Tesla and Panasonic freeze spending on $4.5B Gigafactory
An ironic aspect of financing (from personal loans to multi-billion dollar deals) is that you can get it as long as you don't need it.Google or FB would have no problem at all spending a measly $4.5bn on a project that potentially has real impact on their primary business (search,ads), or even secondary one (android, etc.). Their only problem is finding a way to spend it.This is because Google makes software, and software doesn't really require much capital. The only thing they could realistically spend that kind of money on is m&a.So, because they don't need it, google has many times that sum sitting around and could probably raise many times that sum again.Because the only thing they could spend it on is m&a. If they do, the money goes to pay founders/investors in the target company....and back to to the "available to invest" pile of money collectively accumulating in software giants' balance sheets, VC & PE funds and such.What rarely happens is actual spending.If Tesla or another manufacturing company gets ahold of $5bn, they will actually spend it on parts, machinery and such.The current money market is so loopy. All it can do is move money around. It can't spend it. It's like a real estate market in dense places like NY, but worse. Lots of money flies around, but it goes between one pocket and another. Very little goes towards building buildings. An investment in the gigafactory would be more like investing in a new city. It actually results in buildings, but isn't going to be attractive to investors, because... because it isn't a zero sum game. Other people can build a building too. There's no reason for your building to be worth more than it cost you to build.