd all stop giving shit the moment the became multi billionaires. 

Why? 

They aren't motivated the same way you and I are. 

Anyone who hits multi-million dollars in a business could retire and live a life of luxury. 

By definition, the ones who don't are the ones who have different motivations. General power, prestige, control. Take Putin, dude was the richest man in the world, he invaded Ukraine because he wanted an empire building legacy, the cost was irrelevant.

not sure if that's a good example. 

In a market crash the ones who loose are the ones who have to sell. 

The billionaires don't have to sell, they can just buy the ones who do have to sell by leaveraging loans off their existing assets, which are still worth billions. 

So it's exactly like your ration for Elon buying twitter, temporary losses aren't imporaint to the final goal.

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u/PrimeIntellect 16h ago

losing $100B isn't that big of a deal if you still have $200B, it's literally unfathomable levels of wealth that is enough to buy entire industries.

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u/linkfan66 16h ago

I agree, but OPs argument was that they fabricated their net worth loss themselves and are jumping in joy over seeing their own stock plummeting in value.

OP is literally saying how they came up with the plan themselves, when in reality it's stupidity and yes-men.

I can guarantee you that Elon isn't happy seeing TSLA go from $290 to $240 in the span of a few hours, as if he hasn't been desperately trying to pump the stock the day prior. That's the point I'm arguing

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u/BeatBoxxEternal 17h ago

I'm convinced the thing Musk cares about more than anything isn't the wealth, the power, the popularity (although all of these things are high on his priority list) -- it's being remembered. If you view Musk through that lens, in everything he does, it makes more sense. He would rather be a controversial figure plastered in the history books then to be forgotten. He'll lose billions and be hated just to be studied in the future. It makes sense. It's not that he doesn't care about the money, it's just... what does the richest man in the world really want.

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u/Catatonic_capensis 18h ago

Calling it a conspiracy is one of the dumbest things. The rich do that shit every time things tumble. Always.

Musk out 80% of his stock value still has 60+ billion dollars. Do you think he'd be financially struggling with that? Do you not think he can qualify for a loan anymore? He could lose 99% of it and still afford to buy a business or two during a significant downturn.

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u/GiantPurplePen15 13h ago

He sold his inflated $44 billion Twitter stocks to... himself and basically dumped all the losses in his new crypto start up or somethin.

Looks highly illegal and its being investigated but at the end of the day, whose going to enforce any sentences on him?

He's also getting contracts worth hundreds of millions for selling Cybertrucks to the US military too so he's not really losing much at all. Let's not forget SpaceX too. He's milking everything he can from the US.

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u/linkfan66 13h ago

He could do everything you outlined above while also not losing $1B per hour from a market crash.

None of what you said proves in any way that this market crash is some sort of 4D chess move by the billionaires.

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u/GiantPurplePen15 13h ago edited 10h ago

How many of his companies have inflated value that were bound to lose billions though? The thing I've been wondering is how much of his losses were predicted and whether he's trading those losses for longer term contracts that allow him to continue to interfere with the American government.

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u/brasticstack 18h ago

So you're saying Musk, the world's richest man, now can't afford to buy more stock? Because that's what your comment reads like and that's obviously nonsense.

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u/tilikang 18h ago

Musk is rich because his stock is worth a lot. He doesn't have $400 billion in cash sitting around.

There are some billionaires who do have a lot of cash (Berkshire Hathaway famously took a lot of money out of the market recently) but most billionaires already have almost all their money invested.

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u/linkfan66 18h ago

Do you know how leverage works?

If I have $1B in assets let's say the average bank will be willing to lend me $5B to gamble on stocks, with the understanding that they'll liquidate everything if the position falls 20%.

If I have $100B they'll let me borrow a hundred times that ($500B) with the same stipulations. Rough numbers of course, but the principal remains the same

Does that make sense? The more money you have on paper, the more money you have to borrow to buy the dip. And if you decide to sell Tesla for other stocks, you're obviously fucking yourself because you could have sold at prices that were 100% higher a few weeks earlier.

In 2 days Elon has $25B less that he can use as leverage for buying the dip. The more stocks crater, the less leverage he has considering all his net worth is tied to Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, which will all see valuation crashes during this recession