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I thought this was actually going to be an interesting article, about how he over leveraged himself and is now bankrupt, but no. It's a high profile person who
by zpeti 3y ago
I thought this was actually going to be an interesting article, about how he over leveraged himself and is now bankrupt, but no.
It's a high profile person who is using debt to build a business. This is basically every business person in the USA, except Kiyosaki hit some magic number at $1bn.
This is completely meaningless without knowing what his assets are worth. Probably more than $1bn.
Yet again, it's proved to me journalism is completely dead.
- LargeTomato 3y agoJust block low tier news. I block verge, ars technica, fortune, etc.
- maigret 3y agoWhat is high tier news?
- paulgb 3y agoAs a general rule, if you aren’t paying for it, it’s probably crap. Paid sources are just better-incentivized and better funded to do real reporting. The traditional newspapers (like WSJ, NYT, WaPo) still do quality reporting. People tend to have strong feelings about them because they disagree with the editorial side (often for good reason), but if you have the media literacy to know what’s news vs. what’s editorial, they are still quality sources.
- LargeTomato 3y agoThat's subjective but I like the Economist a lot. NYT is fine. It is what is it but it's a lot better then e.g. CNN.
- andrewstuart 3y agoIt’s true that without the full picture $1b in debt means zero.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y agoExactly. You can't just add up the "debts" or "liabilities" side of the ledger and say, "guy is $1B in debt". You also have to include the assets side of the ledger. If his debts are balanced by assets, then he isn't (net) in debt at all; he's levered. Granted, leverage can be dangerous -- if the assets evaporate, then you can be in trouble. But I wonder even about that in this case. Does he personally have $1B in loans? Or does he control companies with $1B in debts? If the latter, then if push comes to shove, those companies can go bankrupt, and he's probably still fine, I imagine. (Hm. I guess a highly levered company has a very "convex" return profile, like a call option.) So I agree. If somebody is going to do a story on how Robert Kiyosaki uses debt, they should do this accounting and figure out how much he is personally liable for. And how the assets balance the liabilities. Not that I'm particularly a fan of the guy, to want to defend him. I've listened to him speak and he says nothing. As for his assets -- he's talking about physical silver and oil wells? This sounds like cranky goldbug stuff. But what do I know.