>I would strongly disagree with the author that Apple is a "de facto investment bank" The fact that they have piles of money which they need to park says other

>I would strongly disagree with the author that Apple is a "de facto investment bank" The fact that they have piles of money which they need to park says otherwise. "Advising clients on financial transactions" is precisely what they are doing...internally. People seem to really underestimate the issues with dealing with such vast sums of cash for which you want to maintain value. It's not trivial, as the author points out. >But Apple isn't even CLOSE to competing with Visa and MasterCard in that regard At one point Apple wasn't even close to competing with Nokia or Blackberry in the smart phone space. Then a bit of innovation happened.