The vendor financing stuff I saw (as a junior / intern at a supplier) in those days was a reflection of that culture. They’d lease capital equipment through GE Capital, and pack it with other stuff to the limit of their accountants appetite for risk. (You can usually roll 20% of the value into services or peripheral stuff) I remember one deal where we had to run around and buy office supplies and tools with a corporate card. I did 4 Honda Civic of laser toner.

GE was reporting their own capital equipment and office supplies as revenue on the Capital side. :) But that is penny ante stuff in terms of what they did.

The AI stuff is a shady variation of that, but likely far worse as we’ve fired all of the watchers.

The POTUS kids are players in Polymarket and Kalshi, and are running crypto grifts.

The SEC fired most of their investigators, hasn’t appointed members to key boards, and cancelled most of their contracts with FINRA. (Which has laid off a ton of people) Nobody is watching.

So there’s an open season for normal corporate bullshit, and if you’re personally committing felonies attributable to you, you make sure you do it in Florida, and pay a vig to the library fund for a pardon.

We’ll have a fun run, then everything starts exploding in mid 2027-2029.