[Closed] Apple has more money than the US Govt

I thought the US was in massive debt, so even I had more money then them?

I think I have more money down that back of my sofa than the US Govt at the moment.

I got paid today. Zero debts. **** u USA! haha. erm.. but I don't have the spending power. bugger.

But apple could get pwned if barrack opened up the war chest on their asses! No limit to those funds!!!

Probably due to the overpriced products Apple make.

waits for apple to buy the US!

Apple has more [b]CASH[/b], not worth or value.

As in actual greenbacks that things can be bought with right now.

A lot of it used to be mine 🙁

Yep, I've also been funding Apple for the last few years...

so i drink cider and now magners have more money than america.. thats a lot of headaches.

You forget that technically the us can print as much money as they like. Imagine having that up your sleeve.

R.lepecha - Member
Probably due to the overpriced products Apple make.

“Windows-based PC makers looking to challenge Apple’s extremely successful line of ultra-lightweight MacBook Airs with designs based on Intel’s “Ultrabook” platform are losing hope that they’ll be able to do so and still turn a profit on sales of the notebooks any time this year,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider.
“Unveiled a couple of months ago at the Computex trade show, Intel’s new ‘Ultrabook’ design is a set of guidelines for PC notebook makers aimed at marrying the performance and capabilities of a traditional notebook with ‘tablet-like features’ in a ‘thin, light and elegant design,’” Jade reports. “A direct response to Apple’s hot-selling MacBook Airs, Intel says it plans to reach a 40 percent share of the consumer notebook market with the ‘no-compromise’ Ultrabook designs by the end of 2012. Its guidelines call for the systems to retail for less than $1000 and sport form-factors that are no more than 20mm thick.”

Jade reports, “The first Ultrabook notebooks were slated to arrive at that price point in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season but a new report reveals that ‘actual production costs’ to build the new notebooks are roughly as high as Apple’s MacBook Air retail prices, which could ‘render the hope [of matching the Air's pricing] practically infeasible.’”

Jade reports, “The first Ultrabook notebooks were slated to arrive at that price point in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season but a new report reveals that ‘actual production costs’ to build the new notebooks are roughly as high as Apple’s MacBook Air retail prices, which could ‘render the hope [of matching the Air's pricing] practically infeasible.’”

So if Apple can make them so cheap, what shit do they fill them with...

So if Apple can make them so cheap, what shit do they fill them with..

I think it's fair to say he's not a believer then 😆

Makes you wonder what kind of crap is in the £299 laptops that usually get referenced at some point in Apple-related threads, not to mention the working conditions of the people who make [i]them[/i].

You seemed to have grasped it perfectly there.

So if Apple can make them so cheap, what shit do they fill them with...

Apple have huge buying power for NAND Flash (memory chips), which they use in their iPhone, iPad, iPod and Macbook Air lines. So much buying power in fact, that they gobble up some ridiculous percentage of the world supply, driving up the price of the remaining supply.

In summary; Apple buy their NAND cheap, competitors can't because they won't commit to buying Apple-like volumes of the stuff.

without getting bogged down in OSs and specific software........

Apple is a premium brand

you don't have to shift as many Apple computers as say Acer computers to make the same money

still a bit frightening they've amassed all this cash

personal opinion: I don't think they do offer good value.. never said they were bad.. just not good value

still a bit frightening they've amassed all this cash

I imagine it's mostly come from iPhones/iPods.

iphones, they still actually own iirc

How much profit does the itunes store generate?

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as an owner of an iPhone, four iPods, two iPads I won't even consider anything from Bill Gates and Co. My Macbook is two year old now, never had a virus checker, firewall etc, it's never once crashed, frozen up and there's nothing I can't do on it that I could on a win doze PC. The battery still lasts a good 5 hours and I never switch it off, just put it on sleep.

I have three apple stores near me, can pop in for advice and have had a repair done on iPhone and no questions asked. Tried taking my lass's Acer back to PC world last week and after 45 mins of waiting we were met by someone who wouldn't be technically competent to put air in car tyres...... nuff said.

Apple probably own half of the US government now, who do you think the governments borrow their money from?? Bankrupt banks?? They borrow hard cash from cash rich companies who are given anonymity on their balance books. Apple now have so much money they don't need any more, so lend it to the government for a guaranteed high return..

So because PC world are rubbish that means PCs are rubbish? 🙄

Apple probably own half of the US government now, who do you think the governments borrow their money from??

Is that suppose to be a serious comment, or a joke ? I can't figure it out.

If it was a serious comment, then perhaps you should know that China owns $1.16 trillion of US government debt.

If it was a joke, perhaps you should brush-up on your material.

So because PC world are rubbish that means PCs are rubbish?

You missed the point. The point was service levels, pile them high sell them cheap merchants like PC world don't have the margin to offer a decent level of after sales service. I'm not saying all PC's are rubbish I'm saying that I'd rather pay a premium and have an aesthetically pleasing product, that holds some resale value, is easy to live with and if I need support I can take it to an outlet (pre booked in advance) where the people know it inside out, get the problem resolved and carry on using it.

I downloaded OS X Lion last week, clicked three yes's and after about half an hour a totally new OS is running. Everything was as it was left on Snow Leopard and I hadn't lost a single file etc etc. Last time I used Windows it re-formatted the HD and then you had a totally blank PC after upgrading the OS. Or has Win7 copied everything else from Apple and now have that function???

Is that suppose to be a serious comment, or a joke ? I can't figure it out.

If it was a serious comment, then perhaps you should know that China owns $1.16 trillion of US government debt.

If it was a joke, perhaps you should brush-up on your material.

Yes China owns $1.6trillion so who owns the other $14 trillion then??

Would that be the banks who are mainly government owned these days, who were all on the verge of bankruptcy??

They borrow from wealthy investors (Apple are an investment company like many conglomerates) who buy the debt in the form of bonds. China buy a lot of bonds as well as BP, ICI, Rio TInto to name a few. They can if they want borrow from the IMF but that is generally too expensive.

If it all goes tits up then the bonds are used to buy government assets and I'm sure even you can work out how borrowing money against an asset works when you can't keep up the payments.

Wasn't our on government looking to sell off the forests only a short while ago?? Why? Because their asset was going to become a liability.......

You've convinced me ........."Apple probably own half of the US government now"

Cant help but think that as an investor Id be mighty pissed off with Apple for sitting on $70bn of cash. That's not going to be doing anything accretive to my returns now is it?

Makes you wonder what kind of crap is in the £299 laptops that usually get referenced at some point in Apple-related threads, not to mention the working conditions of the people who make them.

I suggest you do a search on Apple and working conditions in their plants.

[url= http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110801/10562015345/apple-does-not-have-more-cash-than-us-govt-stop-saying-that-it-does.shtml ]Apple Does Not Have More Cash Than The US Gov't; Stop Saying That It Does[/url]

The US government can print cash. It does not run out of cash. The numbers being talked about concerning the debt ceiling represent an artificial limit, set by the government, on how much the US can borrow (debt) in order to finance its operations (set in a budget by the federal government itself). What the Apple comparison treats as government "cash" is just the difference between what the government is (artificially) permitted to borrow and what it has borrowed already.

None of this has anything to do with how much cash the government has on hand. Comparing the distance to the debt ceiling with the amount of cash anyone has is comparing two totally different things, and while it sounds nice, it's a silly political ploy and it makes you look silly. A more accurate comparison would be of something like how much money I have in my wallet right now to how much money Bill Gates' arbitrarily promised his wife he would take out of the bank this year. The comparison is totally meaningless and stupid. Please stop making it.

Cant help but think that as an investor Id be mighty pissed off with Apple for sitting on $70bn of cash. That's not going to be doing anything accretive to my returns now is it?

I rest my case.

I suggest you do a search on Apple and working conditions in their plants.

Probably better than Nike! It's a shame as we have a few high spec factories sitting mothballed (like [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-11673919 ]Hyundai[/url] and who can forget the £1bn factory built in Newcastle and closed within a year) in our country from the millennium, wouldn't you think the government would buy them and do a trade deal with people like Apple to use them? But it's all about the dollar.....

Cant help but think that as an investor Id be mighty pissed off with Apple for sitting on $70bn of cash. That's not going to be doing anything accretive to my returns now is it?

[b]"I rest my case"[/b]

Only that wasn't your case. You didn't say anything about Apple sitting on $70bn of cash, you said they "probably own half of the US government now" for a "guaranteed high return".

[i]Apple probably own half of the US government now[/i]

the premium half, no doubt.

The point was service levels, pile them high sell them cheap merchants like PC world don't have the margin to offer a decent level of after sales service.