| HN Mirror

How can you even write this? "SpaceX turned a profix. Most of it's income is from Starlink".

Yes, that obviously means it's not investor cash, that it's real profit, right? Entirely reasonable view, that. In Europe this is called a "carousel" (named after the old French merry-go-rounds) and it's almost always a form of fraud.

The reason this is often fraud is that they pay each other in fake, but not fake according to accounting rules, money. Lots of things are money "equivalents" in accounting. Loans given out. Shares. Letters of credit. Goodwill. Etc. The way you implement this fraud is that you make SpaceX buy something expensive from Starlink and vice-versa. Then you pay this with anything that is not money (e.g. shares, loan, delays on payments due, ...), that have been freshly printed by the company. Now, by accounting rules, the value of both companies has gone up by (if you do it right) twice the value of the zero-dollar exchange. This is what's going on with companies when their income/revenue is high ... and "somehow" their cashflow is low (both companies publish their income/revenue ... but hide their cashflow statements. "I wonder why")

One of the ways to do this ... which for "some reason" we'll call the Amazon trick is to start 2 companies. Then get cashflow going between them. To illustrate let's buy a bakery. You split the bakery. One company is the store. One company actually bakes the goods to be sold. The relevant part of this is that it's exactly the same as before, except there's now (virtual) cashflow between the two companies. Initially, you buy a pie, the cash is immediately divided up between the store and the bakery. Then you load up the bakery AND the store with debt, by slowly increasing the terms of payment. Settlement-after-15-days. Then 30. Then 60. Then 90. Then 6 months. The key is that the cashflow gets going, and is assumed in accounting to extend into infinity. Now look at what happens. If the s series is what the store makes and p is what it pays to the bakery. Now look at the profits:

Initial monthly profit: s1 - p1, s2 - p2, s3 - p3, ...

Change to settlement at 30 after the first month.

Profit now: s1 - p1, s2, s3 - p2, s4 - p3, ...

So the second months REVENUE goes 100% into your pocket (it's not profit, it's used to buy shares from you, read on). Now change to 60 days. 90 days. 6 months.

Now do the same, but pay in shares of the bakery (while taking out bank loans). If you have cash flow you can do this for at least half a year's revenue (which you get on both sides of the equation if, like Musk, you own both companies, so you get a full year's REVENUE (not profit, revenue) in your pocket, free). And if you now sell the company with the "massive increase in profit" ... AND since the store has signed a contract to pay (and has ideally a long history of paying), it's very easy to get (ideally) investors, but also banks to cover this amount. Who do they buy the shares from? From you! And if you're truly desperate, like Musk, who is buying the shares of the store? The bakery! And who is buying the shares of the bakery? The store! If you look at how this happens, you will realize that it's near impossible for states or banks to stop this, and investors, frankly, don't even try.

And of course, this is totally not what happened with SpaceX and Starlink. Oh, and, obviously, there's reasons that Musk would never ever do this if SpaceX turned a profit (he'd be stealing from himself, essentially). Frauds, all frauds, are dependent on the original investor getting out, or in this case, on Musk selling shares. And, surprise, surprise, Musk has done this kind of split and he is selling shares like mad ...

Tesla is similar. If you take out government subsidies, Tesla is losing money hand over fist. That includes the Federal government buying "cybertrucks", which is such an incredibly bad idea on so many different levels.