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Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

nytimes.com

151–160 of 169 posts

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#151

Let’s be extremely clear here: That’s fucking crazy. Musk is acting like a crazy person. Financial regulators are extremely dangerous. They’re vindictive when spurned, have unlimited resources to fight it out, and are absolutely willing to string you up to prove a point. Rejecting a sweetheart deal and forcing your board to fight is nuts. Pride goeth before...

Rejecting the deal proved not to be "nuts". Financial regulators aren't that dangerous. Musk wasn't that crazy as proved out. etc.

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#152
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember Steve Jobs calling random people pedophiles or committing a little light securities fraud while high. Elon brings incredible value to his companies. He also brings incredible risk. The error his fans make is in assuming the two are inseparable--that you can't have the space visionary without the libel, or the automotive and energy revolutionary without the fraud. I think this is a mistake. You could…

Steve Jobs stole $5k from his best friend Steve Wozniak https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/steve-wozniak-cried-jobs-kept-atar... He denied, for many years, that he was a father of his daughter and, while a millionaire, didn't support his daughter or her mother financially. He was investigated by SEC for, wait for it, securities fraud (stock options backdating including his 7.5 million stock options). He wasn't charged. His CF…

I put creating 5 companies...

Zip2, x.com, SpaceX, Boring Company. Elon didn't create Solar City or Tesla. What am I missing?

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#153
post #151

Let’s be extremely clear here: That’s fucking crazy. Musk is acting like a crazy person. Financial regulators are extremely dangerous. They’re vindictive when spurned, have unlimited resources to fight it out, and are absolutely willing to string you up to prove a point. Rejecting a sweetheart deal and forcing your board to fight is nuts. Pride goeth before...

Rejecting the deal proved not to be "nuts". Financial regulators aren't that dangerous. Musk wasn't that crazy as proved out. etc.

It was nuts, because the penalties increased. To be able to stand up against the SEC for 48 hours he paid another $10m (compared to the original deal), paid the board $20m (in purchased stock), and lost the chairmanship for 3 years instead of 2.

That’s pretty expensive for 48 hours worth of grand standing.

There’s no way to cast the decision to fight and then fold in a positive light. It would’ve been much easier, and introduced far less stock turmoil if he’d just accepted the first offer instead.

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#154

As someone who doesn’t own a Tesla, but did purchase a very crappy jacket they sold in 2012. I can say without Elon I put the whole company in “meh” mode. The truck, the roadster, the 3. All great products. The sense of its technology advancements. These stem from what Elon and the chief designer want. You can sense it. It’s like a heartbeat on the design. Take Elon away. I’ll buy whatever dumb electric rolls off the…

Where does you intimate knowledge about Musk's psyche stem from? Purely inferred form his public persona or do you have first-hand information?

I ask because this sounds a bit like a cultist describing the cult leader.

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#155

As someone who doesn’t own a Tesla, but did purchase a very crappy jacket they sold in 2012. I can say without Elon I put the whole company in “meh” mode. The truck, the roadster, the 3. All great products. The sense of its technology advancements. These stem from what Elon and the chief designer want. You can sense it. It’s like a heartbeat on the design. Take Elon away. I’ll buy whatever dumb electric rolls off the…

Where does you intimate knowledge about Musk's psyche stem from? Purely inferred form his public persona or do you have first-hand information? I ask because this sounds a bit like a cultist describing the cult leader.

It sounds like a fan describing a celeb. Saying this isn't musk pscyche ignores the clear and consistent pattern his business and his business decision have.

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#156
post #98
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk sure sounds a lot like a younger Steve Jobs. Maybe he needs to leave then come back?

When Jobs left Apple, he was 30; when he returned, he was 42. Musk is 47. If he needs time away from Tesla to ’grow up’, he better do it fast.

Your acting as if job change and apple accepted him back. No apple crashed and burn without him as his became more of what he was. He never "grew up" he just proved that his current attitude was correct and the people saying he need to "grow up" were wrong.

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#157

Is Elon Musk really an asset that Tesla needs to hold onto? I'll admit that he's a great salesman; but he's also a spoiled child who throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way. If Tesla wants to be taken seriously as a car company -- rather than as a maker of toys for people who have too much money on their hands -- they might well be better off calling his bluff.

> toys for people who have too much money on their hands

Sounds like the future of privately owned motor vehicles. In maybe 20 years or so I expect most people will be getting around in self driving cars that they hire.

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#158

He approached it perfectly. I mean seriously, what’s the worst that could happen? He leaves and the company sells out to Apple? Sure, progress would slow but Apple wouldn’t bungle it. Meanwhile he would get to focus on the weightier innovation at SpaceX and The Boring Company (disclaimer, am a SpaceX shareholder and secretly this is exactly what I want)

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#159
post #73

He approached it perfectly. I mean seriously, what’s the worst that could happen? He leaves and the company sells out to Apple? Sure, progress would slow but Apple wouldn’t bungle it. Meanwhile he would get to focus on the weightier innovation at SpaceX and The Boring Company (disclaimer, am a SpaceX shareholder and secretly this is exactly what I want)

You have SpaceX shares? How?

Privately held limited liability corporations still have shares, but you can’t buy them on the stock exchange.

Re: Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

#160
post #91

Whats their source for all this? I can't find it in the article anywhere.

For a lot of popular press you can check out the confessed social media propoganda experiment @TeslaCharts for before-it-breaks-on-the-news coverage of whatever sourceless negative article you want. You can also use it to read deluded stock analysis talking points, since the goal of the twitter feed is to produce a profit via a short position on Tesla, many of the narratives are aimed at influencing stock analysis.

It's hard to predict what will take hold though, since there are literally hundreds of negative narratives being pushed all the time. It's like a Nigerian prince scam.

For example, the recent NYTimes article on the Tesla delivery hubs (cast as parking lots filled with cars that no one wants) were being pushed by the so-called 'shorty air force', a collection of accounts that look extremely similar on the surface to political influence campaigns perpetrated by the Russian Internet Research Agency. Naturally, the sources for this story didn't want to be identified.

I think this stuff turns out to be surprisingly effective, due to the generational forces which influence news propagation. A grandmother loses her fortune when she messes up and gets scammed, but the news makes a bit of extra money due to increased attention when it publishes the right type of FUD.

Just remember that the account is very explicitly telling you that it does everything it does with the goal of feeding confirmation bias and that they are conducting a social media experiment.

Super disturbing results imo. I ended up writing representatives to get them to look at de-incentivizing bot-based influence campaigns run on the internet when I got a sense for the direction things were going. Kind of excited by the fact that the governor passed a law so quickly on the topic. Wheels were moving way earlier than my writing because of the interest in securing elections from similar threats.

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