7 ms·

Apple Could Make Money by Bailing Out Greece

57 points by rbc 11y ago

gesman 11y ago
Apple could buy Greece, become a government and exempt itself from income taxes for the next 10,000 years! (And replace apple symbol with olive too) >> ...and the American companies will keep accumulating cash they don't know how to spend. Not too many US companies are having this problem though.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >and exempt itself from income taxes for the next 10,000 years! Greece is an unsustainable welfare state full of tax fraud where the government is the largest employer. If Apple "buys it" (partners with the current government for some kind of super sweetheart deal) and cannot send out those monthly public sector checks then a lot of angry hot heads with machine guns will be its biggest problem, not a cool reception to the Apple Watch. Even if they cut a modest low tax deal, the EU would balk at a unilateral Greek deal cutting their tax revenues. At most Greece could offer Apple a low tax haven for domestic sales, but considering how small Greece's economy is, it would be financially stupid in both the short and long run to do this. As a Greek-American and Greek landowner, I'd prefer the Greeks stop fucking up and get fiscally responsible for once instead of courting corporations or other nations to take care of them. I don't want the ancient lands of my ancestors sold off for some short-term cash relief. Nor do I want it to become some Cayman Islands-like tax shelter that will isolate it economically and become the plaything of the American super-rich. I don't think the author of this piece remotely understands how incredibly stubborn and patriotic the average Greek citizen is. Greeks have lost their autonomy more than a few times in history. They aren't itching to lose it again. Saying, "You should let Apple buy you," in Athens would probably lead to a punch in the face fairly quickly for those reasons as well as the general anti-corporate attitude the largely leftist Greek population subscribes to. The American love of mega-corporations and super successful CEOs just doesn't translate there.
  - aikah 11y ago
    > or other nations to take care of them As a greek you should know that when the EU is bailing out Greece, they are bailing out European banks, not Greece. If Greece fails, the EU banks that are exposed to the Greek debt will fail too. EU will throw as much money at the problem as it needs to save EU banks, especially french , english and german banks that are over exposed to Greek debt. Because otherwise it will be the 2008 crisis x10 in Europe, and possibly the end of EU. Not that I would miss it though. But you can't have the same money without sharing risk. And if for Greece it means robbing your land and selling it, they will. There is no escape anyway, drastic measures WILL be taken, one way or the other.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - 7_7 11y ago
    > Saying, "You should let Apple buy you," in Athens would probably lead to a punch in the face fairly quickly That is what I believe, and hope, would happen not only in Athens but everywhere. Although on a second thought, fanboys of any kind or perhaps most of the new generation would simply not care. > anti-corporate attitude the largely leftist Greek population subscribes to I believe this is not the case. For years Greeks would vote for right wing parties and the one left wing on the outside but really right wing in disguise one. I agree about the general anti-corporate attitude though.
  - tajen 11y ago
    > full of tax fraud How much is the total tax burden in Greece? That may have a strong impact on the fraud... In my country (France), compound tax/cost of running a business is about 68% in money and 15% of employee time. It is broken down as followes: 20% VAT, 46% various compulsory insurances and pensions (which may or may not cover your situation, hence the regular strikes), 15% income tax, 3% housing tax, and a myriad of compulsory accountants and administrative burden. I simply don't figure why there isn't more fraud.
- bane 11y ago
  > (And replace apple symbol with olive too) And rename themselves 'Olivetti" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti
- viggity 11y ago
  Couldn't find any super recent numbers, but as of 2012, US companies were sitting on $2.2 Trillion http://fortune.com/2012/06/06/new-study-says-2-trillion-corporate-cash-hoard-not-obamas-fault/ http://fortune.com/2012/06/06/new-study-says-2-trillion-corp...
  - peeters 11y ago
    The article has numbers. > Non-financial American firms hold $1.73 trillion in cash (...), and $1.1 trillion of that belongs to the 50 biggest companies Yes, American companies hold a lot of cash, but almost all of it is concentrated in the relatively few huge companies.
Estragon 11y ago
Does anyone seriously believe Greece would ever pay them back?
- aidenn0 11y ago
  Did you read TFA? The suggestion is to pay off part of the Greek debt in exchange for a sweetheart tax-deal with Greece, not to assume ownership of the Greek debt.
  - gesman 11y ago
    Actually US companies surely would be able to negotiate an extra haircut off creditors as well.
  - kevinskii 11y ago
    The point still stands. Does anyone seriously believe that Greece would honor such a tax deal long enough for these companies to recoup their investments?
  - cheald 11y ago
    The problem in dealing with governments is that they have the legal authority to change the terms of an agreement on you at their whim. There is exactly nothing that would keep Greece from taking the money and then turning around and repealing any sweetheart deals if it were advantageous to do so.
  - lifeformed 11y ago
    Is $200bn really worth saving 35% in taxes?
    - greggyb 11y ago
      If your taxable income is >=$571.43B?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
cs702 11y ago
The idea is not as ridiculous as it may seem at first glance. Apple, Google, Microsoft and a few other tech companies are together sitting on far more cash than Greece owes to its creditors. The author proposes these companies bail out Greece in exchange for permanent low taxes on non-US operations.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  "Permanent" Yeah right. The author somehow mentions that Ireland scheme is doomed, but somehow Greece is immune. Certainly not a risk that is worth $200bn!
  - giarc 11y ago
    You must not have read any further than that. They talk about why the Greece deal might get EU approval and even US approval. Hint, they both stand to lose tons of money if Greece fails.
    - autokad 11y ago
      governments are fickle, especially the US. all it takes is 1 administration change (up every 4 years) and that deal is over. I for one, if I was an elected official would not let it stand. Allowing a select group of large corporations to evade taxes and have a huge advantage over all other companies? no thanks.
      - giarc 11y ago
        Yes but the consequences of breaking it up once it's started is collapse of the eurozone. International markets would be hammered and every rich person in the US would be banging on the presidents door. It would be political suicide.... if this highly theoretical thing actually happened.
- adventured 11y ago
  If Greece remains in the Euro, most likely that deal would not be allowed. Most of Europe is already annoyed at the existing low-tax schemes. If Greece exits the Euro, the Euro group would pass legislation compensating against the Greek deal, effectively nullifying the new tax scheme. There's zero chance such an arrangement either is allowed to work, or if put into practice ends up having enough financial returns after the Euro group responds to it that it justifies the extreme risk.
Istof 11y ago
Couldn't Apple require the European union to reimburse them?
- emodendroket 11y ago
  Why would the EU agree to that? They could just bail out Greece themselves without requiring onerous austerity measures if that were what they wanted to do.
  - Istof 11y ago
    I guess that depends what deal Apple signs with Greece... and what dirt the NSA has on EU officials...
    - emodendroket 11y ago
      So that raises a different question -- namely, why the US government would employ top-secret intelligence to squeeze the EU into giving money to a private corporation.
tomelders 11y ago
Do it I say. It's better than Russia doing it.
serve_yay 11y ago
They could also make money building and shipping products. Wonder which one they'll pick
- fwr 11y ago
  > They could also make money building and shipping This just in: Apple researches a possibilty to become a real estate and logistics company
- peeters 11y ago
  The article does actually talk about this. > Unless Apple starts building cars -- or perhaps spaceships -- it will keep accumulating cash. Their point is that Apple has so much cash (coupled with an MO of not casting a wide net in new product efforts) that they will never spend it all on R&D.
- URSpider94 11y ago
  The more products they build and ship, the more cash they accumulate.
vannevar 11y ago
That we permit corporations (particularly public ones) to accumulate such massive cash reserves seems absurd. Perhaps we should consider an 'idleness' tax on overly large corporate cash reserves to ensure that the money is put to work.
- revelation 11y ago
  It is put to work. Apple doesn't have some private Fort Knox in California, all that money is tied up in a variety of financial instruments.
  - vannevar 11y ago
    Not tied up enough that it isn't apparently reported as cash. It's an interesting question, though, and maybe an accountant might chime in: when is corporate cash NOT cash? Where is the line drawn?
    - revelation 11y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents Notice that journalists might just summarize everything as cash.
      - vannevar 11y ago
        This would seem to be the crux of it: Another important condition a cash equivalent needs to satisfy is that the investment should have insignificant risk of change in value... It could be argued that money that is not at risk is also not at work.
- nanofortnight 11y ago
  Inflation is meant to serve that goal.
  - vannevar 11y ago
spiek 11y ago
I always thought that Kim Stanley Robinson's "meta nationals" from the Red Mars series seemed too probable to really be science fiction.
jkestner 11y ago
Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. That's a byproduct. How does this further Apple's goals of making better products? Does Greece have infrastructure to invest in, like lithium or silicon? > Unless Apple starts building cars -- or perhaps spaceships -- it will keep accumulating cash. Yeah, I think both of those are more likely than bailing out Greece.
- jmhobbs 11y ago
  > Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. I'm pretty sure their board is interested in making money.
- S4M 11y ago
  > Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. That must be the most fanboy statement I have ever read.
- usefulcat 11y ago
  > Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. If that were true, why not lower their prices, thereby making their products affordable to even more people? With their huge margins they could certainly do it and still remain solvent or even profitable. Apple is, at a very fundamental level, not different than every other successful corporation: they are machines for producing profit. Anything else they happen to produce--products, services, jobs, pollution--is a by-product of that primary function.
  - jkestner 11y ago
    Perhaps I could've parsed it more carefully ("Apple isn't interested in making money for money's sake"), but I specifically said 'philosophically', based on what the top two executives say. Ive: http://betanews.com/2014/11/15/jony-ive-says-apples-doesnt-aim-to-make-money-hits-out-at-those-who-copy-designs/ http://betanews.com/2014/11/15/jony-ive-says-apples-doesnt-a... Cook: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim-cook-doesnt-care-about-the-bloody-roi/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim-... I suppose I'm a fanboy if I take them at face value (and I don't totally), but they wouldn't be the first ones to believe that profit is not the purpose of business: http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/03/william-cohen-purpose-of-business-is.html http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/03/william-cohe... The old thing about lowering their prices - Apple wants that money in part because of institutional paranoia dating back to the 90's tailspin, and in part because big new things like cars can take a lot of capital expenditures even by Apple's standards. Buy a $30billion company or two like Tesla, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
gpvos 11y ago
While a nice idea, it would set a bad example, since Greece's main problem is that all large companies (including the Greek Orthodox Church) and rich people pay next to no tax.
endymi0n 11y ago
People like this guy are exactly what brought Greece down to its knees. Corporations and rich individuals being able to "buy" themselves into special deals excluding the general population led to the mind-blowing amount of corruption that is the main culprit of the current crisis. Sure, why not fix it with a few more Fakelaki? Seriously, people regarding (only!) 35% of taxes as an "issue" needing to be resolved instead of just the fair share of responsibility for an education and infrastructure companies take and use for free every day make me wanna puke.
- adevine 11y ago
  And oddly enough, even if it worked as expected, in the end it's not Apple that would bail them out, it's the American taxpayer who would never have recourse to collect on taxes owed because all of these rich companies would just set up in these now-legal tax havens.
vacri 11y ago
There are several problems with this concept, the first of which has been mentioned several times - that rich entities not paying tax is one of the root problems in Greece in the first place. Other problems include that laws can always be amended. A law is only as hardy as your next election, and once Greece gets the money, you have no further leverage. We saw that happen at the last election, with the current government throwing out the previous government's solution to the problem. Another issue is that without significant reform of government and some changes in society, Greece will end up in exactly the same place if it goes back to 'business as usual' - something which would be very easy to do if bailed out by an entity that has no future leverage. Similarly, first-world countries with decent economies are doing their utmost to reverse the trend of tax havens, and if Greece did this, they would suffer politically in other ways as a result. Edit: And then, of course, there is the question: Why would Apple spend $100B to secure a tax haven for themselves? Not only are there already quite a few tax havens to choose from, including in Europe, but if they turned around and decided to pay their fair share of domestic taxes, it'd take quite a while before their tax load would match their $100B in cash. Who knows what the world would look like then?
smegel 11y ago
Hold on...are they talking about extending Greece a loan or simply paying of it debts in return for said benefits? The problem with a loan is that loans need to be repaid, and Greece seems unwilling to take the kind of internal reforms needed to generate enough revenue to pay back loans. The issue has never been the willingness of others to extend Greece a bailout - it has been the unwillingness of Greece to accept the kinds of conditions attached to such bailouts. If Greece was willing and able to commit to the right kinds of internal reforms, then I am sure that Germany and other countries would be quite happy to extend another bailout. No-one (in the EU at least) wants to see Greece collapse. On the other hand, simply giving away $200B for the kind of sweetheart tax deal that is usually achieved simply by gracing a country with the presence of a multinational headquarters (bestowing employment, secondary industries and prestige), seems to be insanely bad business. I mean, even if they wanted to bribe their way in, would it not be far more effective to bribe politicians a few tens of $M rather than an entire country $200B?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  That's very much the party line, and very much incorrect. Greece has - rightly - been unwilling to crash its own economy in pursuit of some fictional idea of austerity which has been proven to fail whenever it's been tried. The UK has tried a more moderate version of the same nonsense, and if you look at the facts and past the propaganda it's clear that "growth" is stagnant. In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation - which makes the "recovery" the slowest since the Great Depression. The problem is entirely political. Who runs the government of Greece - the Greek people, or the IMF and the ECB? The IMF and the ECB want to prove it's the latter. Unfortunately a Grexit would be a disaster for the EU and possibly the rest of the financial world, and the Greek negotiating team is well aware of this. I think it's quite likely anyway, because in international banking it's more important to save face and status than to save an economy. But we'll see.
  - soup10 11y ago
    > In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif

57 points by rbc 11y ago

Apple could buy Greece, become a government and exempt itself from income taxes for the next 10,000 years! (And replace apple symbol with olive too) >> ...and the American companies will keep accumulating cash they don't know how to spend. Not too many US companies are having this problem though.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>and exempt itself from income taxes for the next 10,000 years! Greece is an unsustainable welfare state full of tax fraud where the government is the largest employer. If Apple "buys it" (partners with the current government for some kind of super sweetheart deal) and cannot send out those monthly public sector checks then a lot of angry hot heads with machine guns will be its biggest problem, not a cool reception to the Apple Watch. Even if they cut a modest low tax deal, the EU would balk at a unilateral Greek deal cutting their tax revenues. At most Greece could offer Apple a low tax haven for domestic sales, but considering how small Greece's economy is, it would be financially stupid in both the short and long run to do this. As a Greek-American and Greek landowner, I'd prefer the Greeks stop fucking up and get fiscally responsible for once instead of courting corporations or other nations to take care of them. I don't want the ancient lands of my ancestors sold off for some short-term cash relief. Nor do I want it to become some Cayman Islands-like tax shelter that will isolate it economically and become the plaything of the American super-rich. I don't think the author of this piece remotely understands how incredibly stubborn and patriotic the average Greek citizen is. Greeks have lost their autonomy more than a few times in history. They aren't itching to lose it again. Saying, "You should let Apple buy you," in Athens would probably lead to a punch in the face fairly quickly for those reasons as well as the general anti-corporate attitude the largely leftist Greek population subscribes to. The American love of mega-corporations and super successful CEOs just doesn't translate there.
- aikah 11y ago
  > or other nations to take care of them As a greek you should know that when the EU is bailing out Greece, they are bailing out European banks, not Greece. If Greece fails, the EU banks that are exposed to the Greek debt will fail too. EU will throw as much money at the problem as it needs to save EU banks, especially french , english and german banks that are over exposed to Greek debt. Because otherwise it will be the 2008 crisis x10 in Europe, and possibly the end of EU. Not that I would miss it though. But you can't have the same money without sharing risk. And if for Greece it means robbing your land and selling it, they will. There is no escape anyway, drastic measures WILL be taken, one way or the other.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- 7_7 11y ago
  > Saying, "You should let Apple buy you," in Athens would probably lead to a punch in the face fairly quickly That is what I believe, and hope, would happen not only in Athens but everywhere. Although on a second thought, fanboys of any kind or perhaps most of the new generation would simply not care. > anti-corporate attitude the largely leftist Greek population subscribes to I believe this is not the case. For years Greeks would vote for right wing parties and the one left wing on the outside but really right wing in disguise one. I agree about the general anti-corporate attitude though.
- tajen 11y ago
  > full of tax fraud How much is the total tax burden in Greece? That may have a strong impact on the fraud... In my country (France), compound tax/cost of running a business is about 68% in money and 15% of employee time. It is broken down as followes: 20% VAT, 46% various compulsory insurances and pensions (which may or may not cover your situation, hence the regular strikes), 15% income tax, 3% housing tax, and a myriad of compulsory accountants and administrative burden. I simply don't figure why there isn't more fraud.
bane 11y ago
> (And replace apple symbol with olive too) And rename themselves 'Olivetti" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti
viggity 11y ago
Couldn't find any super recent numbers, but as of 2012, US companies were sitting on $2.2 Trillion http://fortune.com/2012/06/06/new-study-says-2-trillion-corporate-cash-hoard-not-obamas-fault/ http://fortune.com/2012/06/06/new-study-says-2-trillion-corp...
- peeters 11y ago
  The article has numbers. > Non-financial American firms hold $1.73 trillion in cash (...), and $1.1 trillion of that belongs to the 50 biggest companies Yes, American companies hold a lot of cash, but almost all of it is concentrated in the relatively few huge companies.

Estragon 11y ago

Does anyone seriously believe Greece would ever pay them back?

aidenn0 11y ago
Did you read TFA? The suggestion is to pay off part of the Greek debt in exchange for a sweetheart tax-deal with Greece, not to assume ownership of the Greek debt.
- gesman 11y ago
  Actually US companies surely would be able to negotiate an extra haircut off creditors as well.
- kevinskii 11y ago
  The point still stands. Does anyone seriously believe that Greece would honor such a tax deal long enough for these companies to recoup their investments?
- cheald 11y ago
  The problem in dealing with governments is that they have the legal authority to change the terms of an agreement on you at their whim. There is exactly nothing that would keep Greece from taking the money and then turning around and repealing any sweetheart deals if it were advantageous to do so.
- lifeformed 11y ago
  Is $200bn really worth saving 35% in taxes?
  - greggyb 11y ago
    If your taxable income is >=$571.43B?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

cs702 11y ago

The idea is not as ridiculous as it may seem at first glance. Apple, Google, Microsoft and a few other tech companies are together sitting on far more cash than Greece owes to its creditors. The author proposes these companies bail out Greece in exchange for permanent low taxes on non-US operations.

IshKebab 11y ago
"Permanent" Yeah right. The author somehow mentions that Ireland scheme is doomed, but somehow Greece is immune. Certainly not a risk that is worth $200bn!
- giarc 11y ago
  You must not have read any further than that. They talk about why the Greece deal might get EU approval and even US approval. Hint, they both stand to lose tons of money if Greece fails.
  - autokad 11y ago
    governments are fickle, especially the US. all it takes is 1 administration change (up every 4 years) and that deal is over. I for one, if I was an elected official would not let it stand. Allowing a select group of large corporations to evade taxes and have a huge advantage over all other companies? no thanks.
    - giarc 11y ago
      Yes but the consequences of breaking it up once it's started is collapse of the eurozone. International markets would be hammered and every rich person in the US would be banging on the presidents door. It would be political suicide.... if this highly theoretical thing actually happened.
adventured 11y ago
If Greece remains in the Euro, most likely that deal would not be allowed. Most of Europe is already annoyed at the existing low-tax schemes. If Greece exits the Euro, the Euro group would pass legislation compensating against the Greek deal, effectively nullifying the new tax scheme. There's zero chance such an arrangement either is allowed to work, or if put into practice ends up having enough financial returns after the Euro group responds to it that it justifies the extreme risk.

Istof 11y ago

Couldn't Apple require the European union to reimburse them?

emodendroket 11y ago
Why would the EU agree to that? They could just bail out Greece themselves without requiring onerous austerity measures if that were what they wanted to do.
- Istof 11y ago
  I guess that depends what deal Apple signs with Greece... and what dirt the NSA has on EU officials...
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    So that raises a different question -- namely, why the US government would employ top-secret intelligence to squeeze the EU into giving money to a private corporation.

tomelders 11y ago

Do it I say. It's better than Russia doing it.

serve_yay 11y ago

They could also make money building and shipping products. Wonder which one they'll pick

fwr 11y ago
> They could also make money building and shipping This just in: Apple researches a possibilty to become a real estate and logistics company
peeters 11y ago
The article does actually talk about this. > Unless Apple starts building cars -- or perhaps spaceships -- it will keep accumulating cash. Their point is that Apple has so much cash (coupled with an MO of not casting a wide net in new product efforts) that they will never spend it all on R&D.
URSpider94 11y ago
The more products they build and ship, the more cash they accumulate.

vannevar 11y ago

That we permit corporations (particularly public ones) to accumulate such massive cash reserves seems absurd. Perhaps we should consider an 'idleness' tax on overly large corporate cash reserves to ensure that the money is put to work.

revelation 11y ago
It is put to work. Apple doesn't have some private Fort Knox in California, all that money is tied up in a variety of financial instruments.
- vannevar 11y ago
  Not tied up enough that it isn't apparently reported as cash. It's an interesting question, though, and maybe an accountant might chime in: when is corporate cash NOT cash? Where is the line drawn?
  - revelation 11y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents Notice that journalists might just summarize everything as cash.
    - vannevar 11y ago
      This would seem to be the crux of it: Another important condition a cash equivalent needs to satisfy is that the investment should have insignificant risk of change in value... It could be argued that money that is not at risk is also not at work.
nanofortnight 11y ago
Inflation is meant to serve that goal.
- vannevar 11y ago

spiek 11y ago

I always thought that Kim Stanley Robinson's "meta nationals" from the Red Mars series seemed too probable to really be science fiction.

jkestner 11y ago

Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. That's a byproduct. How does this further Apple's goals of making better products? Does Greece have infrastructure to invest in, like lithium or silicon? > Unless Apple starts building cars -- or perhaps spaceships -- it will keep accumulating cash. Yeah, I think both of those are more likely than bailing out Greece.

jmhobbs 11y ago
> Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. I'm pretty sure their board is interested in making money.
S4M 11y ago
> Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. That must be the most fanboy statement I have ever read.
usefulcat 11y ago
> Apple philosophically isn't interested in making money. If that were true, why not lower their prices, thereby making their products affordable to even more people? With their huge margins they could certainly do it and still remain solvent or even profitable. Apple is, at a very fundamental level, not different than every other successful corporation: they are machines for producing profit. Anything else they happen to produce--products, services, jobs, pollution--is a by-product of that primary function.
- jkestner 11y ago
  Perhaps I could've parsed it more carefully ("Apple isn't interested in making money for money's sake"), but I specifically said 'philosophically', based on what the top two executives say. Ive: http://betanews.com/2014/11/15/jony-ive-says-apples-doesnt-aim-to-make-money-hits-out-at-those-who-copy-designs/ http://betanews.com/2014/11/15/jony-ive-says-apples-doesnt-a... Cook: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim-cook-doesnt-care-about-the-bloody-roi/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim-... I suppose I'm a fanboy if I take them at face value (and I don't totally), but they wouldn't be the first ones to believe that profit is not the purpose of business: http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/03/william-cohen-purpose-of-business-is.html http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/03/william-cohe... The old thing about lowering their prices - Apple wants that money in part because of institutional paranoia dating back to the 90's tailspin, and in part because big new things like cars can take a lot of capital expenditures even by Apple's standards. Buy a $30billion company or two like Tesla, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

gpvos 11y ago

While a nice idea, it would set a bad example, since Greece's main problem is that all large companies (including the Greek Orthodox Church) and rich people pay next to no tax.

endymi0n 11y ago

People like this guy are exactly what brought Greece down to its knees. Corporations and rich individuals being able to "buy" themselves into special deals excluding the general population led to the mind-blowing amount of corruption that is the main culprit of the current crisis. Sure, why not fix it with a few more Fakelaki? Seriously, people regarding (only!) 35% of taxes as an "issue" needing to be resolved instead of just the fair share of responsibility for an education and infrastructure companies take and use for free every day make me wanna puke.

adevine 11y ago
And oddly enough, even if it worked as expected, in the end it's not Apple that would bail them out, it's the American taxpayer who would never have recourse to collect on taxes owed because all of these rich companies would just set up in these now-legal tax havens.

vacri 11y ago

There are several problems with this concept, the first of which has been mentioned several times - that rich entities not paying tax is one of the root problems in Greece in the first place. Other problems include that laws can always be amended. A law is only as hardy as your next election, and once Greece gets the money, you have no further leverage. We saw that happen at the last election, with the current government throwing out the previous government's solution to the problem. Another issue is that without significant reform of government and some changes in society, Greece will end up in exactly the same place if it goes back to 'business as usual' - something which would be very easy to do if bailed out by an entity that has no future leverage. Similarly, first-world countries with decent economies are doing their utmost to reverse the trend of tax havens, and if Greece did this, they would suffer politically in other ways as a result. Edit: And then, of course, there is the question: Why would Apple spend $100B to secure a tax haven for themselves? Not only are there already quite a few tax havens to choose from, including in Europe, but if they turned around and decided to pay their fair share of domestic taxes, it'd take quite a while before their tax load would match their $100B in cash. Who knows what the world would look like then?

smegel 11y ago

Hold on...are they talking about extending Greece a loan or simply paying of it debts in return for said benefits? The problem with a loan is that loans need to be repaid, and Greece seems unwilling to take the kind of internal reforms needed to generate enough revenue to pay back loans. The issue has never been the willingness of others to extend Greece a bailout - it has been the unwillingness of Greece to accept the kinds of conditions attached to such bailouts. If Greece was willing and able to commit to the right kinds of internal reforms, then I am sure that Germany and other countries would be quite happy to extend another bailout. No-one (in the EU at least) wants to see Greece collapse. On the other hand, simply giving away $200B for the kind of sweetheart tax deal that is usually achieved simply by gracing a country with the presence of a multinational headquarters (bestowing employment, secondary industries and prestige), seems to be insanely bad business. I mean, even if they wanted to bribe their way in, would it not be far more effective to bribe politicians a few tens of $M rather than an entire country $200B?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
That's very much the party line, and very much incorrect. Greece has - rightly - been unwilling to crash its own economy in pursuit of some fictional idea of austerity which has been proven to fail whenever it's been tried. The UK has tried a more moderate version of the same nonsense, and if you look at the facts and past the propaganda it's clear that "growth" is stagnant. In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation - which makes the "recovery" the slowest since the Great Depression. The problem is entirely political. Who runs the government of Greece - the Greek people, or the IMF and the ECB? The IMF and the ECB want to prove it's the latter. Unfortunately a Grexit would be a disaster for the EU and possibly the rest of the financial world, and the Greek negotiating team is well aware of this. I think it's quite likely anyway, because in international banking it's more important to save face and status than to save an economy. But we'll see.
- soup10 11y ago
  > In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif