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The reality is there’s too much money floating around. The saudis will eventually stop making so much from oil, they need income and cannot afford to sit on cas

The reality is there’s too much money floating around. The saudis will eventually stop making so much from oil, they need income and cannot afford to sit on cash. But neither can anyone else, so they take risks to deploy huge capital. Probably they’ve made out big elsewhere

rexpop 7y ago
> The reality is there’s too much money floating around. Jeeze, it frustrates me to hear such notions when Flint and many other cities still have toxic drinking water, millions are in debt for education and medical bills, impoverished by our rental arrangements, etc.
- twic 7y ago
  Perhaps parse that as "too much of the money that exists is floating around generating comical stories for Matt Levine, rather than being spent on increasing human well-being".
  - rexpop 7y ago
    That's a good enough working definition for "floating," if I'm being generous.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
In VC? One of KSA's best known VC investment so far is Uber. They invested $3.5Bn at $65Bn valuation [1]. Uber has a current market cap of $47Bn. One of their best investments has a near negative 30% return. If they just put money in the S&P 500 in 2016, they'd have gotten a ~64% return (positive). [1] https://www.vox.com/2018/2/9/16996834/uber-latest-valuation-72-billion-waymo-lawsuit-settlement https://www.vox.com/2018/2/9/16996834/uber-latest-valuation-...
- blackearl 7y ago
  Sure, but I'm aiming to moonshot, own the taxi, car, and self-driving AI industries, and become the world's first trillionaire.
- scrumbledober 7y ago
  Best known !== Best
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Am I crazy to think they should invest it in modernizing their country and bringing industry to it? Why not invest in making Saudi Arabia the world leader in "X" for when the oil runs out instead of just blowing money on Uber and WeWork?
- nradov 7y ago
  They are trying to do that by building a whole new city called Neom. At this point it's unclear whether that will work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom

rexpop 7y ago

> The reality is there’s too much money floating around. Jeeze, it frustrates me to hear such notions when Flint and many other cities still have toxic drinking water, millions are in debt for education and medical bills, impoverished by our rental arrangements, etc.

twic 7y ago
Perhaps parse that as "too much of the money that exists is floating around generating comical stories for Matt Levine, rather than being spent on increasing human well-being".
- rexpop 7y ago
  That's a good enough working definition for "floating," if I'm being generous.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

In VC? One of KSA's best known VC investment so far is Uber. They invested $3.5Bn at $65Bn valuation [1]. Uber has a current market cap of $47Bn. One of their best investments has a near negative 30% return. If they just put money in the S&P 500 in 2016, they'd have gotten a ~64% return (positive). [1] https://www.vox.com/2018/2/9/16996834/uber-latest-valuation-72-billion-waymo-lawsuit-settlement https://www.vox.com/2018/2/9/16996834/uber-latest-valuation-...

blackearl 7y ago
Sure, but I'm aiming to moonshot, own the taxi, car, and self-driving AI industries, and become the world's first trillionaire.
scrumbledober 7y ago
Best known !== Best

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

Am I crazy to think they should invest it in modernizing their country and bringing industry to it? Why not invest in making Saudi Arabia the world leader in "X" for when the oil runs out instead of just blowing money on Uber and WeWork?

nradov 7y ago
They are trying to do that by building a whole new city called Neom. At this point it's unclear whether that will work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom