On news: apple has more $ than us government, scary?

I have more money than the U.S. Government. I am not in debt.

To be honest a lot of companies out there are capable of holding sums of cash much larger than this. For now Apple earns "supernormal" profits because it basically owns the tablet market, and high end smartphone market. That's what allows it to build the reserve.

Money is best when it at work. When you just sit on a large sum your loosing out on the opportunity of earning big sums.

Why would apple hold all this cash,

- Planning for big spending (acquisitions/mergers),

- Dodging tax by withholding dividends (in fact it's lobbying for tax holidays right now),

- leverage against banks to get low low, looow rates,

- preparing for a beating, from Google's imperialistic campaign to be the everything of everything.

Is all this scary or not?

well if Apple plans to bring those reserves to the US and actually does some spending, you american's can breath a sigh of relief.
If it doesn't then you've got a large pile of cash that could be used by some american somewhere but instead it's just sitting in some large offshore account somewhere. If lots of companies are doing this (very likely) your debt crisis is going be around for a much longer time.

You'll just have to wait and see.

And apple is what, like the 100th company to do this.

Yes and guess who apple pays taxes too. The government! =D Just like any other business.

Inevitable.

apple could release a super cheap version of the ipad and take over the low end tablet market as well. then there will be two lines, the ipad and the ipad pro.
or the epad. e for education.

Idk about everyone else but I find it kind of funny :)

Maybe Apple are planning to take over and steve will become the new dicator of America? That's some scary shit, well for you yanks any ways.
~S2S~

If they have trillions in debt, who DOESN'T have more money than them?? lol....I realize they have assets but still.....

Time to legalize drugs and ho'ing, if they'd wake the fuck up and realize that. Then maybe they'd get somewhere.

Apple's net worth as of 21 May 2010: 221 billion.

USA PPP (spending power): 14 trillion.

???????

we live in a capitalistic society...the Government is a not for profit entity, why is this scary?