Spyke

Billionaires at Trump’s swearing-in have since lost $209 billion

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

Billionaires at Trump’s swearing-in have since lost $209 billionhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-10/billionaires-at-trump-s-swearing-in-have-since-lost-200-billionOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
lemmy.world

only meaningful if their stocks don't bounce back, but too soon to tell

146

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")

74
lemm.ee

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.

37
NeonNightreply
lemm.ee

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

21

We just need to keep going until at worlds population billionaires

4

Do what they do, put some extra cash away and buy an index funds

2

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

3

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.

5

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

7

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.

1
lemmy.world

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.

82
[deleted]reply
lemmy.world

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.

52

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

27
infosec.pub

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

They win no matter what.

17

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.

5
lemmy.world

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.

2

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"

1

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

1

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.

6

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.

6
lemmy.myserv.one

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

18
feddit.uk

That doesn't stack up, Musk is the richest, currently worth $324Bn - they can't be worth more than $3.24Tn combined.

8
ezmacreply
lemmy.world

I think they replaced the period with a comma.

8

The %s are all out of whack too, it's more like 13%, which, while not enough, is a lot more than 0.13%.

4

For sure, Google tells me there's only 21.2T USD in circulation.

3

You seem to have forgotten to multiply by 100 after you divided 209 by 1,548.

209 is 13.5% of 1,548, not 0.13%.

Edit: It is a bit disturbing how many people upvote things without making even the most basic sanity check.

4
Cortreply
lemmy.world

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

17
lemmy.world

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.

65
lemmy.world

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

10

Yes, the all-but-inevitable Trump decision to throw Musk under the bus is not something I've seen a lot of people discuss.

8

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.

4
lemm.ee

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.

0
kautaureply
lemmy.world

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

14

It's a funny argument, because, yeah, a lot of tech companies are overvalued, but that's not a good thing either

1

looks more like a cancerous tumor9tesla) crowding out healthy tissue.

2
lemm.ee

That is absolutely wild... I cant believe how much of the industry they are! Well thats great then! I was worried the death of tesla would be unfelt by elon.

1
lemmy.world

He's hit the level of wealth where he'll never be poor. But he can be removed from "buy governments" money until such time as he can be held accountable for his actions

3

Politicians are whores, I really doubt you need more than a billion to own your own starting lineup.

1

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

1

and they have bailouts just in case they cant actually make money.

5
axh
lemmy.world

Those are rookie numbers! We've got to pump that number!

44
lemmy.world

Yes, the more they lose the more we win.

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

10
lemm.ee

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.

1

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.

1
lemmy.world

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.

41
thatKamGuyreply
sh.itjust.works

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.

7

I think we might be nearing a catastrophic economic collapse. It will be interesting to see how these billionaires react.

6
turnipreply
sh.itjust.works

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.

3
dx1reply
lemmy.world

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".

2
turnipreply
sh.itjust.works

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.

2

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.

1

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

1

Them losing billions is meaningless. Don't for this: if you had 1 billion dollars, and you lost 99% of it, you still have 10 million dollars, which is more than what most people will ever have.

Their entire industries need to be nationalized and ALL their assets seized.

22

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".

12

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

1

It remains to be seen if their kissing the ring was strategic or just tactical (apart from Musk, who is committed), but what they've bought wasn't a good economy. They bought into the transition from democracy and capitalism to authoritarian oligarchy.

Dollars don't describe the value of Russia-level corruption, which is where the country is now pointed. And the longer-term gains from captured institutions would far outpace a hundred billion dollars or two, if they succeed.

23
DokPsyreply
lemmy.world

Small but important point. We've been an oligarchy for a while now. We're just losing the pretense of it being a democracy.

17
lemm.ee

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

19

Unfortunately our own pensions and such are also getting wiped out by the same forces. And with less access to insider information.

5
endlesstalk.org

Unfortunately this hurts many other people more than those few. Anyone with a 401k or investments, people who work for those companies, and consumers will all have their lives impacted more than the billionaires. It should have never gotten to that point of having these billionaires to begin with.

0

I understand that and I sympathize, but sadly all of our "investments" are the reason these billionaires exist. Nobody has ever become a billionaire by making and selling products, it's always come down to going public and selling people on the illusion of infinite exponential growth. Even the investments that are considered conventionally "safe" (like index funds) are just another way to funnel money towards the biggest companies and the richest people.

I wish I had the answer, because obviously we all want to save for retirement, but the entire system feels like it's broken in a way that is designed to enrich people like Musk and Bezos.

0

Comparing my net worth to that total net worth? I’d be upset, but not terribly so, if I lost $1000 too.

But since I would be getting it back later, and then some, it’s more like a small investment only . Definitely worth the small risk,

16

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.

14

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.

14

Not really. Comparative wealth of the entire USA is declining, the Billionaires are still on top. If Elon Musk loses 99% of his wealth he would still be a billionaire.

What this really means is that people around the world outside of the USA no longer view it as a stable investment.

6

Tbf, not all of them invested in his campaign though.

1

But to them this is winning, right? Anything to "own the libs" that they so hate. There's no such thing as failing, there's only failing forwards.

13

Oh ok, that’s sad, let me shed a few tears here before I go back to be exploited by the rich 😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹

10

I can’t help but feel like this was some sort of Monkey’s paw situation. “I wish there weren’t any billionaires”

8
lemmy.world

They don't care. Stock prices only matter when purchasing and when selling. The day to day up and down has no affect on their direct worth.

7
fedia.io

False - these billionaires use their stock as collateral for loans. It’s all part of a tax avoidance scheme. If the stock goes down significantly, the banks come knocking.

Both of the billionaires pictured also head their companies in some way or another. Investors can vote to throw them out. Not that they would, but even the vote of no confidence is not a good look.

14

Banks may come to them, but hardly knocking with demands. 'If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.' And how they interact with banks, loans, etc. is far different in scale and method than the average consumer anyway.

11
lemmy.zip

I know were in for a world of pain with the stocks tanking. But honestly don't mind that they lose even more. Lose everything. Burn with us.

7
lemmy.world

They won't. You'll see. They will come out of this richer and more powerful than when they went in.

2
lemm.ee

go woke go broke, no wait....

6

turns out its the either side going woke going broke. right wingers are by thier own definition, the wokest people out there.

2
lemmy.world

and the American retirees who depend on their savings lost trillions to these idiots. A majority of those retirees voted conservative, but I feel bad for the ones who didnt.

6

The only solace to watching all my retirement and investments get cratered is the fact that the assholes that brought this all about are taking the bigger hit.

5

I'm sure they will be able to weather the storm. I bet they could find a way to get by on "only" a billion, let's say.

5

Just Covid economy 2.0 shifting more of everyones money into less hands, this way it can be Bidens fault it dropped and then Trumps when it regains

5

Damn that’s financially irresponsible. I’ve only lost a $20 since then

4

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.

4
lemmy.world

Crazy how you can tell from looking at Zuckcuck's face that he doesn't have a soul.

3

he is an android, his public appearances have always have him acting like a robot. he stays in his "alcove" while uploading META-data into his "brain" when hes not in public.

2

Good. Since they drive their wealth from using the value of their stocks as leverage to get loans, having these stocks collapse will not only make their loans smaller (not sure by how much), but they will have to pay using more of their dividends than what they expected

In short, they will get less money and it will cost them more to pay it back.

3

I'm sure they still have plenty of liquid assets to scoop up discounted stocks. Tax cuts will save conglomerates money, which they'll use for stock buybacks to inflate the worth of their stocks, which had already been picked up by the billionaires. This will reinflate their net worth.

Plus, and I don't know how or when this would be involved in the calculation of their net worth, but they're probably shorting stocks with insider info passed around Mar-a-Lago. Just a guess.

They'll be fine. The rest of us will continue to be screwed even harder. Fuck them billionaires.

3

They like the stock market going down, since it'll eventually go back up and meanwhile they still have billions available to buy up a lot more stock on the cheap while it's down.

3

When someone has this much money, it doesn't matter if they buy the presidency, buy the media, buy the means to live, buy people's rights... It doesn't matter. They will never get the respect and love they desperately seek like all humans do. They will never love themselves until they understand that their wealth isn't earned and they aren't special. We don't consider ourselves better than anyone as a human and then not get depressed and lonely. It's not difficult for us to accept kinship with all humans, but almost impossible for them.

2