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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

(www.cnbc.com)
607 points givemeethekeys | 1 comments | 22 Aug 25 21:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jjcm ◴[22 Aug 25 22:36 UTC] No.44990743[source]▶
In 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 investing BUY INTEL SHARES" media event. These things should follow a strict set of rules and processes so investors and companies know what to expect. These kind of deals should be boring, not a media event.

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Terr_ ◴[23 Aug 25 07:09 UTC] No.44993951[source]▶
> On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process

It must at least involve Congress!

What's happening here is crazy: It's the same as if Congress authorized $X for a city bridge and Trump comes in and holds up the funds demanding a cut/kickback of the tolls.

The Constitution does not give the Executive the power to arbitrarily modify what Congress has authorized, converting between grants versus loans versus stock-purchases versus plain extortion.

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1. rnrn ◴[23 Aug 25 13:22 UTC] No.44995799[source]▶
I thought this too, but after reading some of the other comments here I read some of the text of the chips act and the 2021 NDAA (mostly section 9902) and AFAICT Congress appropriated a bunch of money for financial assistance for semiconductor companies and gave the Dept of Commerce the authority to determine the funding type.

That they were grants instead of any other instrument appears to be a Biden Commerce decision, not a congressional one.

I’m no lawyer and could certainly be missing something i the law that says it has to be grants but from what I see it looks like figuring out what to do the the money was pretty much delegated to dept of commerce with limited direction about eligibility and review criteria.