According to a Wall Street Journal report, banks that loaned Elon Musk $13 billion to buy Twitter haven’t been able to sell the debt.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    When you owe the bank $100 thats your problem.

    When you owe the bank 13 billion dollars, thats the banks problem.

    When you then use that money to create a platform of hate, racism, and facism, thats humitys problem.

  • rem26_art@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    the ability for institutions like that to sell debt has always been wild to me. Like, can i sell my debt? Please?

    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      It’s not money they owe, but money owed to them; backed by some form of contract. Your credit card contract for example.

      Person A owes person B money, let’s say $100. Person B sells that debt to Person C for $80.

      Person A still owes the same $100, just to a different person.

      Person B gets paid now instead of waiting for Person A to pay up, but lost $20 on the deal.

      Person C invested $80, hopefully gets paid the full $100, not having to chase down a delinquent debtor, and profits $20 out of the deal.

      Nobody wants to be person C when it comes to the Debt Twitter owes.

      If you had someone that owed you money (or anything else really), you could sell that debt, assuming you can find a buyer for it. Banks just do this on a much larger scale than $100 at a time.

      • cuerdo@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Another example are collection agencies:

        • Frenchie owes Artie $50,000, but he cannot collect.
        • Tony pays Artie $6,000 to buy the debt.
        • Then Tony visits Frenchie and he gets the $50,000 with a bit of gabagool

        Free Cannoli

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      Yes you can sell your debt as a consumer. People do it all of the time.

      However, the terminology is different.

      We call it “taking out a loan”.

    • then_three_more@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Say you have a credit card debit and you take out a new card because it has a free credit transfer offer going on. You’re selling your debt right there.

      Another scenario is you have a loan and refinance it using a new loan.

  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    it looks like a costly mistake unless they can extract interest payments from X, plus a repayment of principal once the loans mature.

    Did a business genius write this?

  • taanegl@beehaw.org
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    3 months ago

    Might be? This is the worst investment they ever made, and they know it, mostly because they’ve speaking publicly like this, because usually they bury the lead - to protect their other investments.

    International financiers are really the worst.

  • expatriado@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    they could foreclosure it and sell it for 1/3 what Elon paid to get their money back

    • Davel23@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      That’s assuming that anyone would pay even that much for the burnt-out husk of Twitter.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      say-the-line-bart-1 Say the line, Bart!

      say-the-line-bart-2 “If someone owes the bank a hundred dollars, that’s the debtor’s problem. If someone owes the bank a billion dollars, that’s the bank’s problem.”