r/technology • • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Anthropic logged net loss of over $80 billion in first half of 2026

https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-recorded-net-loss-over-80-billion-first-half-this-year-wsj-reports-2026-10-20/
26k Upvotes

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

134

u/Wizywig 1d ago edited 12h ago

This is fine. As long as we are okay with letting them crash and burn and force them to pay for the damages.

We can solve this. This isn't an unsolvqbke (edit: unsolvable) issue.

Bail out the people not the companies.

153

u/keelhaulrose 1d ago

Better get out and vote for candidates that won't bail these techbros out, because historically the harder you crash, the more your bailout.

57

u/Wizywig 1d ago

Honestly, obama should have let the banks collapse, and bailed out the people.

105

u/-Saucegurlllll 23h ago

The government should have taken control of the banks. If the banks are so greedy that they're a danger to the country, they should not be in the hands of private actors. Bailing them out was rewarding their hubris.

29

u/ChepaukPitch 22h ago

The government did take a stake in the banks and then sold it back once they were safe. Because anything more and it would be socialism and that is worse than everything.

1

u/BenFoldsFourLoko 18h ago

1) the money the government gave was loans that were paid back with interest. Most of the banks didn't want the loans because most of the banks were individually stable and it looked bad for them, but the point was to GUARANTEE the banks weren't about to have a bomb go off

2) the government passed regulation to mandate minimum cash on hand, checks, and plans so that banks were no longer a risk to the whole system. If a bank is worth more than certain thresholds, they have demands of showing the Federal Reserve each year how that bank would quickly liquidate itself if it failed, to guarantee that its failure would be fine

& nbsp;

They literally have to keep enough money on hand to pass yearly "stress tests" run by the Fed, because of what Obama changed

3

u/Streiger108 18h ago

I'm pretty sure they rolled all that back during trump's first term.

1

u/BenFoldsFourLoko 18h ago

https://www.federalreserve.gov/supervisionreg/dfa-stress-tests-2026.htm

Results 2026

See "Large Bank Capital Requirements"

 

Either way, the point is, the government took action to solve the problem.

It's since taken many actions that have made many problems worse (Thanks Trump), but that could have happened no matter what. Ever heard of privatization? If the banks were just taken over, they could have just been sold off. But that's not really the point

1

u/-Saucegurlllll 10h ago

This has nothing to do with anything I wrote.

Notice how you don't talk about the millions of people who lost their homes in the wake of 2008? You're instead focusing purely on the finances.

Banks that destroy lives should not be allowed to exist as private institutions.

1

u/BenFoldsFourLoko 9h ago

sorry, I'm too subtle with it. I was replying to the actual thing you said

you said:

If the banks are so greedy that they're a danger to the country, they should not be in the hands of private actors

And I replied with the purpose of saying that actually, the government took a different route to make the banks no longer a danger to the country

your actual argument is based on banks being a danger. they no longer are

 

There's a million parts to the 2008 crisis, and normal people getting wiped out is a huge part of it, but your own comment focused on the banks, so come on lol

1

u/-Saucegurlllll 9h ago

Cool, so the bankers who ruined millions of lives were rewarded for it by remaining bankers. You come the fuck on.

1

u/BenFoldsFourLoko 8h ago

Look, you said something and I replied. If you want to litigate the entire financial crisis, that's a separate and massive conversation.

I think you're assuming I'm fine with how the banks and credit agencies acted, which is a really bad assumption lol

-3

u/WhiteSock_ 18h ago

The obvious way: bail them out with a loan and then have them pay it back over the next 20 years. Plus interest, naturally. I don’t know why that didn’t happen.

6

u/BenFoldsFourLoko 18h ago

Oh my god, it did lol. That was literally the bailout. By 2012 the banks had paid the total value back early, with interest, and the taxpayer was made whole.

A couple failed regardless, and that money was lost, but the interest from the other banks made up for it.

3

u/WhiteSock_ 17h ago

Oh well gg wp then.

Not how it worked in my country, I thought US was the same

2

u/BenFoldsFourLoko 17h ago

oh, lol, rip. yeah I've made that assumption too. no worries man it's the internet and simple mistakes

1

u/-Saucegurlllll 10h ago

No. The obvious way is to take control of the banks for destroying millions of lives.

15

u/reaperx321 1d ago

Dunno why you’re downvoted but I would much rather see the outcome of that opposed to what we have now.

5

u/Tupperbaby 23h ago

No, you really wouldn't.
Our entire economy would have collapsed.
We were within hours of a 1929 level depression trigger event that would have had a major domino effect across the entire world.
It's easy to sit at your keyboard now and type "Hurhur, fuck those banks," but you have no idea how close we came to a total economic meltdown.

11

u/Rayvelion 21h ago

Sometimes things have to break to be fixed. Instead look around, everything has just gotten worse.

2

u/Monteze 13h ago

You're telling me, that a system where you can gamble, then line go down and some make-believe happened....then you send folks with guns to take away food, water and shelter from people isn't a good system?

7

u/dolche93 21h ago

People have this desire for drastic action in the moment that often doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I don't think it's absurd to say that allowing the collapse would have led to direct, causative deaths.

I have a feeling most people with the sentiment would probably back off if they gave it reasonable consideration.

2

u/Linooney 11h ago

As much as I think some government officials are incompetent, I also count my blessings that the average Redditor is not in charge of policy.

17

u/dolche93 22h ago

You know TARP was signed into law by Bush, right?

Obama went through with the law, as is the duty of the executive branch. Congress passed the law.

Having presidents ignore laws is a bad thing, judging by recent events.

11

u/B1Gsportsfan 23h ago

Bush bailed out the banks, not Obama

3

u/neherak 20h ago

Why do people still fucking think Obama did this, jfc. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was created by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008.

1

u/Monteze 13h ago

I think most folks here were in middle school or high-school when that happens. Hell some were probably in diapers....fuuuucckkk.

1

u/excellentforcongress 16h ago

bankers and insurance and the like funded his campaign and his cabinet was stacked with bankers and people from industries. he was a puppet for capitalists.

1

u/divDevGuy 15h ago

But corporations are people too!!! /s

1

u/GifHunter2 23h ago

The banks paid back every dollar that was loaned to them, Plus interest. Stop Believing Republican talking points

1

u/gurgelblaster 21h ago

And who's that, exactly?

1

u/Dernom 17h ago

As one example I have a hard time believing al Sayed would support any billionaire bailout, but yeah there are limited options.

1

u/keelhaulrose 15h ago

There are options sprinkled about.

Why not contact candidates in your local race and ask them their opinion? You don't have to wait for election day to have your voice be heard.

1

u/Just2LetYouKnow 18h ago

Literally every candidate will bail these techbros out, their willingness to do so is one of their defining features as a group.

1

u/keelhaulrose 15h ago

There are candidates who would not, and what better time than now to reach out to your local candidates and let them know your opinion on the matter?

31

u/tMoneyMoney 1d ago

Nobody’s going to force them to pay for damages. They’ll be gliding away in a golden parachute.

9

u/asyork 23h ago

Even more likely, their companies will get bailed out, they will be huge bonuses for "persuading" the politicians, and will be given time to pay back the bailouts while they change the companies to operate more sustainably, all while deciding what industry to do the exact same thing to as soon as the economy just barely recovers enough to sustain it.

1

u/destroyerOfTards 23h ago

Exactly, you heard it here first. These guys are going to come back for round 2.

3

u/asyork 22h ago

This is round two. The wealthy learned their lesson when the banks got bailed out. Any company that can bring down the economy along with it faces almost zero risk. If their gambles fail, the taxpayer covers it. If their gambles pay off, the taxpayer won't see a dime.

1

u/tMoneyMoney 22h ago

I don’t think there will be any bailouts before a shakeout. There are too many companies and not enough is at stake yet to require that. Typically legacy companies get bailed out, not startups. Maybe if the entire industry implodes, but it’s hard to imagine that happening.

1

u/asyork 21h ago

There is an immense amount of AI money tied up in loans and pensions. The little startups will be left out in the cold, but so were many smaller companies in 2008.

2

u/ChepaukPitch 22h ago

They have already made billions. The moment they IPO they will make a few more. And if it all crashes after that, no big deal for them.

57

u/GooseBash 1d ago

lol what reality do you live in ? Since when do rich people ever suffer repercussions ? It’s very rare.

3

u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

Since when do rich people ever suffer repercussions ? It’s very rare.

Only in fiction do those rules actually apply...

12

u/Teledildonic 1d ago

What do you mean? The 2008 global crash was very fairly punished, and it totally wasn't a single digit count of low level sacrificial lambs.

2

u/[deleted] 23h ago

[deleted]

7

u/-Saucegurlllll 23h ago

They're being sarcastic.

2

u/moonjs 23h ago

Whooooosh. He was being sarcastic.

2

u/MetalliTooL 1d ago

Unfortunately they’ll crash the rest of the market with them.

2

u/FunWolverine5349 21h ago

They will 100% get bailed out.

1

u/A_Feast_For_Trolls 9h ago

why didn't you just edit the word instead of doing all that extra work, lol

1

u/Wizywig 9h ago

because I felt my mistake made it more enjoyable.

1

u/darwinooc 1d ago

Ahhh but you must remember: "corporations are people mother fucker 'my friend'" -Mitt Romney.

So not to worry, if things go wrong, they will be sure to get right on bailing out "people".

1

u/gurgelblaster 21h ago

They can't even pay their debts, how are they going to pay any damages?

1

u/12345623567 18h ago

Pay with what, more IOU's?

The only way to distribute T 1.5$ is by shoving it into every index fund and retirement account there is. So guess who's on the hook in the end anyways?

1

u/doommaster 18h ago

But we probably won't we will push money into these companies de-valuating the rest of everything and the rich will take it for scraps...

welcome to end game capitalism, where the only thing allowed to fail are the people.

1

u/sighbourbon 13h ago

an unsolvqbke issue

Easy for you to say, haha

2

u/Wizywig 12h ago

rofl, "unsovable"

2

u/sighbourbon 8h ago

I couldn't resist
Your true intent and meaning were obvious, your comment intelligent.