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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

(www.cnbc.com)
607 points givemeethekeys | 2 comments | 22 Aug 25 21:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.017s | 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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renewiltord ◴[22 Aug 25 23:18 UTC] No.44991142[source]▶
In the end, it turns out that people didn't dislike Chinese policies of nationalized industries. They only disliked that the Chinese were doing it.

I can't wait for the "I don't think social credit scores are a bad idea. Cancel culture is good actually".

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creato ◴[22 Aug 25 23:52 UTC] No.44991417[source]▶
"People" you are referring to want a level playing field. If the Chinese government is tilting the field, there aren't a lot of good options. You can either watch the Chinese subsidize draining most productive capacity from the rest of the world, erect trade barriers (my preference, but it would require cooperation with other countries, which... ain't gonna happen for a while now), or try to tilt back.
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aurareturn ◴[23 Aug 25 02:52 UTC] No.44992654[source]▶
If you truly think Chinese subsidies are artificially depressing prices, then just buy Chinese goods to take Chinese’s people’s hard earned money.
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vlovich123 ◴[23 Aug 25 04:38 UTC] No.44993206[source]▶
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of cornering a market? Sure, uber was offering lower prices subsidized by VCs until taxis were driven off. After the fact they raised prices back up. Or what Amazon did with diapers.com? It is not wise to let your geopolitical foe gut the productive capability of your economy. It’s how America took over dominance from the UK by taking over the high tech business of the day back then (textiles).

It’s fine for the consumer in the short term but a flawed long term strategy.

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1. aurareturn ◴[24 Aug 25 07:24 UTC] No.45002097[source]▶
Uber lost $31b. They make about $4b/year in profit now. It'll take them 7 years to make it all back assuming they don't grow anymore.

$31b put into S&P 500 would have netted investors are more in return over the last 15 years. So honestly it was a bad deal.

And let's not forget that Uber can be killed by self driving cars.

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2. vlovich123 ◴[24 Aug 25 15:57 UTC] No.45005235[source]▶
That’s like claiming that Amazon is a bad investment because they weren’t reliably profitable until 2015 and only had their first profitable year in 2003. The part you’d be missing is that they were reinvesting all their profits into the revenue growth machine. These past few years is actually the switchover point for Uber when growth seems to have leveled off more.

It’ll take them 7 years to make it back and keep generating for even longer. Whether or not self driving cars kills Uber will depend on how well or poorly they’ve diversified their business model.

But headwinds and risks are true of any business. You’re missing the larger point I’m making that investors and business people frequently do loss leading as a tactic to kill off competitors and once the competitors are gone they can milk the market. Whether or not it’s an effective strategy doesn’t matter - can companies are not coming back no matter what happens to Uber. Similarly, local industries that China kills won’t come back no matter what happens with China.

Also as a final nit - the data I’ve looked up suggests they only lost 16B since founding. This halves the payback time to a few years and then every year after that is many billions in profit.