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Comment by gary_0 | Hacker News Reader

While I'm sure their finances are a bit more complicated than "they have infinite money", I find it hard to believe that people who can buy and sell small countries and ruin millions of lives with a few keystrokes are as powerless as you might be implying. "If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."

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These people have all set up financial constructions that will see them and their children safely into old age with the very best of medical care, pocket money to the tune of being able to just buy off the whole evening of their favourite fancy restaurant for the night for just the two of you on a whim, and owning one or two private fucking islands in perpetuity, whatever happens to their megacorps.

They can indeed do with their toys whatever they want. They just don't want to put up with the bother of other investors trying to get rid of them, or the orange guy not sending them a Christmas card, or having a little less than infinite money.

What they don't have is financial constructions that would leave them in nominal control when they go down that path. And they absolutely do want to stay in control, or else they would have sold a long time ago.

Even if that control is only nominal, of it comes at the price of anticipating every wish institutional investors might have and obediently following them to the (unwritten) letter.

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