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> Yet another impractical vaporware passion project with no use-case/demand. The use case is services professionals extracting cash from extremely credulous me

> Yet another impractical vaporware passion project with no use-case/demand. The use case is services professionals extracting cash from extremely credulous members of the KSA royal family (this is part of the new city project, another insane waste of resources). Softbank raised $50bn in a ten minute meeting with MBS. They then turned around, set the whole thing on fire...this has been going on for almost half a century (the very first financial crisis caused by the Saudis was the boom in EM debt in the 70s, this bankrupted Citi and wasn't resolved fully until the early 90s...they on the same tier as German bankers when it comes to losing massive amounts of money very quickly). It is a crazy situation.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
To be fair (to be fairrrrrr), extracting huge wodges of a cash from the KSA royal family for "services" and putting it pretty much anywhere else is probably not the worst thing you could do.
- skippyboxedhero 4y ago
  It leads to a massive overproduction of people with no skills. If you take Softbank, some of the stories out of there are insane. People in senior leadership positions doing things that are very weird (one of them was forced out of Softbank, his first move...raising a $5bn+ VC fund from ME investors). As I said too, it actually has a real impact on the economy. When 2008 happened, everyone pointed to the investment banks..."how could you do this to us?"...no-one asked why investment banks had clients who specifically required investments that were so toxic...I will tell you: Japanese saving institutions, German/French banks, some non-Japanese East Asian saving institutions, and Middle East SWFs (they have been behind almost every financial crisis in the last ten years: MBS, Eurocrisis, Turkey, EM debt, tech...every single time, going back decades). People ask why financial markets produce things that are pointless...this is why, because the distribution of assets globally is not guided by the market in any way.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > People ask why financial markets produce things that are pointless...this is why, because the distribution of assets globally is not guided by the market in any way. What do you mean? Wasn't "the distribution of assets globally" in this way guided by the market? The market wanted oil, so it sent vast quantities of money to the Saudis, who are the most effective producers. I think this is more an illustration of how the market, left to its own logic, often does pointless or dysfunctional things.
    - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
      The most effective producers because of non-economic reasons (i.e. geological properties). So they end up being one of the largest investors in the world because of geology. The market does often not do pointless or dysfunctional things because markets tend to give most capital to the most efficient users of that capital. But those rules do not apply to things like oil where there are significant non-economic returns (to an extent, the Saudis will always lose all their money, I have named other reasons who repeatedly do the same thing...but it is not terribly efficient spending resources to prise capital from them).
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    Expanding the global B-ark personnel manifest is still not the worst thing a trillion dollars in the hands of that theocratic royal family could achieve. Far, far from the best, but not the worst. Also the "free market"[1] gave KSA all that money willingly in exchange for oil (as opposed to, say, sorting out alternating energy technologies 30 years ago). [1]: Well, maybe with a generous geopolitical subsidy delivered by Raytheon and US Marines.
    - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
      Again, it caused two decades of political upheaval in South America, multiple military dictatorships, hyper-inflation, economic chaos, etc. (this was all mediated by US banks btw, who were the ones doing the lending...but the reason they were in that position is because ME countries insisted on depositing all their money with US banks). Right, but the reason the "free market" gave that money was because of the geological properties of KSA, not their ability to invest capital wisely. The failure to realise that this is a path to nowhere is the fault of our politicians however. For comparison, if I am raising capital for a hedge fund and I start talking about the geological properties of the earth under my house then I will carted out. But that logic is how KSA are one of the largest investors in the world...it is going about as well as you might imagine (the same is true for Taiwan, Japan, Germany in more subtle ways...they have created systems that expropriate wealth from consumers for investors, and those investors essentially spend a huge amount of time setting that money on fire...the only country that has got out of this is Sweden, which decided to give substantially all their material wealth to one family, the Wallenbergs, who turned out to be the some of the best investors globally...but that is a rare example of arbitrary wealth allocation ending well).
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Less credulous and more desperate. Saudi Arabia needs something that can sustain the current lifestyle of Saudis when oil and gas revenue start to go down.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

To be fair (to be fairrrrrr), extracting huge wodges of a cash from the KSA royal family for "services" and putting it pretty much anywhere else is probably not the worst thing you could do.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago
It leads to a massive overproduction of people with no skills. If you take Softbank, some of the stories out of there are insane. People in senior leadership positions doing things that are very weird (one of them was forced out of Softbank, his first move...raising a $5bn+ VC fund from ME investors). As I said too, it actually has a real impact on the economy. When 2008 happened, everyone pointed to the investment banks..."how could you do this to us?"...no-one asked why investment banks had clients who specifically required investments that were so toxic...I will tell you: Japanese saving institutions, German/French banks, some non-Japanese East Asian saving institutions, and Middle East SWFs (they have been behind almost every financial crisis in the last ten years: MBS, Eurocrisis, Turkey, EM debt, tech...every single time, going back decades). People ask why financial markets produce things that are pointless...this is why, because the distribution of assets globally is not guided by the market in any way.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > People ask why financial markets produce things that are pointless...this is why, because the distribution of assets globally is not guided by the market in any way. What do you mean? Wasn't "the distribution of assets globally" in this way guided by the market? The market wanted oil, so it sent vast quantities of money to the Saudis, who are the most effective producers. I think this is more an illustration of how the market, left to its own logic, often does pointless or dysfunctional things.
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    The most effective producers because of non-economic reasons (i.e. geological properties). So they end up being one of the largest investors in the world because of geology. The market does often not do pointless or dysfunctional things because markets tend to give most capital to the most efficient users of that capital. But those rules do not apply to things like oil where there are significant non-economic returns (to an extent, the Saudis will always lose all their money, I have named other reasons who repeatedly do the same thing...but it is not terribly efficient spending resources to prise capital from them).
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Expanding the global B-ark personnel manifest is still not the worst thing a trillion dollars in the hands of that theocratic royal family could achieve. Far, far from the best, but not the worst. Also the "free market"[1] gave KSA all that money willingly in exchange for oil (as opposed to, say, sorting out alternating energy technologies 30 years ago). [1]: Well, maybe with a generous geopolitical subsidy delivered by Raytheon and US Marines.
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    Again, it caused two decades of political upheaval in South America, multiple military dictatorships, hyper-inflation, economic chaos, etc. (this was all mediated by US banks btw, who were the ones doing the lending...but the reason they were in that position is because ME countries insisted on depositing all their money with US banks). Right, but the reason the "free market" gave that money was because of the geological properties of KSA, not their ability to invest capital wisely. The failure to realise that this is a path to nowhere is the fault of our politicians however. For comparison, if I am raising capital for a hedge fund and I start talking about the geological properties of the earth under my house then I will carted out. But that logic is how KSA are one of the largest investors in the world...it is going about as well as you might imagine (the same is true for Taiwan, Japan, Germany in more subtle ways...they have created systems that expropriate wealth from consumers for investors, and those investors essentially spend a huge amount of time setting that money on fire...the only country that has got out of this is Sweden, which decided to give substantially all their material wealth to one family, the Wallenbergs, who turned out to be the some of the best investors globally...but that is a rare example of arbitrary wealth allocation ending well).

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Less credulous and more desperate. Saudi Arabia needs something that can sustain the current lifestyle of Saudis when oil and gas revenue start to go down.