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Regulators Criticize Banks For Lending Uber $1.15 Billion (venturebeat.com)
Federal regulators criticized several Wall Street banks over the handling of a $1.15 billion loan they helped arrange for Uber this past summer, reports Reuters, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: Led by Morgan Stanley, the banks helped the ride-sharing network tap the leveraged loan market in July for the first time, persuading institutional investors to focus on its lofty valuation and established markets rather than its losses in countries such as China and India. The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which are trying to reign in risky lending across Wall Street, took issue with the way in which the banks carved out Uber's more mature operations from the rest of the business, the people said.
I hope that Uber dies and with each loss they sustain, I cheer. The company cheats its drivers out of so much. Uber is just another predatory company.
The whole point of corporations in the US is so that nobody's liable for what corporations do. Corporations can't/don't go to jail, and a member of a corporations going to jail for something done under the auspices of the company is rarer than lightning strikes or lottery winners.
I don't respond to AC's.
and THAT is the problem
"hit's", "get's"? Seriously?
Ride sharing has a specific meaning, and Uber is not it.
The head of foreign corporation building diesel engines programmed to cheat emissions tests can be arrested while on vacation in the US.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
While risky, Uber does actually have a bloody good business model. It's just that they are also unethical as hell, and does not give a crap about your privacy or your security.
Why would you want to rein in Jesus? What makes you believe it would be easy to do so?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Nah, I think they have it right. Read it again, as written: The government is "...trying to reign in risky lending". They want to be the kings of it :)
Totally a problem.
So enjoy your lengthy sentence for that buggy ass code you wrote, chump.
When every last customer and driver you have can walk away after a 3-minute download, how can that "lofty valuation" be justified?
What I don't get is how the company can be worth more than every last taxi medallion in every major US city combined.
Yup. That's one of the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Oh, maybe that kid who tried to run a pharmaceutical company. But, that's my point. It happens much more rarely than it should. Who from GM was sent to jail for killing over 100 people by knowingly using bad ignition switches? Every industrial accident that was the result of negligence? Or even companies that willingly and knowingly sell things to people that give them cancer?
I don't respond to AC's.
Where were these "regulators" when the banks were lending trillions on junk mortgages then reselling them to people as bonds?
No sig today...
They were making sure the banks complied as an "equal opportunity lender"
"His name was James Damore."
Found the cabbie scum.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
In theory, the people up the chain of command get a huge salary because they are responsible when something breaks.
in practice, they get to blame you.
That's almost as much money as it took Nick Leason to bankrupt Bearings Bank ($1.4M) back in the ninety's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
They lined their pockets with money to deregulate ?
The whole point of corporations in the US is so that nobody's liable for what corporations do. Corporations can't/don't go to jail, and a member of a corporations going to jail for something done under the auspices of the company is rarer than lightning strikes or lottery winners.
This is the result of corporate lobbying over the last 20 years, and the growing view (among the wealthy elite) that white-collar crime isn't really a thing. After the savings-and-loan collapse in the 1990s, over 900 bankers were convicted of criminal offenses; after the most recent (and much worse) financial crash, nobody in the banking industry has spent even a night in jail.
It is one of those odd ones. I work in the tech sector. I also trade stocks as a bit of a hobby, not any real large amounts of money mind you, just money I don't care if I lose. Sort of my type of gambling.
I feel I should understand how stocks in tech will react and have some level of success in trading them. But I'm always wrong. If I try to use the logic of do the opposite of what I think, I still end up wrong. I simply cannot understand tech stocks and what earning results and announcements will make them go up or down. Tesla, in enormous amounts of debt, taking on more, losing money every quarter, one of the largest expenses is dealing with recalls due to poor quality, cars are reviewed to not be very good, constantly misses production goals yet their stock is through the roof. Twitter, literally never turned a profit, seems to be imploding, literally has no physical assets, not idea how to monetize anything, stock is unphased. When I worked for an unnamed company, we'd put out an earnings report that we'd achieved record sales and profits, our stock would dive 15%.
Yeah, tech stocks make no effing sense to me.
...long long ago, an out-of-town visitor to New York was admiring the elegant vessels harboured off the Financial District; "Those are the bankers' and brokers' yachts!" exclaimed the guide. "But where are the customers' yachts?" questioned the naÃve visitor in response...
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
...or, for a rather heavily-regulated industry, banks seem to behave in a rather cavalier fashion?
-Styopa
What part of my statement implied I thought Trump was going to do any better? I don't think Clinton would have done better either. Partly why I didn't vote for either of them. If we the people want companies to be held responsible, then we need to voice this as something we want of our elected officials, and vote for the ones who will do something about it. But the people seem fine with how things are right now, thus nothing happens. They'll moan about things, but ultimately when it comes to vote time, they'll base their entire vote based if there's an R or a D at the end of the name.
Seriously, with Trump, it becomes increasingly obvious that most people, both Ds and Rs don't actually care about a candidates actual position. They assume a position based off of emotion and run with it. The media has been making an ass of itself claiming Trump is against certain things (gay rights specifically comes to mind) because he's an R and Rs are against it in their opinion, even though Trump isn't against it. Facts are unimportant. He's an R, Ds don't like Rs, so clearly an R can't support anything they support in their minds. You can flip the Ds and the Rs on another subject and the same holds true. It's pathetic.
Funny how it only happens to foreign corporations while wall street bankers and ratings agencies walk free after the sub-prime crisis.
Aww, that's so cute...
Maybe because the banks aren't stupid enough to get suckered in by horseshit valuation like Wall Street is?
It's just a debt vs equity question. Uber figures they'd rather borrow than try to raise money with an IPO. Either way, banks or Wall Street brokers don't care about the risks. Their job is to package the debt or equity and get it out the door to investors ASAP. They won't be around if Uber falls on its face.
Right now, the debt vs equity decision is tilted heavily in favor of debt, given the overhead costs of regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Also, assuming that Uber does go public in the near future, loaning them a big chunk of money allows well connected investors an opportunity to get in ahead of future equity investors and make a tidy profit.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think at the moment with allegations that his campaign team was in regular contact with the Russians and that the Russians may have something pretty nasty on him, I'd say there are a lot of Ds AND Rs who probably ain't so thrilled with him.
(And yes, I know, the dossier is problematic and may be false in part or in whole).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Everyone is judging how much Uber is worth and talking about their services but no one here has actually looked at their finances, loan agreements, and most probably haven't even read the article. How can this? How can that? Uhh guys you have no idea what makes a company valuable and especially the government doesn't know. They look at one thing, collateral, and say screw it when it comes to all the other details. Of course a 'new' and growing company doesn't have much collateral. Banks don't just loan based on that, although it is the main factor, they bet on the leaders of the company, the potential of the company, and the business model. A business model where someone downloads an app to drive and then you start making hundreds of dollars a day from their service is a pretty damn good one.
But they sound like something that costs less than a million dollars per year. Is the rest all spent on embezzlement services?
First, haha NO, servicing hundreds of thousands or millions of customers a day does not cost less than a million a year, try probably ~$50 million if you're doing it right.
Second, they're currently employing most of the former AI and Robotics labs folks from Carnegie Mellon and a few other large high profile labs in an effort to get autonomous cars going to the point where they can remove their biggest expenditure (their drivers).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The problem with Slashdot these days is that 4chan trolls like yourself are here. There's should be a "-100000 4chan scumbag".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's hard to call a business model that has thus far lost hundreds of millions of dollars a "good" business model. About the only way it is a good business model is that the guys at the top are probably taking in a pretty tidy salary, and will be walking away from the wreckage of Uber's bankruptcy with millions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In theory, the people up the chain of command get a huge salary because they are responsible when something breaks. in practice, they get to blame you.
Of course. They are important to the company (that's why they make that huge salary). The company can't afford to lose them. However some cog way down the chain of command that makes a fraction of what they do (and thereby obviously isn't as important to the company as they are) is easily replaced so they are the ones that get blamed and get fired. Even if they do "resign", they get a seven or eight figure buyout and land somewhere else a few months later after taking a nice long vacation.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The 2008 crisis taught investment banks an important lesson. If you are politically connected enough, the government will bail you out if you screw up.
My apologies. Hadn't had my first cup of coffee
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There was no regulation.
Congress "deregulated" that piece of the banking industry when it repealed sections 20 and 32 of the Glass–Steagall Act in 1999.
It only took the corporations 9 years to create a national disaster.
It turns out some regulations are very, very good ideas.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The robotics stuff is merely a news-friendly stunt to fluff their market cap when they IPO. Non-savvy investors will hear all about self-driving cars and buy Uber as a "technology" stock.
Please, Mr. Trump! Stop the regulators from deciding who they should be lending to!
If anything should happen to these banks the U.S. taxpayer will be there to bail them out and make sure the executives get their bonuses.
Just like the last time.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There's been an entire attitude shift: Remember, civil forfeiture laws were created to steal boats and houses from rich criminals. Now, they're being used to steal a traveler's laptop and iPhone. Citizens who have won court cases against such theft have never gotten their property back, putting those police in contempt of court.
There were many complaints when NY police began 'stop and frisk' procedures but the courts have approved such fishing expeditions so the practice has spread. Police departments have militarized to combat civilian militias that don't exist and even bought house-smashing tanks for arresting non-violent criminals, such as illegal immigrants.
It's not a war on terror or drugs, it's class warfare, with the welfare-dependent and black communities being the enemy.
They are important to the company (that's why they make that huge salary).
Janitors are important too, but look at what they make. A CEO not showing up for two months while he has a vacation in southern France and no one would notice. All the toilets in the company overflowing for two months and that would cause serious productivity damages.
So why are executives "important" if their absence is not missed?
It may be hard for the short sighted or ignorant.
But, without all the shit the CEO generates, they might not need the janitors.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
What part of my statement implied I thought Trump was going to do any better?
You didn't, but you implied that the people could vote for someone who would do better.
My assertion is that they can't. The system is too broken for that to happen. It simply isn't feasible to get someone who will do better, with the way our election systems work.
they'll base their entire vote based if there's an R or a D at the end of the name.
And they have to, because of first-past-the-post voting. It's simply mathematically impossible to have anything besides two dominant parties with such a voting system, so we're stuck with it until we somehow manage to get the Rs and Ds to pass a constitutional amendment reducing their power by changing the voting system to something else.
When you consider that it's unlikely that the business model as it stands is likely to even work in many jurisdictions, due to the growing number of jurisdictions that are rejecting Uber's argument that its drivers are private contractors, I don't actually see a long term view here. Yes, they have the app, and that IP may be worth something, but the business model where you weasel your way out of paying minimum wages and withholding taxes doesn't look very optimistic.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They are important to the company (that's why they make that huge salary).
Janitors are important too, but look at what they make. A CEO not showing up for two months while he has a vacation in southern France and no one would notice. All the toilets in the company overflowing for two months and that would cause serious productivity damages.
So why are executives "important" if their absence is not missed?
A janitor is a cog. They can be easily replaced, and in most cases aren't even part of the company: most major companies outsource cleaning. Now, of course my comment was mostly sarcastic, as we all know that most cogs tend to do much more work than those higher ups.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Trust us.
There is a difference between 'necessary' and 'mission critical'.
Which isn't to say CEOs are all 'mission critical', some are about as competent as drunk monkeys throwing darts at 'decision boards'.
If your Janitors (digital or mop) are 'mission critical', you are doing it wrong.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Kanye?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Well, some were gaoled. But mostly low-level, none of the big fish.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Awful example, the engineer responsible for the forged data is being prosecuted and could spend 20 years in jail.
It's hard to call a business model that has thus far lost hundreds of millions of dollars a "good" business model.
Get your facts straight - they lost $2 BILLION last year alone. If they were losing just hundreds of millions of dollars, they'd be in a much better position than they are. How a company that loses $2 billion in subsidizing it's only "product" (rides) is worth $62 billion is stunning, and a huge warning we're back in an Internet bubble...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Amazon had enough money to weather the storm and survive; will Uber? Their burn rate is an order of magnitude higher than Amazon - and they have no path towards profitabilty, their assets being not warehouses and physical stock but an app.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Sanders would at least have been more interested in prosecuting high executives, and he came close to winning the Democratic nomination. Whether he could have won in November is an open question with lots of unknowns.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No, that's not an open question at all. Sanders would have won, easily.
Hillary wasn't that far behind Trump, she won the popular vote, but she screwed up (among other ways) by not campaigning in key states like PA that the DNC thought were "safe". Bernie was always much better about campaigning in places like that. Hillary's campaign was totally full of hubris; they really thought they couldn't possibly lose, especially to Trump. Her campaign was also full of condescension, esp. to the Bernie voters, and of course to anyone on the right. A lot of Trump voters were just sick of mainstream, incumbent politicians and voted for him out of spite for that and her. Many would have actually voted for Bernie. Bernie brought a lot of enthusiasm from the under-30 crowd. Obama himself won largely because he got young people to get out and vote. Hillary didn't: young people didn't like her, and her campaign didn't care much to court them either. It didn't help that she and her followers specifically told the Bernie crowd that "we don't need you". It also didn't help that she and the DNC were seen by the Bernie voters as having knifed his campaign in the back with dirty tricks, as shown in the leaked Podesta emails.
Hillary lost an election to the 2nd-most unpopular candidate in history. That's because she was the most unpopular candidate ever. There's really no way Bernie could have done worse. People actually *liked* Bernie, he had the support of the youth, and he wasn't hamstruck by scandal after scandal. The only arguments against Bernie were from Hillary supporters inventing nonsense to try to back their queen (like, "the Republicans would have found dirt on him too!" Except that they didn't.).
Just look at the election numbers. There were millions more votes in the 2008 election than in November's, even though the population is a little bigger now. Lots of people simply sat at home. Obama was famous and acknowledged for getting a lot of people out to vote, particularly younger people who are infamous for not turning out to vote; Bernie had the same effect, but Hillary had the opposite effect. Assume that Bernie would get those several million people out to vote unlike Hillary, add in all of Hillary's voters (because they sure as hell aren't going to vote for Trump, and they're generally older so they're more reliable about both turning out and voting along party lines even if they aren't enthused about the candidate), plus definitely more swing voters since he didn't have Hillary's baggage, and it's quite clear that Bernie would have won.
It's just too bad the DNC and their lapdogs in the media will never admit to itself that this is the case, and Trump being president is really all their fault for doing everything they could to keep Bernie from winning their nomination. (Remember the day when Washington Post published almost 20 hit pieces on Bernie in a single day?)
Wow, you're really a loon if you think that's a winning strategy: have Hillary pick a Republican running mate? That might pick up some R voters who don't like Trump, but it'll also cause tons of D voters (including everyone who considers themselves a progressive) to sit out the race or vote third-party. This strategy actually would have been great for getting the Green Party a lot more votes than they got with her crappy pick of Kaine.
Sanders *was* a qualified Democrat. He ran as one, and that's all you have to do. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Democrat Party faithful think that only long-time Party members should be allowed to play in their party. No wonder they have such a hard time getting progressives to turn out to vote for them, by pushing partisan politics over ideals and doing the right thing. Honestly, if there's any good to come out of this crazy election, it'll be the utter destruction of the Democratic Party. At least the Republicans are somewhat honest about their intentions and who they work for.
And Trump absolutely *is* unpopular. Countless polls have proven this. Just because people voted for him doesn't mean they actually liked him, same as Hillary.