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Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 3:26:20 AM

DeviantlyD

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An interesting article, of a sort.

http://business.financialpost.com/2011/07/28/u-s-balance-now-less-than-apple-cash/

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 3:38:06 AM

RapierFugue

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DeviantlyD

An interesting article, of a sort.

Of a sort; the 2 financial situations aren't even remotely similar, and (bizarrely) the article even acknowledges this(!).

"Of course, the numbers aren’t directly comparable" ... no shit, Sherlock :)

So in other words what they should have written was "this is just a spurious puff piece for Apple, written by a lazy journo with time on his/her hands ... it's a fun comparison, but it's like comparing apples (geddit!) with ... bags of cement*.

Apple’s wealth is hardly surprising though, once you take a look at their pricing structure. The miracle is how their marketing division continues to grow a market that’s being so egregiously overcharged.

*I've had to come up with a replacement for "comparing apples with oranges" because I read a piece a while back, from a jokey but factually based article, that demonstrated that, in the majority of normally used ways to test comparators, apples and oranges were actually very similar, therefore the saying was a poor one. Curses! :)

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 4:04:55 AM

DeviantlyD

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If you put in the words from the thread title into a search engine, you'll see that there was more than one person writing about this, so it is not written by one "lazy journo with time on his/her hands". And the point of the article is that...oh never mind.

Cheer up. One day it will get better for you. :D

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 4:20:02 AM

RapierFugue

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DeviantlyD

If you put in the words from the thread title into a search engine, you'll see that there was more than one person writing about this, so it is not written by one "lazy journo with time on his/her hands". And the point of the article is that...oh never mind.

Cheer up. One day it will get better for you. :D

I was going to draw you a nice little diagram, explaining how you missed my point by about 10,000 miles, together with the fact that these are not the times for spurious, inaccurate financial journalism, but the WSBK racing's started, so just pretend you got your arse kicked and we'll call it quits :)

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 4:32:30 AM

Aneirin

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Could it be Apple is successful whereas the US government is not ?

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 4:33:05 AM

DeviantlyD

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You had a point? :P

As for pretending...nope.

Edited for (hopefully) a little more clarity. It's in the wee hours of the morning here and I'm overly tired. ;)

< Message edited by DeviantlyD -- 7/31/2011 4:56:51 AM >

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 4:48:30 AM

Termyn8or

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"but it's like comparing apples (geddit!) with ... bags of cement*. "

No matter what, I think that was an excellent choice of words.

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 9:30:11 AM

DomImus

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Technically, I have more cash than the US government. Part of what they have is mine, too. Big deal.

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 9:33:26 AM

lockedaway

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DeviantlyD

An interesting article, of a sort.

http://business.financialpost.com/2011/07/28/u-s-balance-now-less-than-apple-cash/

This comes as a surprise to you people? Really?

The Rothchild family had more money than the U.S., the Rockefellar family and the Morgan family, perhaps the Gould and Vanderbilt families as well....have more money than the U.S. The U.S. went bankrupt around 1898 and J.P. Morgan lent the country 500 million dollars and insisted he get paid back in gold. Has anyone heard of the Bildenburg Group?

This world is run by families...not governments. We have meaningless figure heads....not leaders.

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 9:44:24 AM

Sanity

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Are bureaucrats and politicians supposed to be better than families somehow?

If so, then how?

Personally I would rather have the opportunity to start an Apple and become wealthy (or even use one of their products) than give government the power and the charge to keep everyone poor

quote:

ORIGINAL: lockedaway
This comes as a surprise to you people? Really?

The Rothchild family had more money than the U.S., the Rockefellar family and the Morgan family, perhaps the Gould and Vanderbilt families as well....have more money than the U.S. The U.S. went bankrupt around 1898 and J.P. Morgan lent the country 500 million dollars and insisted he get paid back in gold. Has anyone heard of the Bildenburg Group?

This world is run by families...not governments. We have meaningless figure heads....not leaders.

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 9:49:56 AM

lockedaway

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity

Are bureaucrats and politicians supposed to be better than families somehow?

If so, then how?

Personally I would rather have the opportunity to start an Apple and become wealthy (or even use one of their products) than give government the power and the charge to keep everyone poor

quote:

ORIGINAL: lockedaway
This comes as a surprise to you people? Really?

The Rothchild family had more money than the U.S., the Rockefellar family and the Morgan family, perhaps the Gould and Vanderbilt families as well....have more money than the U.S. The U.S. went bankrupt around 1898 and J.P. Morgan lent the country 500 million dollars and insisted he get paid back in gold. Has anyone heard of the Bildenburg Group?

This world is run by families...not governments. We have meaningless figure heads....not leaders.

It is not that the bureaucrats and politicians are better. Just like the bureaucrat is the stooge to the larger government, the government is the stooge to the wealthiest families. The top of the power chain is not a president, king or czar. It is a man or a family that is the king maker. That FAMILY can't govern the populace directly...the government does that. The government was not established to serve the FAMILY, but that is how it has become world wide and certainly in the U.S. So people shouldn't be so surprised to learn that there are families and businesses with more money than the U.S.A.

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 9:57:04 AM

Edwynn

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quote:

ORIGINAL: RapierFugue
So in other words what they should have written was "this is just a spurious puff piece for Apple, written by a lazy journo with time on his/her hands ... it's a fun comparison, but it's like comparing apples (geddit!) with ... bags of cement*.

If you might allow me to disagree with you in detail by way of agreement in spirit ...

Unfortunately the media are far from lazy when it comes to putting every resource to pursuit of the inconsequential, the irrelevant, the non-germane, etc., as distraction to the actual consequences of a multitude of either misguided or overtly self-serving decisions elsewhere in our society.

< Message edited by Edwynn -- 7/31/2011 10:00:17 AM >

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 11:32:23 AM

Moonhead

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity

Are bureaucrats and politicians supposed to be better than families somehow?

If so, then how?

Personally I would rather have the opportunity to start an Apple and become wealthy (or even use one of their products) than give government the power and the charge to keep everyone poor.

I'd suggest you look into the extent to which the home computer boom which made Apple (despite "Big" Job's incompetence as a business manager) was a result of all the money your evil restrictive Government ploughed into the nascent computer industry in the '50s and '60s.

The (shit) Apple, Apple II, (very shit) Apple III and Macintosh wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the creation of a business climate where the company that manufactured them could buy slightly crap microprocessors dirt cheap in the late '70s, and the reasons for that were mostly down to the evil Federal government underwriting companies who made that shit so they could have the thinky bits for ICBMs, the space programme and various other electronic schmutter the Feds thought were good ideas.

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RE: Apple has more cash than the US government - 7/31/2011 1:03:55 PM

Termyn8or

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"This world is run by families...not governments. We have meaningless figure heads....not leaders. "

I'm surprised someone haven't come out with that fairy tale list of the richest people in the world. I had to explain the concept of old money in a thread not too long ago. When a wealthy family has been inheriting gold since before the time of Christ, it's not declared anywhere.

Which brings me to questons about what you said :

"The U.S. went bankrupt around 1898 and J.P. Morgan lent the country 500 million dollars and insisted he get paid back in gold."

In what form of specie did he make that loan ? Was it in the form of a bank draft, currency or actual gold ? Has it been paid back ? Just to give an idea how people are misled about this old money, from where did it come ? What's more if he got paid back in a half billion in gold back then, try to fathom what that gold would be worth today and that'll give an idea of REAL money.

Where did he get it ? Was there even that much US currency in circulation at the time ? That's some real fucking money when you can loan out a half a billion, and certainly that was not every dime he had.

But people don't want to believe me when I say that there are people who could buy and sell Bill Gates with pocket change. You have graciously provided a good example. Think about five hundred million in gold at the turn of the twentieth century, now hopefully people will realize that every fact in the world is not public. Poor babies are going to lose all their illusion finding out that they don't know everything.

If Morgan made that loan in anything but gold, and then got paid back in gold, he would not even have to charge interest to make a nice bundle eh. Interesting to note that such people think in the long term, multi-generationally. They are taught from early on that the wealth that they inherit is of great value, greater than money because it equals power.

How could I possibly know such a thing ? Because if it were not true they would not be in the position they enjoy now.

T^T

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