Yeah it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s all valuations.
The issue though is that he can borrow against that. That’s the real scam, and it’s something we need to address. Loans backed by assets like stocks should get taxed as if it were a short term sale of the assets. Also cap how much stock you can use as collateral for loans. Or just ban using stocks as collateral in the first place. They want to spend? They need to sell, pay the taxes, and weigh the loss in voting power against their need for money
Outright banning using collateral for loans wouldn’t work, even us plebs can do that and it has uses, like taking out a loan against your house. And if it’s not stocks, its something else they have that’s worth a lot or will loophole around into. They just need to tax collateralized loans or ban it after a certain amount.
edit: and if you get to the point that its taxed (if its at a threshold) then you got enough money to pay someone to figure it out and manage it.
I’m quite sure it’s solely for clout. The timing was just right and the numbers lined up just so to produce that extra digit.
He’s like that one dog at the barbecue who’s just tall enough to snag a sausage from the buffet table while the humans weren’t looking. This is now the part where he parades his pilfered prize and gloats for a few minutes too long. “Look what I’ve got”. Don’t give him the satisfaction!
That’s exactly the trick. The rich don’t become rich by selling their assets. They become powerful by never having to.
They pledge their stock as collateral, borrow against it, and live off debt instead of income. No sale means no capital gains tax. No liquidation means no crash in their holdings. Meanwhile, the underlying assets keep appreciating.
Their “paper wealth” may not be cash, but it buys access to virtually unlimited credit, and credit becomes power.
At that level, wealth isn’t about liquidity. It’s about leverage, and leverage is power.
He almost over leveraged himself with Twitter as the market was crashing, that would have been a sight to see if he hadn’t derisked that and sold stock instead.
Headline: Musk buys twitter, but loses nearly all control of Tesla as margin call in crashing market wipes him out.
But he doesn’t have a Trillion Dollars. He is, in theory, on paper, worth a Trillion Dollars.
If he tried to actually extract that wealth, the share price would plummet making him a measly billionaire.
If you look at what he has in real liquid wealth, it’s less than a billion.
Yeah it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s all valuations.
The issue though is that he can borrow against that. That’s the real scam, and it’s something we need to address. Loans backed by assets like stocks should get taxed as if it were a short term sale of the assets. Also cap how much stock you can use as collateral for loans. Or just ban using stocks as collateral in the first place. They want to spend? They need to sell, pay the taxes, and weigh the loss in voting power against their need for money
Outright banning using collateral for loans wouldn’t work, even us plebs can do that and it has uses, like taking out a loan against your house. And if it’s not stocks, its something else they have that’s worth a lot or will loophole around into. They just need to tax collateralized loans or ban it after a certain amount.
edit: and if you get to the point that its taxed (if its at a threshold) then you got enough money to pay someone to figure it out and manage it.
I’m quite sure it’s solely for clout. The timing was just right and the numbers lined up just so to produce that extra digit.
He’s like that one dog at the barbecue who’s just tall enough to snag a sausage from the buffet table while the humans weren’t looking. This is now the part where he parades his pilfered prize and gloats for a few minutes too long. “Look what I’ve got”. Don’t give him the satisfaction!
That’s exactly the trick. The rich don’t become rich by selling their assets. They become powerful by never having to.
They pledge their stock as collateral, borrow against it, and live off debt instead of income. No sale means no capital gains tax. No liquidation means no crash in their holdings. Meanwhile, the underlying assets keep appreciating.
Their “paper wealth” may not be cash, but it buys access to virtually unlimited credit, and credit becomes power.
At that level, wealth isn’t about liquidity. It’s about leverage, and leverage is power.
He almost over leveraged himself with Twitter as the market was crashing, that would have been a sight to see if he hadn’t derisked that and sold stock instead.
Headline: Musk buys twitter, but loses nearly all control of Tesla as margin call in crashing market wipes him out.