Apple’s Cash Hoard Exceeds GDP of 126 Countries | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s Cash Hoard Exceeds GDP of 126 Countries

macobserver.com

31 pointsdigiwizard35 comments

I'm not sure if this is still true, but I recall reading something about Apple not participating in any philanthropic ventures? With so much money (and aside from the point that they invest a lot in their products), it's a wonder why they don't work on innovating products to help struggling nations. Granted, there's no rule that says a company needs to do these sorts of things, but I think it would be a cool move.

Can Apple do that? Helping struggling nations is not exactly extracting value for the shareholders and that’s what Apple has to do.

You can argue that spending some money (maybe a few million dollars per year) is good PR work and good for the company’s image – but spending a substantial portion of those 76 billion? Hardly a good way to use the money (from the shareholders’ perspective).

Apple could certainly participate in philanthropic ventures but it’s not a way for them to get rid of their money.

Is sitting on a cash hoard extracting value for the shareholders?

Not much, but at least Apple is not exactly “destroying” value (by gifting the money).

Sure. They should issue a $50/ share special dividend, and they'd still have enough left over to buy eBay.

It's arrogant corporate behavior that's only being put up with while their growth rate is so high. Watch how quick the knives come out when they slip up.

They do invest the money, and make quite a bit of money on it as well. They have a range of short term to long term investments, as most companies who have lots of cash do. They also invest a lot in factories that build parts for their devices, ensuring a cheap, early supply of new components.

At what point is Apple poor enough that they can use their money as they wish?

I've had very bad experiences with these types of organizations. I once visited an institute for blind people and I had the chance to see them using the computer lab. I was moved by the scene: all these eager young people hungry for learning, and yet they didn't have internet. Their Braille library was 20 books.

So I made a huge effort and found someone who could donate a router, took $500 in savings (which, as a student in Mexico, was quite a sum) and asked friend to match my donation. So my donation was in essence two years of internet.

Some time went by and when I followed up, the router was stowed in a closet and my donation had gone to "administrative purposes" because they were having trouble making ends meet.

This is a huge problem in charitable organizations, most of the money doesn't go to the people who need it, it goes towards maintaining the organization and generating more money through bothersome print and phone campaigns.

I've met a couple of people who have worked in these organizations, and they become jaded once they catch the mechanics. There are certainly exceptions: The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the Turner Foundation function on the funds provided by their founders.

I still believe in charity, but in a more peer-to-peer fashion, not necessarily involving money but mentoring that builds long-standing roads to success.

Yeah, I could imagine that a lot of charitable organizations have a rough time operating. Perhaps refining their business model would be a great startup idea? I'd love to see a startup that focused on building charitable organizations. Perhaps a kickstarter for charity? Something where people can offer up a small recurring donation every month. Might actually exist already. If not, though, that would be killer and a great way to help circumvent some of the issues you mention.

I had similar experiences, the administration on charity organizations are often less efficient than government institutions. I was at the Red Cross in Germany and at 14 o'clock nobody was at work anymore. They were out because the weather was so nice told me the apprentice browsing on Facebook, there was nobody else there and she couldn't help me with my problem.

This makes me angry, there is no competition in this area so nobody controls if their administration is efficient. All this money is gone for the people who really need it.

There is competition - they're competing with other charities for funds.

The problem is that the evolutionary forces for fundraising non-profits can only result in ineffectiveness.

For senior management, success at fundraising and is income security and growth. Actual charity work is a cost center with no ROI, so you cut costs by having less and worse services.

related: Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bur...

This kind of comparison is ridiculous. Gross domestic product (GDP) refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. [Wikipedia] It would have units of [money]/[time]. Apple's cash hoard is just a lump sum reserve; it has units of [money]. To compare the two is meaningless.

A similarly meaningless comparison would be between distance and speed or countless others. Simple dimensional analysis shows how inane this whole comparison is.

It is not a meaningless comparison. It means that Apple could (theoretically) buy the entire output of any one of these countries for an entire year.

How much that matters is certainly unclear, but it's interesting to think about for sure.

It's not ridiculous to compare something to something/time. I could say a restaurant has more food in the kitchen than a family could eat in a month. That is what we are saying here, a company has more money in the bank than many countries produce in a year. It doesn't have to be the case, we could live in a world where companies are small and countries are all large in comparison. We don't.

Let’s compare Apple’s cash hoard against countries’ cash hoards rather than their GDP. Assuming the source data at:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

is correct then Apple slots in at position #4 (!), slightly ahead of Russia and quite a bit behind Germany.

That's current accounts for the country (i.e. inflows less outflows), not "cash hoards". There's no easy way to measure a country's "cash hoard", as it were. GDP goes up with the number of transactions, even if there is no value added in each transaction. Money is just a way of making value liquid, fungible and transferrable etc.; the amount of it specifically is relatively meaningless, as banks etc. can multiply it based on reserve ratios.

I think every country in the world has a negative cash hoard, except perhaps Norway?

The amount of cash in your bank account has nothing to do with the amount of debt you have. In many cases the more debt you have the more cash you have because when you raise that debt through a bond issuance corporations receive the cash before spending it. It isn't like it is in the consumer world where you typically only acquire debt as loan for an asset (car, home, etc).

I was talking net.

> Let’s compare Apple’s cash hoard against countries’ cash hoards rather than their GDP.

Agreed. The comparison doesn't make sense as the numbers don't have the same units. $ vs $/year.

That certainly doesn’t mean that the comparison makes no sense. Apple’s current cash reserves are equal to what many countries produce in one year. That’s a perfectly valid and valuable comparison.

Why not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ext... ?

Because I finished my Economics classes aged 16 and have only a vague understanding of what the difference in all these different measurements is? :)

This may seem an unfair and ridiculously large amount of money to hoard, but there's one reason it isn't. When Bush came in his admin just took Microsoft off the hook. The US is so capitalist that it's quite happy for monopolies to subvert the whole point of capitalism - competition. So Apple, and every company, including Microsoft, must hoard as much paranoia money as it can, because the US government's willingness to be corrupted is obvious to everyone, especially if you're Apple, or say, Netscape. They got away with destroying it, didn't they. They wish we were all still using IE6. When the government is on the side of your competition, no amount will make you safe. They will crush you, while paying their friends soft money to look the other way.

Two great examples of where graphs fail compared to a simple table of data.

A fascinating thing here is that despite all of Apple's current products, all the rising sales numbers, all the hype, popularity and air of coolness surrounding them and all the generally good news about them and all that... up to the launch of Lion, the share price has hardly moved and if anything it went down - just because Steve Jobs announced he would retire.

'cause the popular belief is that once Jobs retires, Apple will enjoy a free fall in _everything_.

Fascinating.

I understand this bit very well, thankyouverymuch. What I find fascinating is how one-dimensional and downright stupid and emotion-filled the stock market actually is and the Apple stocks are one of many good examples for that in this case.

When saw that Quora question on "why is Apple's stock so low" and didn't agree with a single one of the answers I moved half my parents investments into Apple. It is crazy to think that he hasn't imbued them with a lasting sense of design. I still think the company is undervalued.

That sounds like a terribly risky move for any investor, much less folks who are probably in or nearing retirement. Diversify!

I bought put options to cover the (extreme) downside. We were up about 30% YoY, so I wasn't too concerned.

Hmmm, so a simple description of what the irrational thinking the market has deserves a downvote now.

I used not to believe the downvoting trend on HN, but it appeared to be a real issue.

When did Steve Jobs announce he was going to retire? I can't find any evidence of that.

I wonder how "world's top 100 wealthiest entities" comes out as.

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