G.E. Is Accused of $38B Fraud
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4286597-markopolos-short-re...
edit: added value
If he shorts the stock, he has a bias. If he doesn't short the stock, different people would probably be saying "if he is so certain, why isn't he putting his own money in?".
At least the logical outcome makes sense; everyone in the financial press should be considered untrustworthy at all times on all topics.
When GE people go on CNBC and make all kinds of carefully lawyered statements that sound like denials but aren't actually categorical denials, they're also getting paid.
The GE people get paid whether or not their statements hold up over time. Given that, I'd put more weight on Markopolos because he actually has skin in the game.
There's no reason to think Markopolos won't profit if the accusations are bogus, because he profits from the market reaction, not from the actual merits of the accusations. In fact, his experience in the past tells him that even if his accusations are true, they're unlikely to result in successful investigations, and if his accusations are untrue, he's unlikely to face consequences for it.
Also, whilst the people who go on CNBC to defend GE are paid to go on, they're paid a fixed salary, they generally aren't particularly incentivized to boost the stock price.
The strength of the market reaction is contingent upon the strength of his claims.
The Myth of the Rational Market by Justin Fox
It is my understanding that Markopolos was paid to evaluate the company, and not to deliver a particular result.
His money is in providing the results of his investigation, thus being paid when he delivers them.
There is no need to come up with convoluted conspiracy theories. Occam's razor and all, and also the fact that GE is more than capable of hiring lawyers to defend their bookkeeping.
So it stems from a dispute between the opinions of "fraud hunter" Harry Markopolos and the professionals employed by GE.
This seems to be a "Everything Everywhere Is Securities Fraud" situation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
Ford really should have declared bankruptcy like General Motors did then in the preceding crisis, and it was only through a miracle of financial engineering that they somehow managed to avoid it. To this day, you can still see the incredible burden it carries on the company.
Ford didn’t go bankrupt then, but they basically had to figuratively sell their soul in order to avoid doing so.
Ford's relentless pursuit of cost cutting led them to keep many vehicles for far too long. Their former bread-and-butter model, the Ford Explorer, went 9 years in between platform changes. The ford Flex has been on the same platform for 11 years. The Ford Focus went 8 years without a change of platform.
Further, their cost-cutting initiatives have earned many of their vehicles poor reliability marks to such an extent that Ford Focus sales are less than half of what they were in just 4 short years.
I might add that Ford went upscale in price on a lot of its vehicles without an attendant increase in upscale features. The Ford Explorer sells about half of what it used to during its peak.
Selling off car companies was a good idea. However, poor products, poor product planning, poor reliability, and a spineless vision of the future has put them into a bad spot with no real light on the very distant horizon.
It is very very naive to say that all the complexity in finance is necessary. It is not. Not. at. all.
We are human and as such we build many things that are needlessly complex. Much of out software suffers from such baggage. If humans can cause such systems to be overly complex, then humans can cause such a thing to happen in the finance industry as well.
You see overcomplexity in all systems that are typically built by more than one human from tax law to software all the way to: finance.
You will note that such complexity in the things humans construct is especially prevalent in things that are abstracted away from the physical world as the physical world is bound by laws that place a huge energy cost on what a person can create. When things are abstract that cost is a magnitude lower. Software and finance are vicious examples that utterly annihilate your statement.
It's all adhoc design with no theory. If finance consisted of a bunch of axioms and theorems then we could find a algorithm that can optimize such a system.
However finance like software is in the domain of design. As such we construct and create such systems with no quantitative formula for creating better systems or even defining what a better system is... What formula can quantitatively measure how much better capitalism is vs. communism? Or Vice versa. None.
So you, are basically fully correct. A rewrite without formal theory on what is a better "finance" is like throwing darts blind folded. We only know the previous iteration didn't work, and we have no idea if the new design will function. In terms of probability, likely it will be nowhere near the perfection we strive for.
Also I never commented on "restarting finance." I said no such thing. I commented on high level issues that are obvious like over complexity.
That being said you can very well comment on aspects of medicine even though you aren't an expert. Medical costs and quality are out of control in the united states. Surely as a consumer of medicine you can comment on it even though you're not an expert. Would you leave all the "experts" to exclusively control the costs? Well doing so results in the broken medical system we have in the United States today. A three day hospital stay in the US costs 30,000k. Medical experts charge you this because they know the cost better. Is it logical to defer to them? No. Not being an expert on something does not preclude your judgement from being correct. You also have the advantage of not being as biased as the expert.
What about it is more complex than necessary?
Tax law is part of finance and is a system that is overly complex. If tax law contains loop holes then by definition it is too complex. Loop holes are created unintentionally when a creator of law adds a rule to a system. The loop hole is an instance of complexity added unintentionally and is therefore an example of unneeded complexity within the system. If a system has unneeded complexity it is then over-complex.
Do you want more? A forensic expert was used to dig through the complexity of the GE fraud. There are plenty of examples there as usually such experts are necessary when a system is complex and in the case where complexity is deliberately created to hide fraud: overly complex.
What I can point to is that when humans create systems that abstract we tend to make things unnecessarily complex. Our software is a perfect example. Statistically if most of the software we create suffers from this phenomenon how likely is it that our finance (which is also a very abstract system) suffers from it as well? Answer: Very likely.
If you want specific examples. The sub prime mortgage crisis was caused by a finance concept called a CDO that was so complex people could hide garbage assets away from view. Tax law (which is also a part of finance) is so complex corporations can find unintended loopholes that benefit them and harm the economy.
It just sounds like you are stretching a bit - you've admitted that you're not a finance guy so it seems likely that you don't fully understand the reasons for why financial systems might be as complex as they are.
Sure, there probably are some areas that could be structured more efficiently (guessing here) but it also seems just as likely that there are many areas that are complex but for good reason.
For example the theory on how banking came about or how we use paper cash to represent wealth was literally an organic concept that slowly came to be over time. People needed to store grain, so someone formed a grain storage business that gave out paper certificates as proof of storage... people started trading those certificates as if it was cash... the storage business owner realized he could just print out those certificates and loan it out... hence the creation of banking and loaning...
That's the basic idea behind how banking formed organically. It is complex not by design but by evolution.
If you studied machine learning and genetic algorithms you'll know that natural selection and random walk does not always lead to the most optimal minimum and your walk will spend a lot of time wandering the entire space of possibilities before converging on a possible sub optimal solution. Finance is such a walk. Random designs eliminated by natural selection. We are more than likely in the middle of this random walk heading towards a solution that like all of our software is more than likely a sub optimal minimum.
Nobody needs to understand finance completely to know this. They just need an understanding of the properties of the real world in general. Finance IS overly complex you and I don't need to be experts in finance to know this.
Seriously, I don’t know why. Because I’m human? And humans do illogical things?
This is fallacious. Just because something can be so doesn't mean that it is so.
I agree with your position but your reasoning is horrible.
Here's a better way to word it.
IF humans create many forms complex and abstract systems which is basically a bunch of rules and concepts put together into a category called software... and if most of these systems end up being over-complex....
Then if we do the same thing of creating a bunch of abstract rules and concepts into a system and give it a different name... lets call it "finance" then by probability the same thing will likely happen again.
There, let me know if you get it. Apologies for being vague.
Basically humans tend to create overcomplicated systems when given an abstract universe to play with, finance and software are both such an abstraction. It is both an intuitive property and a statistical one as I have shown above.
> most of these systems end up being over-complex
You've provided no evidence for this, and I give you the entirety of mathematics as a counterexample considering it is a quantifiably as simple as possible at every step.
Either way, I'm talking about the worlds outside of mathematics and logic. Science, statistics and design. This world is rife with over-complexity. I can't prove it, but it should be intuitive.
If your a normal person you can most likely think of many, many examples where systems created by people are seemingly over-complex. If you can imagine this, then I would say for this informal dialogue that is pretty good evidence for the case that overly-complex systems are abundant.
I am 100% aware of what you disagree with. You don’t disagree with me, you disagree with my reasoning, and what I am doing is lending more detail to my reasoning so that it is more clear the foundations it is built off of. My last statement served only to do this, it is not written to give you advice.
You gave a counter example, I stated how your counter example is not what I am referring to. Since i have no scientific proof or statistical evidence proving my point I made an appeal to your intuition. Intuitively if you can imagine many abstract systems we design to be overly complex and if such systems are abundant then it is very likely finance which is also an abstract system we designed holds such a property. Is this reasoning flawed or not?
Actually to be honest I think people are voting me down because I used the words: “I have no idea what’s going on” then proceeded to say that someone was completely wrong. Credentials trump logic in human psychology as nobody believes the arguments of someone who has claims he has no idea what’s going on even though his arguments are sound. I think it’s abundantly clear now that I do have greater than expected understanding then what my initial statement implied.
> Kurzweil has an unfortunate tendency to think that being brilliant at computer science means every other specialty can be treated as a special case of computer science. He thinks that the genome contains all the information needed to grow a brain, therefore it is a problem of Kolmogorov complexity and computer science, therefore we will be able to simulate one on computers by 2030. Experts on the evolution of brains think Kurzweil does not understand biology and thinks the genome works like a blueprint, whereas most qualified biologists think the right analogy is a recipe that takes as a starting assumption the informational content of the rest of life on Earth. In the case of the human brain, it literally cannot physically develop correctly except in the presence of a human culture (e.g., see Feral child). This leads to a certain exasperation on the part of those who actually know what they're talking about.
Literally tell me how this is wrong.
You're not wrong but you're not making any measurable claims. If you want to understand what complexity is "necessary" you should define necessary a bit better for the purpose of discussion. If necessary means "required for the individual stakeholders in the financial enterprise to achieve their goals" that is a productive starting point. If necessary means "required so people are happy" that is a quagmire.
That being said if finance serves to achieve certain goals I assume necessarily complex means a minimal set of rules and concepts that serve to achieve said goals. Overly complex means a system with way more rules and concepts necessary to achieve a certain goal.
I cannot pinpoint definitively what the overall goal of finance is. Like how it is with everyone else, the notion is vague and complex. I would love to make meAsurable claims but it is hard to do so in a topic that is relatively unmeasurable. What is the measure of complexity in finance? I don’t know. The starting point established here is the best I can come up with. If you can do better by all means do so, I would love to hear more on the science and statistical measurements of complexity in finance.
Just like a Python script seems magical to the layman.
Loopholes don't exist because Law is too complex. They either exist on purpose or because lawyers will hack the letter of the law in their favor, not unlike many of us on HN would do.
Your claims are just shallow, I'm sorry to say – you need to understand Finance or Law before you can really have a meaningful opinion on it. Just like Linus doesn't care what a script kiddy thinks of his kernel. Sorry if that seems blunt but hope the analogies show the merit in this reply.
In other replies to this thread I have provided my inductive reasoning for why I believe finance is overly complex. To your reply I will provide some counter examples since you cite yourself as an example.
If finance wasn’t over complex why does this investigative report require career forensic accountants to dig out the details?
If finance reports weren’t over complex why was GE able to hide fraud by simply changing the formatting of their reports once in a while?
I’m willing to bet even a finance expert can’t uncover fraud by looking at GE finance statements. They are so complex you need a forensics expert to find it.
Another example of over complexity is loop holes in tax law. Loop holes aren’t created intentionally. They are created unintentionally. How? Because complexity of tax law makes the creator of a loop hole unaware that he is creating it. The law maker creates a law to improve the system, the loop hole is created as an unintended consequence hidden by over complexity/
My claims are shallow this much is true. But your claim is equally shallow. Analogies and examples are shallow. If we want to move forward one of us needs a quantifiable measure of over complexity and statistical analysis of this on finance. If neither of us can offer this then we are at a draw.
Because this particular company has chosen to produce incredibly complicated financial statements due to a variety of reasons. It's the exception to the rule.
Just like the Underhanded C contest[0] doesn't describe the entire universe of computer programming
And Tax Law doesn't represent the entirety of the body of Law that governs a country. Law is an entirely different beast because there isn't a BDFL who can refactor the existing code into something meaningful, and there is no unit testing to ensure the any refactored law will work as intended won't have terrible adverse effects. Legislating is a social experiment, and if you've ever been part of a group project you know how hard that can be with a handful of people, let alone hundreds of representatives or millions of voters.
My claims are just as deep as they need to be to discredit yours. I'm happy to engage in a deeper debate, but you haven't invited us to one yet. Right now this is just noise, particularly considering that you choose to take the stance of someone who thinks they're right even though they admit to being a layman, instead of asking genuine questions driven by intellectual curiosity and the desire to become better informed.
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The fact that a career with the title "forensic accountant" exists to decode said financial statements mean that there are many many exceptions to the rule. So many exceptions must exist to support such an occupation that it is viable to say finance is overly complex.
>And Tax Law doesn't represent the entirety of the body of Law that governs a country. Law is an entirely different beast because there isn't a BDFL who can refactor the existing code into something meaningful, and there is no unit testing to ensure the any refactored law will work as intended won't have terrible adverse effects. Legislating is a social experiment, and if you've ever been part of a group project you know how hard that can be with a handful of people, let alone hundreds of representatives or millions of voters.
Tax law doesn't represent the entire body of law but it does represent a significant portion of finance. If that significant portion of finance is as you say a "social experiment" that results in over complexity then tax law is a good example of a part of finance that is overly complex.
>Just like the Underhanded C contest[0] doesn't describe the entire universe of computer programming
To describe a universe of things you need quantified statistical evidence about the complexity of the system as a whole. I have offered none. You have also offered none. The reason is no such evidence exists. This argument makes no movement until someone can offer such evidence as no one can make a definitive statement about finance until such statistics and quantifiable measurements are offered.
>My claims are just as deep as they need to be to discredit yours. I'm happy to engage in a deeper debate, but you haven't invited us to one yet. Right now this is just noise, particularly considering that you choose to take the stance of someone who thinks they're right even though they admit to being a layman, instead of asking genuine questions driven by intellectual curiosity and the desire to become better informed.
Your claims offer nothing. You didn't even respond to all my points. This last paragraph is subtle underhanded insult that comments on me personally rather than the argument at hand.
I have said this to absolutely no one else in this thread except you. Due to the underhanded subtle personal insults you have stated against me in your last paragraph... you are not invited to engage in deeper debate with me, you are not invited to respond to me and you are encouraged to leave. I will not respond to you anymore. You will note that I have done this to No one else in this thread except you.
> The fact that a career with the title "forensic accountant" exists to decode said financial statements mean that there are many many exceptions to the rule. So many exceptions must exist to support such an occupation that it is viable to say finance is overly complex.
False. It does not follow from the existence of "forensic accountants" that finance is _overly_ complex. At best, you can argue there are certain situations that require a closer look. Forensic Accountants are hired when the words "bankruptcy" or "fraud" are in play. For nearly all other purposes, any Finance-savvy professional can read a public company's SEC disclosures like their 10-Q or 10-Ks. The double-entry accounting system has existed since the year 1340, at least, if not earlier[0]
> > And Tax Law doesn't represent the entirety of the body of Law that governs a country. Law is an entirely different beast because there isn't a BDFL who can refactor the existing code into something meaningful, and there is no unit testing to ensure the any refactored law will work as intended won't have terrible adverse effects. Legislating is a social experiment, and if you've ever been part of a group project you know how hard that can be with a handful of people, let alone hundreds of representatives or millions of voters.
> Tax law doesn't represent the entire body of law but it does represent a significant portion of finance.
No, it doesn't. The world of Finance follows GAAP or IFRS standards, not the Tax code. I know the absolute minimum about taxes and still carry on valuing companies on a daily basis. I just now how to account for differences between cash and GAAP taxes.
> If that significant portion of finance is as you say a "social experiment" that results in over complexity then tax law is a good example of a part of finance that is overly complex.
I said legislation is a social experiment, not Finance. Tax Law isn't really a significant "part of of Finance", even if it is complex. GE is not being accused of tax fraud, as far as I know.
> > Just like the Underhanded C contest[0] doesn't describe the entire universe of computer programming
> To describe a universe of things you need quantified statistical evidence about the complexity of the system as a whole. I have offered none. You have also offered none. The reason is no such evidence exists. This argument makes no movement until someone can offer such evidence as no one can make a definitive statement about finance until such statistics and quantifiable measurements are offered.
You're the one making the claim that Finance is overly complex, so the burden of proof is on you, not me.
Incidentally, in making that claim, you're implying there's a "simpler" form of Finance out there, at our reach, that we choose not to employ. That's quite an extraordinary claim, and unless you can point to what exactly is this better form of Finance, I'm inclined to disagree with your hypothesis.
As a matter of fact, if you believe that there are enough actors whose incentive are to make Finance as easy to understand as possible (professors, practitioners, the FASB and IASB members who are in charge of GAAP and IFRS rules, etc) suggests that the current state of Finance is empirical evidence that no better system is known to us. We might discover improvements as we keep investing time and resources, but as of right this second, our reality is the best we could make of it.
> > My claims are just as deep as they need to be to discredit yours. I'm happy to engage in a deeper debate, but you haven't invited us to one yet. Right now this is just noise, particularly considering that you choose to take the stance of someone who thinks they're right even though they admit to being a layman, instead of asking genuine questions driven by intellectual curiosity and the desire to become better informed.
> Your claims offer nothing.
Again, you're the one making claims, so the burden of proof is on you, not me.
> You didn't even respond to all my points.
It's not my job to respond to all your points, particularly when so many of them can be self-answered through some minimal amount of training and research. There are countless resources out there for you to understand Finance and Law. Go read on this stuff before making wild claims and people will have more patient to engage in meaningful conversation.
> This last paragraph is subtle underhanded insult that comments on me personally rather than the argument at hand.
Hardly. That's just how you choose to look at it. I'm giving you actual constructive criticism: (a) you shouldn't make baseless claims on stuff you don't understand and (b) if you admit to not being an expert in something, perhaps consider opting for a more inquisitive rather accusative tone.
> I have said this to absolutely no one else in this thread except you. Due to the underhanded subtle personal insults you have stated against me in your last paragraph... you are not invited to engage in deeper debate with me, you are not invited to respond to me and you are encouraged to leave. I will not respond to you anymore. You will note that I have done this to No one else in this thread except you.
I don't need your invitation to reply, sorry, and you can't "invite me to leave". This is not your house, it's the internet. Also, I wanted to make sure anyone stumbling upon this thread in the future would understand where I'm coming from, so for that purpose alone I wanted to set the record straight. Whether you did any of the above to anyone else is entirely irrelevant.
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0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping_syste...
You don't need an invitation to insult me either yet you chose to be highly impolite and insulting. The only record a reader needs to know is that we were engaged in a debate then you suddenly chose to comment on my character and insult me. That is why this debate is over and why I will not respond to any of your points. You can continue to respond despite the fact that your responses are not welcome but the only person you are debating now is yourself.
Many people on this thread highly disagree with me. You are the only one that insulted me and therefore you will be the only one I will not be responding directly too.
It's not an insult to be stupid. Yet we don't go around commenting about peoples intelligence or what they know or don't know do we? Let's be utterly clear, you made a rude and insulting comment about my intelligence. This is not a choice I made on how to perceive your statement, it is a choice YOU made to be rude. You made the additional choice to feign ignorance and play word games like this.
Games are for an audience, to help others decide who is or who isn't a winner in a game of wits. Unfortunately this is the internet, I don't care what another person thinks. If your goal is to communicate with me or convince me about something rather than play a game or perception you have failed completely.
There is ZERO possibility that I will address any of your points. There is zero possibility of any meaningful debate between you and I once you made the choice to be rude.
One of the properties of complex systems [1] is emergent properties; the individuals may be simple but when they interact with other individuals, the overall system exhibits behavior that may no longer be simple due to the permutations and stochasticity. There is a complexity that is inherent. In complex systems, the whole is not the sum of its parts.
Take 2 people who trade with each other (barter). The interaction is fairly simple. Now blow that up to a village. And then to a city. Then to a megacity. And suppose the individuals are more or less autonomous (we call this freedom). And they react to things differently (feedback). And then add randomness and variation. Now you have an complex economy. Then they want to do things bigger than any individual is able to pay for, so the stock market came about. Then add the effect of the environment which can harm many facets of human endeavor, now people want insurance against crop failure, shipwrecks, etc. Now you have derivatives (though arguably the world hobbled along just fine without derivatives for a while).
Complexity in finance like other things has two components: irreducible complexity and reducible complexity. If I had to guess (and I could be wrong), I would say the irreducible complexity part of finance is much bigger than the reducible complexity.
Not to say there isn't any reducible complexity -- exotic derivatives etc. are a product of pure financial engineering and one wonders if we could do without these.
But many parts of the finance system are necessary complexity, or at least necessary to power the modern economy. Else, we'd be stuck in the early agrarian world.
You also break complexity down into two different concepts which I agree probably exists but we don't have an axiomatic theory of the complexity of finance so there's really no way for anyone to say definitively what is reducible and what is irreducible. For example, Which is irreducible... communism or capitalism? None of this is properly defined.
But the OP's claim of necessarily complex is completely wrong.
The spectrum of under complexity and over complexity spans an entire gradient similar to a number line. While Necessarily complexity sits on a single zero dimensional point on that number line. Referencing this number line, By probability Overly complex and underly complex is infinitely more likely than necessarily complex.
Literally GE is using complexity of their accounting statements to hide fraud. That is a case of over complexity in the world of finance. That is not a necessity. You cannot get more definitive than this. That's why I was able to use such hard language because it's literally completely true.
I'll make a point about technological complexity. It's not necessarily a uniform good. Financial engineering enabled by computers has allowed the finance industry (spit) to grow threefold in 40 years. That's of course very nice for people in that industry. For instance the finance code monkeys that are angry and downv0ting you have done extremely well.
A point, remove computers and computer machinery and the finance industry from US GDP and growth is zero to negative over those same 40 years. So that complexity has enable a large transfer of wealth from the productive parts of the economy to finance. But the total benefit is negative. And for some sectors massively so.
I'm not a finance code money, never was, not aspiring to be either.
The simple fact that these high-end/custom/complex finance products/services are not cheap but people buy them means that it provides value to some rich investment people. (And they usually know what makes them money.)
Computers made everything grow since there are computers. Every company uses spreadsheets, uses or subcontracts the use of tax, payroll, healthcare/benefits and accounting software. Email, telephones (modern telephony is completely computerized), and so on (basically everything nowadays depend in its current form on chips and electricity).
Finance was simply one of the most well suited aspects of the business world to benefit from computerization. So it grew a lot. But naturally we're nowhere near the "end of automation". Software is eating the world, but quite slowly, because the world is complex - as you said, however modeling it and putting some tracking indexes on it and quoting a price can be done well. (This is what MSCI do for example. Benchmark indexes are very crude but generally useful things - and their purpose is exactly to paper over the complexity of real life, of "real industry" for business analysis purposes.)
Note that natural selection can function at a higher level of abstraction as well. Not just at the biological level, but at the ecosystem level as well. Ecosystems that overload or are unbalanced are killed off. It's not a coincidence that most ecosystems still around in the world today are running in a steady state of equilibrium.
We can bring natural selection to an even higher level of abstraction and consider human civilization. Only the rules, cultures and behaviors that aid with the survival of the civilization live on to form even more complex systems of civilization. The global civilization that enshrouds the world today is the result of such evolution.
Which brings of full circle to FINANCE. The components rules and systems of finance are not some grand design deliberately created by an architect. The concepts you see today were formed organically and under the restrictions of natural selection.
Take banking. The theory is banking formed when people needed a place to store an abundant resource like grain. A business owner opened a grain shop and gave out paper certificates that represented grain storage. The certificates soon became so abundant that people basically began trading the certificates as cash, hence the formation of paper money. The storage owners realizing this now realize they can print these certificates out of thin air and loan it out to people. Hence the creation of loans and mortgages...
You can see how finance forms organically and the concepts that work continue to thrive while the systems that break are eliminated by natural selection.
Like biology over time this leads to more and more complex systems that somehow just work. This is the origin of complexity in finance. You will note that like biology such complexity is completely random and unnecessary like the platypus, the kiwi or the kangaroo. Finance is littered with things like the kangaroo.
Don't ask a finance guy why finance is complex. This question is better served to you by an anthropologist or a historian. The finance guy is concerned with how to out compete the other finance guy, he is not concerned with the how and the why behind the entire system.
The fact that they put up a gefraud.com and they call them "GEnron" is interesting.
Let's also start with which hedge fund it might be.
It matters if people are looking to sell the stock. Existing owners can also plummet a stock by selling even if there are no shorts.
> It doesn't matter who is shorting etc
to mean that short activity had no consequence.
What you're seeing with BYND is not directly because of the act of short-selling, but the knock-on consequences and market dynamics. In part that has to do with the fact that BYND has very few of the total shares floated, all available shares were shorted (around 50% of float), and what little organic retail demand for their shares existed was enough to move the price materially. Eventually the market cap crossed the threshold for inclusion in the Russel 2000 index, forcing ETFs tracking the Russel to buy BYND shares too. This all caused the short-sellers to get liquidated, forcing them to buy at whatever price was available. This in turn liquidated more shorts. And so on. That was a textbook short squeeze.
IMO the reason it didn't go all the way up to the moon is that brokerages were charging 140% APR to short the shares, so we were seeing consistent turnover in the short positions.
The answer to "Who would buy BYND shares for $250" is "the trader and/or index fund who has no choice." It's worth more than 25% of the companies in the S&P 500, but only has $87M in revenues and 200 employees in a warehouse in LA with a handful of pea patties.
(1) You borrow shares from your broker, and agree to return the same number of shares at some point in the future without regard for what they'll be worth then.
(2) You then immediately sell those shares on the market. Increased selling does cause downward pressure on shares as a result, in the same way that increased buying pressure pushes shares up.
(3) Eventually, you re-purchase shares for what is ideally a lower price and return them to the brokerage. Your profit (or loss) is the difference in price between when you short-sold and when you re-purchased, minus the fees your brokerage charged you to borrow the shares.
Where it gets a little messy is if the stock price goes up, you run out of margin, and your brokerage forces you to purchase shares to cover your position. Then you're buying them at whatever price you can get them. This in turn moves the stock further up -- far enough, and it may cause other short-sellers to get liquidated too, and so on. The stock may go parabolic like BYND and TLRY. This is called a short squeeze.