Summary
Since Trump’s second-term inauguration, five top billionaires have lost a combined $209 billion as markets react to policy uncertainty.
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Elon Musk’s net worth plunged $148 billion as Tesla shares collapsed amid declining European and Chinese sales.
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Jeff Bezos lost $29 billion as Amazon stock fell 14%.
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Sergey Brin’s fortune dropped $22 billion following Alphabet’s weak earnings and regulatory pressure.
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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.
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”.
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.
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.