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Like a centipede waiting for the other shoe to drop in [The Economy] thread

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    PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    Butters wrote: »
    GE financial spun off a few years ago and became Synchrony. That event could prove pivotal to the company's downfall considering Synchrony has been relatively successful and because GE's stated reason for selling it off was they weren't fond of being held to the regulatory standards of financial institutions.

    Why is this not a giant red flag for investors?

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    shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Butters wrote: »
    GE financial spun off a few years ago and became Synchrony. That event could prove pivotal to the company's downfall considering Synchrony has been relatively successful and because GE's stated reason for selling it off was they weren't fond of being held to the regulatory standards of financial institutions.

    Why is this not a giant red flag for investors?

    Because it's not necessarily shady. Being subject to stricter regulatory standards that aren't actually connected to your core business is just incurring pointless compliance costs to protect against behaviour that simply may not make sense for your business.

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    PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Butters wrote: »
    GE financial spun off a few years ago and became Synchrony. That event could prove pivotal to the company's downfall considering Synchrony has been relatively successful and because GE's stated reason for selling it off was they weren't fond of being held to the regulatory standards of financial institutions.

    Why is this not a giant red flag for investors?

    Because it's not necessarily shady. Being subject to stricter regulatory standards that aren't actually connected to your core business is just incurring pointless compliance costs to protect against behaviour that simply may not make sense for your business.

    Call me cynical then, I guess. I just assume when a business complains about regulation it's mostly because the regulation is stopping them from doing something. Which, you know, usually means it's better if the regulation stays. Then again, I usually hear about in the context of shit like the current FCC.

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    JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    Worth noting that the person who reported it works for a hedge which has shorted GE. So you've got that, too.

    That being said, they disclosed it in the report right out front.

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    PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    Disclosing is good but they are absolutely going for sensationalism here with GEnron and gefraud.com and with a 13% one-day reactionary drop they just made bank

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    AegisAegis Fear My Dance Overshot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Isn't that type of strategy (taking a short position and then aggressively putting out bad/negative press about a company) typically considered illegal market manipulation?

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    JepheryJephery Registered User regular
    I think only if its not publically available information. They're doing forensic accounting based on GE's public books.

    }
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    jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Aegis wrote: »
    Isn't that type of strategy (taking a short position and then aggressively putting out bad/negative press about a company) typically considered illegal market manipulation?

    Yeah but think about the FCC in 2019.

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    JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    My understanding is that the people who researched Enron did the same thing, FWIW.

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    shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Butters wrote: »
    GE financial spun off a few years ago and became Synchrony. That event could prove pivotal to the company's downfall considering Synchrony has been relatively successful and because GE's stated reason for selling it off was they weren't fond of being held to the regulatory standards of financial institutions.

    Why is this not a giant red flag for investors?

    Because it's not necessarily shady. Being subject to stricter regulatory standards that aren't actually connected to your core business is just incurring pointless compliance costs to protect against behaviour that simply may not make sense for your business.

    Call me cynical then, I guess. I just assume when a business complains about regulation it's mostly because the regulation is stopping them from doing something. Which, you know, usually means it's better if the regulation stays. Then again, I usually hear about in the context of shit like the current FCC.

    Sometimes the problem is just that it's got nothing to do with your actual business. A completely made up example with no connection to reality:
    Basically imagine you are a domestic shipping business. You buy up another shipping business that does most of it's business domestically but does a small amount of business internationally. Suddenly, because now technically part of your overall business does international shipping, you have to do like 3x more paperwork to comply with financial disclosure laws and inspection laws and all that designed for international shipping. Even though you are still a domestic shipping company and have no interest in going international and you just bought this other company because they have a good setup in, like, California. And the whole company has to follow these regulations because they are designed to keep you from moving money around internally to evade the rules. You might find this entire situation very annoying and look into getting rid of the part of the new business you just bought that does international shipping. Not because you are afraid of what the new law might find but just because there are compliance costs you are now incurring that have nothing to do with your core business and are costing you extra money.

    In this case, from what I can gather, it seems like GE Capital were actually the part of the business up to some shady shit and/or they had major debts. Poking around it seems like they had debts and SEC investigations going on and other such things. Basically a ton of shit that had nothing to do with the rest of the business and was dragging it down. So they wanted to get rid of that part.

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    JepheryJephery Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Conceptually to me, it seems simpler to set up new business as a subsidiary that you own the majority of, instead of having its operations be a part of your current corporation.

    Though that might be the programmer in me.

    Jephery on
    }
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    ButtersButters A glass of some milks Registered User regular
    Short selling is very dangerous and the investors that do it usually suspect fraud and do considerable research to find it before making that move.

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    Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    Shryke’s example is pretty good at demonstrating why you would sell off a finance division if it’s not core to your strategy

    While there’s a lot of operational regulation, the regs that govern capital and liquidity of FIs were basically the ones that made no sense for GE- these regs basically make every US bank exactly the same from a balance sheet perspective, and that type of balance sheet makes no sense for an industrial company like GE.

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    GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Butters wrote: »
    GE financial spun off a few years ago and became Synchrony. That event could prove pivotal to the company's downfall considering Synchrony has been relatively successful and because GE's stated reason for selling it off was they weren't fond of being held to the regulatory standards of financial institutions.

    Before that it was Genworth thay had spun off. (Different assurity portfolios though). Genworth is still around but i dont think they really “recovered” from the 2008 crisis.

    wbBv3fj.png
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    NotYouNotYou Registered User regular
    Butters wrote: »
    Short selling is very dangerous and the investors that do it usually suspect fraud and do considerable research to find it before making that move.

    From what I've seen on the subreddit "wallstreetbets," a lot of very young, very stupid, traders also do it all the time using the free app robinhood.

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    monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Butters wrote: »
    Short selling is very dangerous and the investors that do it usually suspect fraud and do considerable research to find it before making that move.

    Yeah, in a normal trade the most you can lose is everything you own and maybe all the money you can borrow on margin. For a short trade there is no limit to how much you can lose if it goes wrong.

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    JepheryJephery Registered User regular
    Has there ever been economic study based on a Sims like agent simulation?

    }
    "Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
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    ButtersButters A glass of some milks Registered User regular
    Shryke’s example is pretty good at demonstrating why you would sell off a finance division if it’s not core to your strategy

    While there’s a lot of operational regulation, the regs that govern capital and liquidity of FIs were basically the ones that made no sense for GE- these regs basically make every US bank exactly the same from a balance sheet perspective, and that type of balance sheet makes no sense for an industrial company like GE.

    Maybe it didn't but to my knowledge of all of the assets that they've spun off, Synchrony has performed the best and maybe of they kept them around they wouldn't have funky books I don't know.

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    Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Butters wrote: »
    Shryke’s example is pretty good at demonstrating why you would sell off a finance division if it’s not core to your strategy

    While there’s a lot of operational regulation, the regs that govern capital and liquidity of FIs were basically the ones that made no sense for GE- these regs basically make every US bank exactly the same from a balance sheet perspective, and that type of balance sheet makes no sense for an industrial company like GE.

    Maybe it didn't but to my knowledge of all of the assets that they've spun off, Synchrony has performed the best and maybe of they kept them around they wouldn't have funky books I don't know.

    It’s actually really hard to lose money as a bank

    Accelerating growth in perpetuity is hard, for sure...but it’s really, really hard to lose money without being way too reckless and greedy and stupid

    Synchrony does some cool stuff that I’m trying to steal and build at my bank, too ;)

    Captain Inertia on
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    ArchangleArchangle Registered User regular
    Butters wrote: »
    Short selling is very dangerous and the investors that do it usually suspect fraud and do considerable research to find it before making that move.
    To elaborate - shorting is selling something you do not own with the expectation that you can replace it at the end of the agreed period. In a bunch of jurisdictions, the various regulators will not let you do this without certification (basically a guarantee that you have sufficient funds to cover most cases if it goes wrong).

    Practically how this happens is that there are 2 types of investors - Passive investors who usually manage some kind of indexed portfolio in the expectation that the portfolio as a whole will go up, and Active investors who try to time the peaks/troughs to buy low and sell high. There's a bunch of research that says that the majority of Active traders will underperform compared with Passive investors in the long run, but:

    (a) There are a class of active investors who can regularly (but not not necessarily consistently) outperform the market. They also get paid exceptionally well for their ability to do so (and the majority of day traders hope that they can become one of them).
    (b) If you happen to make the right trade at the right time, you can effectively retire in your early 20s.

    If you're an Active investor and you believe a stock that you don't own will go up, you buy the stock now and sell it later. But if you believe a stock that you don't own will go down, how do you sell it now and buy later? The answer is that you rent it from a Passive investor - you pay them $x, sell the stock, wait a bit, then buy the stock back (hopefully at a lower price), and return the stock at the end of the agreed period (hopefully pocketing the difference). It's a nice side revenue stream for Passive investors with minimal risk on their part.

    As Moniker indicated, if you buy shares the lowest they can go is zero when you sell, but if you sell shares there's fundamentally no upper limit on how high they can go when it comes time to buy them back.

    However, while dangerous it's seen as a necessary part of a healthy stock exchange - the presence of a high number of sell orders should in theory keep shares priced appropriately. It's thought that one of the reasons why the dotcom bubble was so bad was because all the investors were Active evangelists, and almost none of the big indexed funds held shares. That meant that for people who suspected the dotcom business plans weren't worth the paper they were printed on, there were no shares available for them to short. To observers it looked like the market consensus was only a pool of starry eyed buyers, driving the price up... Until the bubble burst.

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    schussschuss Registered User regular
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

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    GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Jephery wrote: »
    Has there ever been economic study based on a Sims like agent simulation?

    Agent simulation has produced plenty of papers though they're usually pretty limited in scope.

    wbBv3fj.png
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    OghulkOghulk Tinychat Janitor TinychatRegistered User regular
    Agent-based models are the hottest thing in social science research

    They're interesting, but I kinda subscribe to the "simpler the research design, better the estimate" theory

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    AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    schuss wrote: »
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

    WeWork is just pegging the crazyometer at "guano". It's a real estate company that brands itself as a tech company, and has all sorts of drama on top of that (the IPO filing has 10 pages devoted to how the CEO is a risk.)

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    monikermoniker Registered User regular
    schuss wrote: »
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

    WeWork is just pegging the crazyometer at "guano". It's a real estate company that brands itself as a tech company, and has all sorts of drama on top of that (the IPO filing has 10 pages devoted to how the CEO is a risk.)

    The CEO paid himself $6million to buy the trademark of "We" (which, how the fuck) that he owned in another company he owns. A lot of the leases are also in real estate that he owns through another separate company. It's just... technically legal fraud the whole way down.

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    AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

    WeWork is just pegging the crazyometer at "guano". It's a real estate company that brands itself as a tech company, and has all sorts of drama on top of that (the IPO filing has 10 pages devoted to how the CEO is a risk.)

    The CEO paid himself $6million to buy the trademark of "We" (which, how the fuck) that he owned in another company he owns. A lot of the leases are also in real estate that he owns through another separate company. It's just... technically legal fraud the whole way down.

    It's an onion of Insanity - just layers upon layers of WTF.

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    SleepSleep Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

    WeWork is just pegging the crazyometer at "guano". It's a real estate company that brands itself as a tech company, and has all sorts of drama on top of that (the IPO filing has 10 pages devoted to how the CEO is a risk.)

    The CEO paid himself $6million to buy the trademark of "We" (which, how the fuck) that he owned in another company he owns. A lot of the leases are also in real estate that he owns through another separate company. It's just... technically legal fraud the whole way down.

    I work in a wework space. Wonder what happens if they go into the shitter

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    monikermoniker Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Sleep wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

    WeWork is just pegging the crazyometer at "guano". It's a real estate company that brands itself as a tech company, and has all sorts of drama on top of that (the IPO filing has 10 pages devoted to how the CEO is a risk.)

    The CEO paid himself $6million to buy the trademark of "We" (which, how the fuck) that he owned in another company he owns. A lot of the leases are also in real estate that he owns through another separate company. It's just... technically legal fraud the whole way down.

    I work in a wework space. Wonder what happens if they go into the shitter

    Probably bought up by a REIT that isn't a Matryoshka doll of malfeasance.

    moniker on
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    AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    moniker wrote: »
    Sleep wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

    WeWork is just pegging the crazyometer at "guano". It's a real estate company that brands itself as a tech company, and has all sorts of drama on top of that (the IPO filing has 10 pages devoted to how the CEO is a risk.)

    The CEO paid himself $6million to buy the trademark of "We" (which, how the fuck) that he owned in another company he owns. A lot of the leases are also in real estate that he owns through another separate company. It's just... technically legal fraud the whole way down.

    I work in a wework space. Wonder what happens if they go into the shitter

    Probably bought up by a REIT that isn't a Matryoshka doll of malfeasance.

    The article compares WeWork to IWG, a competitor who is honest about what they do, and is most likely already planning on what to scavenge from WeWork's broken corpse when it falls to earth.

    AngelHedgie on
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    ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    moniker wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Eh, GE Stock has been scraping low values for a while. There's so much capital the same cementing of capital won't happen like last time. There's likely a recession coming, but I doubt it will be a singular huge event vs. continual slide. I think a bigger theme may be a technology company correction on consumer stuff like WeWork and Uber where the financials are just loony.

    WeWork is just pegging the crazyometer at "guano". It's a real estate company that brands itself as a tech company, and has all sorts of drama on top of that (the IPO filing has 10 pages devoted to how the CEO is a risk.)

    The CEO paid himself $6million to buy the trademark of "We" (which, how the fuck) that he owned in another company he owns. A lot of the leases are also in real estate that he owns through another separate company. It's just... technically legal fraud the whole way down.

    So it's like they looked at how Sears was slowly cannibalized and just started from there?

    ArbitraryDescriptor on
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    Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    wework just looks like softbank trying to cash out at a gigantic valuation. company is basically a walking fraud who's value makes literally no sense.

    aeNqQM9.jpg
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    Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    GE going belly up is going to create a recession, maybe not because of its direct financial impact, but because its history.

    Its the original Tech Company. Its Thomas Edison's electric company. Like it used to be called Edison General Electric Company

    Having it go under is a blow to American prestige. No way it wouldn't generate a ton of negative economic press, in the US and around the world. And as public perception goes, so goes the Thundering Herd(Wall Street).

    The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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    monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Kipling217 wrote: »
    GE going belly up is going to create a recession, maybe not because of its direct financial impact, but because its history.

    Its the original Tech Company. Its Thomas Edison's electric company. Like it used to be called Edison General Electric Company

    Having it go under is a blow to American prestige. No way it wouldn't generate a ton of negative economic press, in the US and around the world. And as public perception goes, so goes the Thundering Herd(Wall Street).

    The same could be said of Sears, the Original Amazon. But it didn't.

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    HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    Kipling217 wrote: »
    GE going belly up is going to create a recession, maybe not because of its direct financial impact, but because its history.

    Its the original Tech Company. Its Thomas Edison's electric company. Like it used to be called Edison General Electric Company

    Having it go under is a blow to American prestige. No way it wouldn't generate a ton of negative economic press, in the US and around the world. And as public perception goes, so goes the Thundering Herd(Wall Street).

    General Electric has been going tits up for years. GE sold off their appliance business in 2014, and their light bulb business earlier this year. Jeff Immelt bet big into oil when it was at it's highest price and GE has been selling off other businesses since then to pay off those markers. GE is even splitting off the GE Oil & Gas division along with the Baker Hughes merger/acquisition from a couple of years ago. GE has been performing so badly that they were pushed off of the Dow Jones index by Walgreens.

    And while Edison may have invented the light bulb, he got rich through patent ownership. He created Edison Park, where he hired a bunch of young engineers to create patentable solutions to the problems of the time. Late 19th century capitalists aren't heroes and shouldn't be treated like such.

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    ButtersButters A glass of some milks Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    Kipling217 wrote: »
    GE going belly up is going to create a recession, maybe not because of its direct financial impact, but because its history.

    Its the original Tech Company. Its Thomas Edison's electric company. Like it used to be called Edison General Electric Company

    Having it go under is a blow to American prestige. No way it wouldn't generate a ton of negative economic press, in the US and around the world. And as public perception goes, so goes the Thundering Herd(Wall Street).

    The same could be said of Sears, the Original Amazon. But it didn't.

    Not daring agree with Kipling but that is hardly comparable. GE made everything from washing machines to jet engines and their decline has been way more rapid than Sears.

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    monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Butters wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Kipling217 wrote: »
    GE going belly up is going to create a recession, maybe not because of its direct financial impact, but because its history.

    Its the original Tech Company. Its Thomas Edison's electric company. Like it used to be called Edison General Electric Company

    Having it go under is a blow to American prestige. No way it wouldn't generate a ton of negative economic press, in the US and around the world. And as public perception goes, so goes the Thundering Herd(Wall Street).

    The same could be said of Sears, the Original Amazon. But it didn't.

    Not daring agree with Kipling but that is hardly comparable. GE made everything from washing machines to jet engines and their decline has been way more rapid than Sears.

    Sears made washing machines too, and hammers, auto parts, and a credit card company &c. And GE spun those divisions off, they aren't going down with the shell.

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    ButtersButters A glass of some milks Registered User regular
    Sears didn't actually make any of that shit or at least not for a while it was all made by major manufacturers and rebranded. Sears was just a retailer the last 30 years.

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    Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    GE used to manufacture nuclear power plants

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    BlackDragon480BlackDragon480 Bluster Kerfuffle Master of Windy ImportRegistered User regular
    GE used to manufacture nuclear power plants

    And the Sears & Roebuck catalog was the toilet paper of choice for more than half of the US in the early 20th century when people we done buying goods out of it.

    Products and companies rise and fall and the arrow of time points ever forward.

    No matter where you go...there you are.
    ~ Buckaroo Banzai
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