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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

The largest shareholders are the Saudis and Qataris, the shareholders appear to have gotten some sweetheart inverted deal relative to the bondholders, and almost nobody is discussing it?

You now if these financial markets just evaporated, who would care really, except a few aristocrats? Are they really doing anything worthwhile like building factories, or is it just a pack of percentage-harvesting parasites?

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> You now if these financial markets just evaporated, who would care really, except a few aristocrats?

Everybody, because retirement is tied to financial markets.

We can’t possibly not pay out 401k’s, right? Isn’t that a neat trick to ensure that everybody cares about the health of financial markets?

Embezzling from the pension fund is a popular move among dishonest accountants, and what can you do if the money's simply not there? In times of great upheaval, promises get broken and in a governmental collapse, there's no entity left to keep those promises.

Hopefully we are not in such calamitous times, but we shall have to see.

> You now if these financial markets just evaporated, who would care really, except a few aristocrats?

Where you not around 15 years ago?

When banks fail it's never "a few aristocrats" who get screwed, it's everyone.

Seems the Saudis aren’t getting off so easy as you suggest:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/credit-suisse-collapse-burns-sa...

You probably should avoid using the word parasites and banks in the same context. The historical connotation is more than a bit errrrr.

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