It's Rumor Time: Apple might be thinking about buying Netflix

To be fair—and hey, it’s not like a little baseless financial speculation has ever been wrong or hurt anybody before, right?—Citi’s analysis doesn’t appear to have taken its cues from anything either company has said about a prospective sale. Rather, Suva and Merchant point to the fact that Apple a) is about to have a lot of money freed up for American transactions by the upcoming changes to the country’s tax code, and b) has had legendarily rough troubles drumming up anything more than a resigned shrug with its own offerings in the original streaming content market. (Where are all our Planet Of The Apps fans at, huh?) Purchasing the streaming giant would be a convenient way to apply a to b, while simultaneously making this latest hypothetical consolidation of media power one more thing we can place on the orange, ugly-haired head of Donald Trump.

To be fair, it’s not like Citi hasn’t made a few credible longshot calls of late; last year, the company marked a Fox-Disney merger at 20-30 percent, a dark horse prediction that ultimately paid off. Still, we can’t say we’re super-thrilled at the idea of Netflix—one of the most aggressive innovators currently operating in film and TV—falling under Apple’s monolithic white plastic thumb.