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SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

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Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I promise you, Elon legitimately thought there would be an opportunity to go private again. That's cool and all. And that's probably why the DoJ case will fail (at least, I'm betting that the DoJ case will turn up nothing). But this is the SEC: they only have to prove recklessness or negligence. That Musk was NEGLIGENT in his ability to properly vet the information before tweeting. In particular: > Musk knew or was…

I find it hilarious that intent is under doubt. Somehow people have forgotten "short burn off the century". If shorts squeeze did happen, there would be cheering everywhere.

Personally, I don't doubt intent. But "Beyond a reasonable doubt", as well as the necessity for a "malice" in the DoJ's case makes me think that... the DoJ has way too hard of a case to pull together.

I mean, I might be proven wrong. But... showing off a couple of rage tweets in court to prove malice doesn't seem plausible to me. Would a Jury of 12 (and remember: all 12 have to agree) be convinced over a couple of "who likes short-shorts" tweets?

If a SINGLE jury member, 1 out of the 12, disagrees, then you get a hung case aka a mistrial. As per the rules of the DoJ investigation anyway. That's why I don't think the DoJ will go anywhere, because proof and evidence is at a way harder standard in a criminal case.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without short sellers or another market mechanism to call bullshit on over-inflated and over-hyped investments, capital will be badly allocated. Capital allocates to what is best for the markets, not what is best for the world. I can't breath shareholder returns. We can't wait for BMW and Toyota to cannibalize their internal combustion product lines with EVs because it's not financially convenient for them (runaway…

Short-sellers didn't cause Elon Musk to tweet fraudulently, putting himself and his company into legal jeopardy with the SEC. Frankly, Q3 2018 was shaping up to be a big moment where M3 cars were mass produced and selling well. If Mr. Musk just shut up for the past 6 months and never tweeted anything, then Tesla would be in a far stronger position. Today: Musk has to deal with the pedophile slander lawsuit, the SEC i…

[deleted]

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#383
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Apple products are any different without Jobs, the problem is they’re nothing new either. With Jobs you knew he loved and lived technology and was always looking for cool new things to do with it. Most of his product launches did just that and brought some excitement about possibilities. Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, but they’re losing the excitement and expecta…

> Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, ... I disagree. Look at the MBP keyboard issues, or the declining quality of OS X. Under Jobs that shit wouldn't fly. Other roles aside, one of Jobs' most important functions was that of acting as a sanity check to ensure that the constiuent parts of any given product came together as a cohesive whole.

Apple had issues like this when Jobs was there too. He's the reason "You're holding it wrong" is a common phrase

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#384

The book The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth, details Musk's time at Paypal and pretty much describes him as an eventual hindrance rather than a help. He was eventually ousted from the company. Peter Thiel was the one that was able to nurse the company to success. He was vital to get the company started but eventually, he was difficult to work with. Looks to me that…

I can only think of Elon as the only person to create THREE multi billion dollar companies in wildly different industries.

Elon is a fantastic CEO AND visionary. I personally know people who could be making double specifically work at spacex because they believe in his vision. Elon is able to get Supreme talent and productivity for pennies on the dollar. He’s able to market Tesla and spaceX to billions with such a positive favoriability unlike anything we’ve ever seen. SpaceX and Tesla don’t have a marketing budget because of Elon. Car companies spend billions marketing, Elon tweets saving billions for Tesla which he reinvests in r&d.

The entire world will lose if Elon is forced out. He’s the biggest fighter for climate change and space travel in modern history, greater than Al Gore in marketing and execution, greater than Buzz Aldrin, Tyson, and cosmos. I’d much rather have an honest relatable Elon Musk than a suit. I’d rather have creativity than suffocating structure.

Elon is a great CEO. I would pick him over almost anyone alive.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#385
post #238

Does anyone else find it amazing that these days social media posts are becoming official government documentation? Who would've thought that the very platforms where we once just shared pictures of cats are starting to run our our elections and stock markets.

Everyone should read the complaint and realize that everything you email and text will be found by the govt if they decide to investigate you.

Protonmail.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#386
The theoretical "go private" option under current circumstances is probably out. Tesla would have to rely on Regulation D[0] to privately place its securities in connection with going private. Being deemed a "Bad Actor" with respect to Tesla could eliminate that option as long as Musk is still a "Covered Person", which includes directors and executives, and, importantly, large owners of the issuer[1]. As SpaceX presumably relies on Regulation D to place its securities, this may have also already implicated SpaceX's ability to rely on Regulation D going forward.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answers-regdhtm.html [1] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6a9b59e7-1b37...

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd hope the company itself would be fine. I really hate this idea of the grand visionary. A good friend of mine who is a mechanical engineer despises Musk. I listened to a bit of his Joe Regan interview and when Regan asked him how he has the time to do all of the things he does, there are smoke jokes about him being an alien, but not once did he say, "Well I have an amazing team of engineers" and credit all the tho…

I really hate this idea of the grand visionary. Which is amusing in the case of Musk. As I've said over and over, his approach is to find an industry where most or all of the hard, expensive fundamental R&D has already been done (and paid for) by someone else, and then start a company to incrementally improve it and promise vast cost reductions from economies of scale. That's what SpaceX is. That's what Tesla is. The…

I think also he's applying many forms of incremental improvement all at once, and also in a field where the other players are stultified.

To some degree, you could say the same criticisms about Linus Torvalds (or, say, Rob Pike).

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without short sellers or another market mechanism to call bullshit on over-inflated and over-hyped investments, capital will be badly allocated. Capital allocates to what is best for the markets, not what is best for the world. I can't breath shareholder returns. We can't wait for BMW and Toyota to cannibalize their internal combustion product lines with EVs because it's not financially convenient for them (runaway…

Short-sellers didn't cause Elon Musk to tweet fraudulently, putting himself and his company into legal jeopardy with the SEC. Frankly, Q3 2018 was shaping up to be a big moment where M3 cars were mass produced and selling well. If Mr. Musk just shut up for the past 6 months and never tweeted anything, then Tesla would be in a far stronger position. Today: Musk has to deal with the pedophile slander lawsuit, the SEC i…

Elon has wasted capital, both political and economic; this I can't argue with. I agree with the mission, not the man's behaviors, but have also lived long enough to recognize what a necessary evil is.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't doubt he's capable of doing that with his background Which background is that? He has an undergraduate degree in economics and a bachelor's degree in physics. I respect the guy but he clearly puts a lot into managing his image. As a relevant example, he used to claim to have been in the Ph.D. program at Stanford, but had to retract that (I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find that on Google).

I'm very curious about the Stanford thing. Do you mean that he was never admitted? Or simply that he never officially enrolled? I tried my hand at googling this but found nothing but re-hashes of the same story of how he left after two days.

He wanted to work on super capacitors in his PhD, but he realized that somebody would work on it anyways, and it's better for him to work on Paypal.

Watch the video of Sal Khan(fron Khan Academy) interviewing Elon musk.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#390
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Apple products are any different without Jobs, the problem is they’re nothing new either. With Jobs you knew he loved and lived technology and was always looking for cool new things to do with it. Most of his product launches did just that and brought some excitement about possibilities. Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, but they’re losing the excitement and expecta…

> Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, ... I disagree. Look at the MBP keyboard issues, or the declining quality of OS X. Under Jobs that shit wouldn't fly. Other roles aside, one of Jobs' most important functions was that of acting as a sanity check to ensure that the constiuent parts of any given product came together as a cohesive whole.

Me.com launch? That happened under Jobs' watch...
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