3 ms·
I might be missing the nuance here but how is WeWork "too big to fail"? While many were against the 2008-09 bailouts, you could at least see the logic of why t
by ssharp 6y ago
I might be missing the nuance here but how is WeWork "too big to fail"?
While many were against the 2008-09 bailouts, you could at least see the logic of why the cost of the wake left behind from a company like General Motors radically reorganizing or dissolving would be worse than the cost of bailing them out.
What happens if WeWork dissolves? Softbank and its investors lose a couple billion. They'll survive. WeWork owns some real estate and would leave behind office space that's already built out for short-term leasing.
They'd be leaving behind something that can be mostly done turn-key by the next owner, hopefully on a smaller scale, with less ambitious growth expectations. They wouldn't be leaving behind an entire supply chain that extends well beyond themselves.
- xuki 6y agoGP is talking about SoftBank. With that kind of debt it's likely that SoftBank will need to get bailed out by the Japan government, i.e. Japanese tax payers.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoThat is ssharp’s point. Why do Japanese taxpayers need to bail out a Saudi gambling operation? Answer is they don’t “need” to.
- xuki 6y agoBailing out SoftBank is different from bailing out Vision fund, I'm sure Vision fund will burn on its own.
- godzillabrennus 6y agoWeWork has more liabilities with its long term leases than the real estate it owns. Adam set that company up for failure and Son funded that stupid vision. Appropriately it was with the SoftBank Vision Fund.
- _curious_ 6y ago"While many were against the 2008-09 bailouts, you could at least see the logic of why the cost of the wake left behind from a company like General Motors radically reorganizing or dissolving would be worse than the cost of bailing them out." It isn't logic grounded in some empirical truth. Bailouts - who gets them, as well as what would happen if not, are so subjective that there's no fair way to even go about it. What's worse is to perpetuate a culture, model, industry that doesn't deserve to continue to operate. And by deserve, it's not my opinion, rather logic of the market dictating things. As if that wasn't even, bailouts reward poor business practices - someone please prove otherwise!
- vikramkr 6y agoSoftbank is the one that is too big to fail, and they are facing a lot more than just writing down wework right now