[keerthiko]

without having watched the Big Short or having read the article, my first impression from the quote is "Megacorporations are failing dramatically, and the billionaires at their helm are freely doing financial gymnastics to pull the covers over the eyes of shareholders, while gaming the system to fully circumvent taxes and regulation -- the people with the power to do anything about it (legislators and regulators) watch idly (maybe profiting), the oligarchs make off like bandits despite copious failures, and the end consumer/taxpayer is either robbed or clueless this is going on, but most likely both, when there was a world where accountability could have been had and the common man was treated better."

the article headline immediately screams "financial gymnastics" to me so the rest followed from the quote.

[Fogest]

I see what you're saying, but I also know that companies do these kinds of things all the time. It's very normal for companies to move around like this if it results in better financials. I don't see how that really makes this "financial gymnastics". Pretty much every company out there does some funny things with the numbers in order to reduce their tax burden. I wouldn't doubt this is the same kind of thing. If xAI plans to launch a ton of servers into the sky, it kind of makes sense for them to be apart of a company they also own that just so happens to launch satellites.

Starlink is also a company under SpaceX. Would you argue that is also financial gymnastics? Is it much different from what Starlink does? Instead of launching satellites to be a world wide ISP, they are launching them to be an AI provider.

I just don't see how this compares to the quote, otherwise it would apply to so many companies, including other ones already under SpaceX.

To me this just doesn't seem related and seems like a pretty big stretch likely biased by people who dislike AI and Elon.