Again, this only affects the shareholders in this case. The employees suffer pretty much the same fate regardless and the consumers, despite what the companies say, tend to lose value when the company is acquired. Think about the mega mergers of the last 20 years, which ended up with better outcomes for consumers and/or employees long term? The shareholders are holding shares of a failing business right? So why should they be entitled to retain their full value?

401k's follow the broader market, WB going to auction is not going to move the entire S&P a significant amount, unless someone had their 401k in WB stock it might dip a couple points but 401k's are not day traders, these are years and decades long investment. We see daily 5-point shifts just on political news of the day. I'm sorry but the "think of the 401k" is a canard to justify any market move no matter how bad. This also at least for my opinion, is part of why the entire 401k experiment has been an intentional failed system to do away with traditional pensions.

The studio count still drops to 4 in a buyout. Now if you told be a new ownership group wants to buy up WB to keep it open as an independent entity I might consider that buyout, but one of the 5 buying eachother? No, sorry, go bankrupt.

Also Netflix was ready to pay like $80B for WB's assets without CNN and TBS and such, you don't think they and Disney and anyone isn't going to buy a piece of the assets? We can also simply regulate that none of the existing entities can purchase more than a certain percent.

I remain unconvinced that Paramount being allowed to fully absorb WB this way is less pain for customers or employees or the economy as a whole, much less much less American society as a whole. You can accuse me of spite all you want but I don't think the advantages promised have ever been seen in the vast majority of the mergers of the last 20 years. Spite backed up with facts isn't really spite is it?

Because the constant mergers and consolidation of industry has also caused thousands of job losses and suffering. The investors are really the only winners. Most of the time it's a PE form that buys up the company, runs it into the ground for short term gains and then the employees and customers are left holding the bag.

I also think it's toxic for our economy that so many businesses start up with the explicit goal of getting bought up by a larger company.

If the company is nearly worthless then you failed at business. Don't over 50% of small business and restaurants die in the first 3 years? Do they get a buyout and make money off the failure?

Let's give capitalism and markets a chance again.

Thank you, see wasn't that easy, next time just take the 10 seconds.

And now I can say, that's a great example of some recent US bad shit. Like this is bad no doubt about it.

It worked for Twitter and CBS so why not here as well I guess.

If I had control of the FTC I would at least do the former, on a blanket basis everywhere.

No mergers, no integration, horizontal or vertical. Go bankrupt. The assets of the company are sold and auctioned off piecemeal. The shareholders get what they get which shouldn't be much as the company is bankrupt which falls on them as much as anyone. With this they get a reward for creating an unsustainable business.

WB was a company that could hit those exceptions though, or be willing to blockbuster budget movies that probably shouldn't have been, best example I can think of is Blade Runner 2049 which is a film I think is fantastic and WB put up like $160M, either through stupidity of love of the product and there was no way that was going to make it's money (and it didn't) but in retrospect we got a great piece of sci-fi out of it. After that even they had enough faith to let him make Dune which I guess paid off for them.

Same for sticking with all the troubles and decades it took for Fury Road to get made.

For sure, to be clear I am not doubting that Trump is doing what he thinks is right for the country, which is his mind I think includes the gladhanding, I mean, he made the deal it has to be in all our interests!.

To that end my point is he's bad at the job, of governance and being President and has bad judgement which is always clouded by revenge against Obama and Biden

Basically by my estimation if he had instead continued with the Chips Act as legislated, like he's supposed to, we'd probably be on a better trajectory than this.

Appreciate you giving us all homework instead of literally doing anything to inform us. For all we know you don't even think vaccination is real and covid was caused by miasma.

There was some sort of... its been so long, whats that stuff called? Oh yeah, legislation! What if there was sort of legislation that funded and support domestic semiconductor fabrication and all the precursor stuff needed for it?

Whats that? There was?

Wonder what happened? Oh yeah, it was picked apart and kind of left to rot. I'm sure gladhanding and handshake deals with the President will be just as good.

Beyond Natcast’s discontinuation (and the apparent termination of the NSTC itself), the Industrial Advisory Committee has been disbanded, the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program is not active,4 the new semiconductor-focused Manufacturing USA Institute has been discontinued, and the Consortium Steering Committee has not met since the change of administration.5 As these activities are mandated by the CHIPS Act, it is not clear how Commerce intends to comply with the Act without substantially increasing staff — at odds with the administration’s push for smaller government. From the outside, the new CHIPS R&D vision appears more like a profit-driven investment program than a provider of core infrastructure benefiting all participants and prioritizing American national and economic security.

https://www.factorysettings.or...

I think you're making his and the AC's point.

1. All of those things were out in the open or completely dis-analogous or as you said, you have to go back 8 decades (Why bring up Ajax from the 50's and not installing the Shah?). Also Tibetan resistance in the 50's which is prior to Nixon's visit and normalizing of relations? Again, this is 8 decades old and during the cold war, can we keep examples to at least post USSR-1991-breakup?

Do you have examples of state-sponsored hacking and election misinformation, social media manipulation on the scale of Russia alone? Do you have evidence of anything in the USA equivalent to Putin's Bears, his multiple clandestine and outside-the-law state funded hacking groups and what they did to Germany, the EU, the US and elsewhere? The NSA/CIA is not equivalent, they already have FSB/GRU/SVR so these are things outside of that.

Also are you saying Putin doesn't deserve demonization? Supporting opposition movements do you mean the Georgians or Ukrainians resisting aggressive invasion? If we can't demonize Putin who can we?

Look this isn't to say America hasn't or doesn't do shady shit but in asking for equivalent evidence to me you are the one who is coming across as completely mad here, I don't think you are aware of what what Russia has been up to the last 12 years alone. Again, if you have evidence, please, come forward.

More like Gay Of Hormuz am I right? Up top!

Good: Nuclear reactors, hey even I can admit that if the policy is working

Bad: Illegal tariffs, illegal forever war in Iran, scuttling his own signature trade deal, "100 deals in 100 days", responsible for 27% of total US debt, stagnating economy, billions in insider trading, illegal bribery schemes via crypto, backdoor dealing to his own family and friends, try to push coal just as hard as nuclear, if not harder, using taxpayer money to cancel renewable energy projects, pardoning 70+ criminal fraudsters who never have to pay back what they owe, approving of his son to open an club that sells access to the president and his cabinet, pardoning all the Jan 6ers, many of whom have re-offended including a dozen or so pedophiles who went on to you know, do more of that. I mean considering his policy on endangered species whale oil might actually be on the table again, it's not out of the question!

But hey, a test reactor did get going and might go into production. That is good, put it on the other side of the scale, I don't think its moving much though.

Elon Musk's company pioneered reusable rockets so we should just accept and embrace that he is a conspiratorial white nationalist who is extremely gullible to conspiracies, spreads heinous ideas to his millions of followers and spent $50+ billion dollars to help turn the election towards Trump, then proceeded to quasi-illegally create his own government agency, illegally accessed records, stole American's data and farmed it to private companies, tried to illegally commandeer a Federal building and then "took a chainsaw" to one of America's most successful soft-power institutions because he got brain broken by Twitter memes?

Oh and he's a gigantic awkward goober whose employees cringe when he's around and has skin thinner than Christmas tissue paper? Oh and hyper-loop was a scam and there still isn't a sub $30k Tesla.

But hey, the rockets are cool and revolutionary, I agree there no denying that. I still wish SpaceX success with Starship.

Kuwaiti? I hard know her!

People sure do change, I'm not faulting him for selling to Zenimax or Microsoft, get your bag but that's the price of basically what is selling out, literally and figuratively. I'm just a little bit of "who cares what these two think". You can have the opinion of MS not being a good steward or whatever but no evidence either of them would be better, they both ultimately acted in their own self interests.