• SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Sure, but buying stocks is one way of buying companies. You’d also need to have those funds transferred into your trading account.

    Actually there may be a technicality there. If you do a funds transfer, it takes time (2-3 days iirc) for the money to actually show up in your trading account. So let’s say you have $1M in your checking account from this qquestion (plus whatever was already there), and you have $1M in your trading account already because you’re investing in the market. So for that brief window of time (which would include the post-24h period) you will have the exact same starting amounts of money net in both accounts. The reset doesn’t need to actually reset anything because that $1M is in limbo. That’s better than hiding in another account or some of the other suggestions, if it works, because you really just don’t technically have that money.

    But in any case, you can absolutely buy houses. Just double the asking price in exchange for a binding contract selling you the house for cash. If someone were to knock on my door tomorrow morning with a cash offer of 4M for my house, I’d have to seriously think about it. If they offered me $40M, I’d have to just do it. With $40M, I can figure out my next steps pretty easily. Make it $400M, and I can’t see anyone turning that down. And the thing is, if you have infinite money, all of those numbers are exactly the same for you. Never having bought or sold a house for all cash, I’m not sure how long the actual closing takes, but I do know when I bought that the longest part was getting the mortgage done. I’m just saying that you could (probably) establish a contract and exchange the money, locking in the deal. Give a million lawyers a million dollars each to do the same thing across the country.

    That kind of thing occurred in a movie or show that I saw. The (I think) bad guy needed this one particular house for his fiendish plot and walked up to the door with $1M (or whatever it was - it was obviously well more than the house was worth) on the condition that the family move out immediately. That’s obviously glossing over some details that my approach addresses - as long as the contract is signed and the money is transferred I don’t need that house today.

    I mean you’d completely crash the economy- possibly the entire global economy - by dumping what would likely be trillions into it within 24h, at which point your houses might not be worth that much. So maybe just a few times.

    Then the government is going to ask you where you got all that money and you’ll have to show them the tweet.

    Then you’ll have to pay taxes on all of that, which you could do by selling off half your houses…

    But if that’s too complicated, you could buy every car on the planet or anything else you could pull off with a cash transaction.

    Or just buy Lichtenstein or something. The problem is that Brewster’s Millions was an interesting question because he had to spend $100M (or whatever it was within a week but be left with nothing. There were restrictions (can’t destroy something - no buying the Mona Lisa and setting it on fire, I think they disallowed donations so no sending it to orphans, that kind of thing). That’s a bit of a challenge. I guess you could rent Salesforce Tower and/or other buildings for a week.

    • drphungky@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The scene you’re thinking of is from Jessica Jones Season 1, and it’s amazing television. Won’t say more since I can’t spoiler tag.