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I believe it was a development loan, not a bailout. I don't understand why you point it out as underhanded. How would you compare Tesla to Chrysler and gm which
by Latteland 8y ago
I believe it was a development loan, not a bailout. I don't understand why you point it out as underhanded. How would you compare Tesla to Chrysler and gm which really went bankrupt and had actual bailouts, not loans to develop new products in unexplored technical areas. GM got a more than $20b investment from the us government. I am glad we did save our auto industry in the us - but Tesla wasn't a bailout as I see it.
- twblalock 8y agoI didn’t say Tesla was a bailout, and I didn’t say it was underhanded. I said that Tesla would not have survived without government money, and that is true.
- resters 8y agoSo you are arguing that without that capital Musk would not have been able to raise money from the private sector?
- twblalock 8y agoYes, definitely. It would have been a very hard sell at that time.
- resters 8y agoPerhaps, but if you consider that shortly after most of the automakers would go bankrupt, Musk would then have been in a very powerful position and would easily have been able to find private capital to help him extract the most useful 20% of value from some of the bankrupt companies for use by Tesla. Private investors did not want to invest in outdated infrastructure and overburdened pension programs, which is why the government bailout was "needed" in the first place. But if bankruptcy had been allowed to proceed, the best bits would have gone to the highest bidder, and Musk was well positioned to become the highest bidder.