Summary

Since Trump’s second-term inauguration, five top billionaires have lost a combined $209 billion as markets react to policy uncertainty.

  • Elon Musk’s net worth plunged $148 billion as Tesla shares collapsed amid declining European and Chinese sales.

  • Jeff Bezos lost $29 billion as Amazon stock fell 14%.

  • Sergey Brin’s fortune dropped $22 billion following Alphabet’s weak earnings and regulatory pressure.

  • Mark Zuckerberg and Bernard Arnault each lost $5 billion as Meta and LVMH stocks tumbled.

The S&P 500 is down 6.4%, reversing gains seen post-election.

Non-paywall link

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Ridiculous how some people pander, especially the press, to the billionaire set.

    When they have a downturn in net worth people say they “lost” money, or are “poorer” even though they’re still worth billions.

    But when they’re making money hand over fist, millions of dollars daily, people act like that money doesn’t exist. “Oh, it’s tied up in investments, you can’t tax it…It’s not income! It’s not in their bank account.”

    Always the poor billionaires; perpetually simultaneously unable to touch their money, complaining when they lose money they ”don’t have,” and living like billionaires with all the conspicuous consumption that goes with it.

    • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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      21 hours ago

      The Top 10 Richest Americans have a combined wealth total of $1,548 TRILLION.

      $209 billion is only 0.13% 13.5% of the of Top 10.

      We need to get those numbers higher.

      Edit: I suck at math, as it was pointed out to me

    • Cort@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      It’s a relatively small price to pay for the power they gained, and most of the losses are elons anyway

    • Also only meaningful if they can’t buy up actual, tangible assets in the coming recessions, effectively converting their dead capital into more assets. (+ getting more state money for being “too big to fail”)

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        No, they’re gonna. It’s exactly what happened last recession. The pain got offshored to the workers, and the people with assets used the moment to leverage their assets to buy more assets on the cheap.

        • NeonNight@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          Yep, every time the US is in an economic low period, the top 1% snatch up swathes of assets for cheap. It’s how we went from 1 billionaire, to several, then several billionaires to hundreds in the last ~20 years

        • errer@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          These companies will absolutely use these things as excuses to replace workers with AI chatbots.

      • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Very similar to what happened just before the “collapse” of the Soviet Union, which seems to be Trump’s aspiration. It had turned into a free-for-all.

    • danc4498@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Stocks will always bounce back. But the people that live off their 401ks now have to sell at a loss to survive.

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
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      2 days ago

      I have a theory that this is all planned. Tank share market, buy lots of shares, in a few years they get all their wealth back and more.

  • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Coverage like this makes me feel sad.

    Do people honestly not realise that billionaires always enrich themselves during recessions?

    This is all going to plan for oligarchs. People celebrating it are naive unfortunately.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I would say most of it is meaningless other than Elon and specifically Tesla, Tesla stock prices plumetting will remove most of the power from Elon in the future, even Trump might turn on him once his main thing his net worth evaporates

      • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Musk is only a part of the problem, and Musk will have to lose another 110 billion before he even stops being the richest man in the world.

        I’d love to see that happen but I’m not holding my breath. Meanwhile it does nothing but enrich powerful Disaster capitalists including Putin and his coterie.

      • PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        Id be willing to bet that tesla is no bigger than 10% maximum of his worth. His big ones are space X that just chugs our tax money, and starlink, which I believe is being used as navigation in weapons systems being sold to nations. Tesla is effectively meaningless now.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I doubt that

          Edit: Tesla’s market cap is now 722 billion, still making it more valuable than any company on this graph. We need to go much lower

        • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I think you are wrong in the exact opposite direction, spaced just lost a 25 billion contract too

  • teslasaur@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Acting like they have the billions as liquid cash is weird.

    IF, and its a big if, they would start selling their assets in order to liquidate their stocks, the assets would nosedive in value to fucking hell. Most of their wealth is smoke and mirrors. Most of them spend money by borrowing cash against their assets.

    Tax them so they have to lend or sell some assets to pay their fair share.

    • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      It’s pretty common knowledge how these billionaires leverage the value of their stocks/assets as collateral against loans, in order to avoid having to pay capital gains tax.

      Even though it’s not liquid cash, there really isn’t much to preclude them from taking out cash loans up to like 70-80% of their value if they ever wanted to (not that they would, as cash depreciates in value due to inflation).

      So while you are correct that if they ever had to liquidate their shares the value would plummet significantly - unless something catastrophic happens and the value of those assets plunges well below an acceptable level to their financiers, it will never happen.

      If you owe the bank a $100 and can’t pay it back, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100m, that’s their problem.

    • turnip@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      The whole monetary system is smoke and mirrors. If people don’t consume more than last year the entire system can collapse and central banks buy up all the debt that is suddenly considered bad.

      Then we wonder how stores of value like housing, gold, and bitcoin can rise so astronomically in nominal terms.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Capitalism does not “collapse” with 0 or negative GDP growth. I don’t know where people got this idea. You only really see any sort of “collapse” if the social structure breaks down - the basic behaviors of trading continue even in extreme crises, insofar as a society operates with property assigned to individuals like that. Not counting “bubbles” and such as a “collapse”.

        • turnip@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          We will see the next recession. I’ll bet you that the bailout is bigger than the last, and I’d bet gold continues to rise as QE is unloaded into the market. Its done 10% a year since the Fed started QE every bailout.

          • dx1@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            What is your prediction for what will become of it, though. GDP growth stops and people start bursting into flames? You know we’ve actually observed this before, right?

            Now, if you do mean “capitalism” not in the plain definition of “an economy based around private ownership”, but the more specific version where control of capital is highly centralized - there’s some truth to the idea that economic decline can cause people to start looking to reform that system. True of any system, really, because people generally don’t want to see their quality of life decrease. But that’s very different than an economic system “requiring” it to function.

      • AoxoMoxoA@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Not mine , I know exactly how much cash I’ve got …except for the coinstar bucket but that’s for real emergencies

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Sheer incompetence. Whenever he says “I’m the only one who can…” I hear “I have no fucking clue how to even begin doing this”.

    • bassad@jlai.lu
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      2 days ago

      The rich didnt lost any money, their stock is just lower than in january, but still higher than last year. And it can still get up.

      The poor have to cope with higher prices of basic goods, which never comes down.

      Only poors are screwed until they eat the leech

  • redlemace@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    So what? It’s not like their bank accounts got affected. Their shares are valued less which means they did not loose money but the lost money they could have had.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      They lost pretend money that could be used for business loans that they don’t need because they have so much pretend money. The only time it matteds for these parasites is if it happens when they are acquiring another company worth billions of pretend monies.

      Even a stock market collapse is a benefit to these chucklefucks.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        The only time it matters for them is when an Italian plumber shows up to collect their debt.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        3 days ago

        Everything‘s on discount for them now! Time to buy up some cheap stock and failing businesses.

        They win no matter what.

        • Kyouki@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Always stood by for, with (fake) money you can make more (fake) money.

          The issue is mostly getting towards that money first for us normies who aren’t born into RNG.

      • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Matters at least a bit. For instance, Musk has signalled his interest in buying OpenAI. He will find it far harder to get the money for it now that Tesla shares have nosedived.

        More generally with Tesla it is difficult to make a business case for the existence of the company right now, since Musk alienated his entire potential consumer base. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company gets sold into parts in the text two years or so.

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          sam ALTMAN doesnt seem interested in selling it to him, musk wants to lead in AI research for some reason, since he has nothing show for it. Thiel is the other competitor with"PALINTIR and anduril"

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        they still have billions stashed somewhere and could buy up things on the cheap/.

    • Captain Janeway@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      They basically use that “money” as collateral for low interest loans. So it impacts how much they can physically buy. It’s a good thing.

    • freebee@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Some of them (ahum you know which one) did lose actual value: the entire credibility of their biggest brands are down the drain for years to come… In that way the stockprices do really show that they are losing out. Some others really are losing (sort of) equal access to big important markets… The loss is real, even tho I agree with the sentiment of your post, the lowering stocks predict lowering income, lowering dividends which these people expect to rake in eternally to keep their billionaire lifestyle afloat, etc. They are slowly becoming less wealthy from the shennanigans. Not quick enough tho. A billionaire is a thing that just shouldn’t be allowed to exist ever anywhere.

  • IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Billionaires remembering why they were supporting the covert right winger Democrats instead of the Republicans. Because a veneer of illusion is needed to keep their empire running.

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Yes, the more they lose the more we win.

      PERSONAL AUSTERITY!!! SAVE YOUR MONEY AND LET THE RICH GO FUCK THEMSELVES!!!

      • piratekaiser@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        You don’t win by them just losing some money. Redistribution is the name of the game. Even if Tesla hits 0/share, you aren’t getting any more wealth just by virtue of that happening.

        …Aside from basking in the downfall of a nazi of course, but those are priceless things.

        • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          The win is the diminishment of his economical power. Same goes for Amazon and Meta. Transitioning off of any dependence of those websites and services will empower us and remove these shitheads’ influence.

  • LonstedBrowryBased@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Good let’s make it another 200 billion EACH and even then that won’t be enough as they’ll all still have hundreds of billions of dollars which is absolutely insane

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    THERE’S THREE AND A HALF YEARS TO GO. THEY’RE PLAYING THE LONG GAME.

    THEY AREN’T UPSET. THEY’RE GETTING EVERYTHING THEY WANT.