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Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

latimes.com

61–70 of 225 posts

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Short sellers can't make Musk bash the SEC or call people pedos; that's on him. But they certainly can engineer a fake rumor of an SEC requesting contempt of court by manipulating journalists and forging documents, if sufficiently motivated. Consider the SuperMicro story submitted to mainstream publications last year that was obviously fake and caused a massive decline in their stock. I don't think it's above a soph…

So, let me get this straight. You think short sellers are a massive cabal of evil geniuses and they just go around forging court documents and duping journalists? But just in the case of TSLA, not all the other companies it would be possible to short? And you think that's more likely than that the SEC asked the judge to hold Musk in contempt, which he obviously is by a plain reading of the settlement agreement ? This…

You're acting as if market manipulation is some far-out conspiracy theory rather than something relatively common. I don't think it takes a "kabal of evil geniuses" to dupe a few credulous journalists who are incentivized and looking for a scoop by forging some documents. There are far more complex market manipulation conspiracies that are well-documented (see: LIBOR scandal)

Furthermore, why haven't we heard anything from the SEC? They are an increasingly transparent organization. Why haven't they issued a press release or published their court filings on their website? Are we supposed to just trust a journalist's word and ability to verify that an anonymous "source familiar with the matter" isn't just bamboozling them?

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following Elon for a very long time, and one of the reason I like him is that he sticks to what he says. So if today Elon says that he respects the justice dept, its very like that he really means it, and he will stick to it. I would not trust Matt Levine on this.

This... doesn't sound like you've been following him for a very long time. Compare the prior incident -- I'll use a summary from Matt Levine again: > Remember when Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk committed securities fraud by falsely claiming on Twitter that he had secured financing to take Tesla private? Remember how Musk and Tesla settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission by agreeing to pay f…

You are cherry picking a few minutes from an interview that was several hours long.

CNBC didn't air the full interview, and the cut at that point of the interview as very misleading. Here is what Elon said in response, "This is a very misleading edit. Please post the full transcript where I complete the sentence." Source:https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1072373731039870979

He also said "60 Mins actually had several hours of interview time, which they distilled to 14 mins. Many stories could been told with that time. This was accurate as viewed from an Upper East Side Manhattan dinner party." Source: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1072351502654672897

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#64
post #8

>Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don’t know about the company’s financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management skills? That seems very possible. I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a % o…

This begs the question: does Elon Musk seem like the kind of person who isn't willing to fail in public? Whether it's for personality reasons or for the sake of keeping his other companies well respected, is he unwilling to let the public lose confidence in him and/or his projects? My guess is he doesn't care that much about our opinions of him, personally and professionally. He might be picking a fight with the SEC…

> My guess is he doesn't care that much about our opinions of him, personally and professionally.

Hahahaha. Everything about his twitter account says the exact opposite.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let me get this straight. You think short sellers are a massive cabal of evil geniuses and they just go around forging court documents and duping journalists? But just in the case of TSLA, not all the other companies it would be possible to short? And you think that's more likely than that the SEC asked the judge to hold Musk in contempt, which he obviously is by a plain reading of the settlement agreement ? This…

You're acting as if market manipulation is some far-out conspiracy theory rather than something relatively common. I don't think it takes a "kabal of evil geniuses" to dupe a few credulous journalists who are incentivized and looking for a scoop by forging some documents. There are far more complex market manipulation conspiracies that are well-documented (see: LIBOR scandal) Furthermore, why haven't we heard anythin…

C'mon, mate. Someone linked you to Musk himself commenting on this story. The "faked court docs" conspiracy theory dies definitively there. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#66
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Short sellers can't make Musk bash the SEC or call people pedos; that's on him. But they certainly can engineer a fake rumor of an SEC requesting contempt of court by manipulating journalists and forging documents, if sufficiently motivated. Consider the SuperMicro story submitted to mainstream publications last year that was obviously fake and caused a massive decline in their stock. I don't think it's above a soph…

So you also think that these short-sellers also made Elon respond to people on twitter, confirming the SEC action? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376?s=08

Elon Musk knows as much about it as we do. It's not like he can call up the SEC and ask them to confirm/deny if they're taking action on him.

Sorry, but this story originally came from Bloomberg and I lost all faith in Bloomberg after they refused to retract the SuperMicro story. I will believe it when I see it on the sec.gov website. Until then it's as good as bullshit in my eyes.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#67
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you also think that these short-sellers also made Elon respond to people on twitter, confirming the SEC action? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376?s=08

Elon Musk knows as much about it as we do. It's not like he can call up the SEC and ask them to confirm/deny if they're taking action on him. Sorry, but this story originally came from Bloomberg and I lost all faith in Bloomberg after they refused to retract the SuperMicro story. I will believe it when I see it on the sec.gov website. Until then it's as good as bullshit in my eyes.

> It's not like he can call up the SEC and ask them to confirm/deny if they're taking action on him.

He and his legal team will absolutely receive copies of any court filings in this case.

Individual filings won't be on sec.gov. You can check PACER, though.

This filing also indicates Musk's legal team chimed in about the tweet in response to the SEC's inquiry (page five). If that weren't the case, Musk would certainly contest that statement. This bit too:

> "According to counsel, immediately upon seeing Musk's 7:15 tweet for the first time after Musk had published it, Tesla's "Designated Securites Counsel" arranged to meet with Musk, and they drafted Musk's corrective 11:41 tweet together."

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following Elon for a very long time, and one of the reason I like him is that he sticks to what he says. So if today Elon says that he respects the justice dept, its very like that he really means it, and he will stick to it. I would not trust Matt Levine on this.

This... doesn't sound like you've been following him for a very long time. Compare the prior incident -- I'll use a summary from Matt Levine again: > Remember when Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk committed securities fraud by falsely claiming on Twitter that he had secured financing to take Tesla private? Remember how Musk and Tesla settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission by agreeing to pay f…

That exchange is exactly what he agreed to: only tweets that could be material needed pre-approval.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#69
post #3

I'm honestly unsure what he has to gain by doing this. I can't imagine that the departure of the counsel isn't related. Maybe the GC announced he was leaving and that rattled Musk somehow? Very strange.

The tweet was obviously meant to highlight how the company has gone from 0 cars to x00,000 in just 8 years. Not a new, formal estimate.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#70
Maybe I'm naïve, but I'm actually buying the obliviousness of his behavior. I don't really believe in Tesla and would gladly buy the whole "suicide by SEC" thing, but reading what actually happened, this doesn't really sound like a big deal. Musk has been having emotional moments for a long time now, at this point it's really easy for me to just shrug off this as "he's always been like this". The last ten years of Musk carrier are just non-stop publicity-stunt drama, it's really easy to believe for me now that he honestly doesn't see the boundary that seems obvious to all lawyery SEC folks and other properly corporate people.
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