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You're right. It's not really money printing, at least not directly. Only banks can print money.

What these recent deals do is inflate asset prices by making (future) revenues appear higher or perhaps just more certain than they really are.

Assets can be used as collateral for loans. If someone were to use their AMD shares as collateral for a loan at a commercial bank (not a margin loan), that would be money printing and you could print more of it today than before the deal was announced.

> because it’s backed by something

If I finance a car backed by hopes and dreams, I'd be driving real good.

Backed by what?

Ownership in a company.

Compute resources.

So like Bitcoin?

Not the same, since if you buy Bitcoin, you don't have partial ownership of the machines used to mine and also these machines being used for a singular purpose which you cannot change.

It is backed by AMD stockholders, whose stock just got diluted.

It's like in that movie "Social network"

And high end networking gear will always have a buyer, right Nortel?

Lucent agrees: even used, the product will retain 90% of list price because the market has an infinite number of VC-backed buyers.