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Comment by GDC7 | Hacker News Reader

Oh it's a long story...where to begin?

It all started in 2006 when the economy grew at 6.6% in Q3 and the Fed still claimed that not tightening was a great insurance policy.

Fast forward:

Subprime crisis

Bernanke says "subprime is contained"

Subprime was not contained

Wheels come off in 2008

Everybody runs away like chicken with their heads cut off

Everybody goes back to Bernanke asking for solutions

Bernanke proposes QE, something that he claims "works in practice, but not in theory"

Slow recovery

More panic

More QE

Temper Tantrum

More QE

13 years of regular QE

2 years of QE on steroids due to COVID

Asset prices only go up

Everything bubble

And here we get to the current scenario where scam companies are worth trillions and Docusign is worth 50B

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My experience is that most people, intelligent, thoughtful people included, simply do not appreciate how absolutely effective the above has been at distorting realty. This is probably due to our collective adjustment reactions to wave after wave of insanity. It has come to the point that we are living in a financial clown world and the show must go on so we are now pretending collectively that it all ok. Like that after school special where nobody talks about the big obvious problem that dad is beating up mom, nope we all just sit at the table for dinner and pretend everything is normal. Problem is most are are like the friend visiting and don’t notice a wit of tension in the household. But just wait, the fury will become evident even to you. So many sit there and wax concerned but try to sound rational. No people, it’s clown world there is no rationality.

What scam companies are worth trillions?

He thinks Tesla is a complete scam for one thing... Probably not a good idea to spend time on any of his comments.

Scam is the wrong word... Mispriced and intentional pumped would be two more accurate ones.

A company which produces 1% of all global cars is worth more then the companies who produce 90% combined? Sounds legit.

Next you'll be telling me a company which has only shipped 160 trucks to employees is worth 100bn... Oh wait...

Ok now we're in scam territory, Nikola was clearly a scam and overvalued. But it wasn't anywhere near a trillion dollars.

If the original comment was just exaggerating for effect, then fair enough. I was genuinely curious by the possibility of not only one trillion dollar scam company, but many.

Hm ok, well while I don't think Tesla can really be called a scam I definitely think it's overvalued

Enron was not a scam until it was.

I assume you are short selling Tesla then?

Assume what you like

Can we talk about Dogecoin and similar ?

With Dogecoin and friends we're entering scam territory. But really I was curious because it sounded like the GDC7 was suggesting there were multiple trillion-dollar scam companies. The reason I commented was that while I think there are a lot of ridiculously valued companies, I'm not so sure we can consider many of them a "scam".

We could bring up a million shitcoins and scams but then we'd be here all day.

If you really want to chuck a hand grenade at the crypto-cultists ask them to rationalise Tether.

Most of its value comes from the hype of 400k electric charging stations promised by the US, i.e. promise of growth, that attract money, and money attracts money, and free money paid as PPP creates even more money.

One quarter it was going negative on profits, so he pump and dumped crypto to keep it positive and the hype going.

It either produce most of the world's cars or it is going to fall out and I hope we wouldn't be the one facing the consequences, but we will :))

Tesla is a surveillance company. Their product isn't a car in the traditional sense, it's a worldwide video feed of public roads, and complete surveillance of the people with the highest disposable income along with a variety of ways of coercing them into shelling out for upgrades every time they come up with a new shiny.

So don't compare them with toyota, compare them with apple and it makes a lot more sense. All the top tech companies work the same way. Vendor and ecosystem lockin, forced depreciation of old products that aren't currently extracting profit, and selling surveillance.

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