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Elon’s Out

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Re: Elon’s Out

#201

Post by phatfish »

moomin wrote: post #27
alphabetting wrote: post #4

I found this part most interesting. Public awareness of the Delaware Court of Chancery is about to skyrocket during this court battle. The fact that Musk is working in such bad faith here — that he seems so unconcerned with law and the contract he signed — cuts both ways. On the one hand, it will certainly annoy a Delaware chancellor; Delaware likes to think of itself as a stable place for corporate deals, with predi…

This is one of those things that could genuinely cause problem for the entire US (corporate) legal system. There’s a genuine danger that the result of this case will be “some people are too powerful to be regulated by the US system, and this is now obvious”.

US law obviously works in favor of billionaires. I doubt even Musk would want to expose it further, and the other parties involved in this deal surely don't.

They will set their lawyers at it and come to a settlement. The super rich know better than to be at each others throats, that sort of behavior is for the poor...

Re: Elon’s Out

#202

Post by gpm »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #179
daenz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the court will take his assets to compensate. How do you seize billions of dollars of stock without affecting share prices?

It doesn't matter if they're affected. A judgement is going to be for a dollar amount. A court will rule that Musk must pay twitter X billion dollars. Twitter can then pursue Musk, taking basically anything he owns in terms of business. They could contact the broker holding his shares and restrain them, order them sold, and collect the proceeds. They could seize and sell at auction the real property of any of his bus…

> They could seize and sell at auction the real property of any of his businesses. SpaceX rockets? Office chairs? Servers? Anything.

They could not, because he does not own those businesses outright. Doing so would violate the other owners rights. They can seize his shares in SpaceX, but not SpaceX property.

Re: Elon’s Out

#203

Post by labrador »

I believe he was sincere, but found out quickly that a lot of people had strong feelings about his plans for the platform. It's possible he was in danger of losing people he really needs for his other businesses. I don't blame him for bailing out on a lose/lose situation.

Re: Elon’s Out

#204

Post by throwaway09223 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #174
throwaway09223 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the court orders Musk to close the deal and he says no? I can't believe people are taking this very silly statement seriously. This is utter nonsense. There are remedies for people who disobey court orders. Having assets makes you more vulnerable to a court's authority because you have something to lose. If a court orders specific performance and he doesn't do it then he's liable and the court will take his…

Levine has addressed this in past columns. Of course the courts have such authority, but individual people have to enforce the court's decisions, and sometimes those people are reluctant to take on Musk. Musk is a special case because he has done things like threatening to ruin the careers of SEC lawyers who have come after him, and he has the power to make that happen. Is this illegal? Probably. Does Musk get away w…

You're talking about Musk pressuring Cooley to fire a lawyer who previously worked against him at the SEC. But the result was that Cooley told Musk no. Hardly a success story for Musk.

There's no shortage of law firms willing to go up against billionaires. Hell, there's no shortage of firms willing to go up against criminal enterprises like drug cartels.

The idea that Musk is somehow more threatening than the types that the US court system regularly puts under their thumb is simply laughable.

Re: Elon’s Out

#205

Post by double_nan »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #185
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Laffer curve it should probably be 70% or so to maximize government income, but yes. If you tax them 100% they'll just stop working or bail to another country, and then you collect zero tax revenue from them. At 70% most of them will just suck it up and pay. (I realize France is a counterpoint here, but I'd argue it was a half-assed attempt, and they have neighboring French-speaking tax havens that h…

The Laffer curve is a fact-free zone except for at it's two end points. The reality is that nobody knows for sure what the curve of revenue vs. tax rate looks like other than at those two end points, which makes the entire concept completely useless.

It’s fascinating. Not only that is fact free, but it’s based on an assumption that the purpose of the government is to collect maximum tax value from the citizens. Is it thought?

Re: Elon’s Out

#206

Post by moomin »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #179
daenz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the court will take his assets to compensate. How do you seize billions of dollars of stock without affecting share prices?

It doesn't matter if they're affected. A judgement is going to be for a dollar amount. A court will rule that Musk must pay twitter X billion dollars. Twitter can then pursue Musk, taking basically anything he owns in terms of business. They could contact the broker holding his shares and restrain them, order them sold, and collect the proceeds. They could seize and sell at auction the real property of any of his bus…

This is why going behind on a mortgage can absolutely ruin a regular person.

Re: Elon’s Out

#207

Post by camjohnson26 »

nerdawson wrote: post #190
camjohnson26 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has become so valuable, more valuable than the rest of the auto industry combined at one point despite much lower revenue and sales numbers, because of loose monetary policy by the Federal Reserve creating artificially inflated asset prices. The Federal Reserve is directly responsible for Musk’s disproportionate wealth as Tesla stock zoomed past ridiculous levels. Tesla has been successful in many of its lines of…

> loose monetary policy by the Federal Reserve creating artificially inflated asset prices You can buy shares in other car manufacturers. Why would Tesla disproportionately benefit from inflated asset prices?

Because car companies are boring, and in an era of cheap money the meme wins. “Sexy” automakers also got insane multiples, look at where Lucid and Rivian were trading. But the capital is diverted to whatever asset people think will keep going up, not the one that will create value in the form of profits. This is also why GameStop, AMC, DogeCoin, Shiba Inu, NFTs, Pokémon cards, etc. were trading so high, the meme is the only thing that matters.

Elon Musk knows this and is a master at harnessing this power, which is why he’s shamelessly pumped DogeCoin and Shiba. He continually pushes his company to be the most popular brands by promising impossible futuristic products that cannot exist, but build excitement. Countless examples of these, but a few are Full Self Driving, a flying Roadster, the Tesla semi, solving transportation issues with tunnels, the Tesla bot, $25k model 3, solar roof that costs less than a normal roof, robotaxi, etc etc etc. It’s all calculated.

Re: Elon’s Out

#208

Post by loufe »

nabla9 wrote: post #2

This is a second time Musk has offered to buy a public company in bad faith. His reputation as a sufficiently reliable counterparty is gone.

Let's not forget that this is a take, not an indisputable fact. Whether ostensible or true, he has cited potentially valid reasons for both cases (he DID have investors lined up to take it private and there WAS a lack of openness to investigate Twitter). I'm not saying he did or he didn't, I just find this kind of assertion (indeed the whole tone of the article) to be a bit flippant and more of a channeling for dislike of someone then for honest unbiased speculation of what is going on.

Re: Elon’s Out

#209

Post by moomin »

towaway15463 wrote: post #135
pacificmint wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Martha Stewart went to jail for 5 months for a meager case of insider trading. I believe she went to prison for lying to investigators. The insider trading they couldn’t make stick. So in the end, maybe the cases aren’t so different?

Facts. She also just paid a fine for the insider trading. Her criminal case was due to conspiracy, obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators.

“Lying to a federal official” is one of the most BS things in the entire US penal. It’s practically carte blanche to imprison anyone you come across.

Re: Elon’s Out

#210

Post by Strom »

petilon wrote: post #71

This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a joke. I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billi…

> Because TSLA is way too overvalued. He has to know that it is overvalued.

Indeed he does. He has talked about this publicly in various interviews over the years. [1]

> Musk pretended that TSLA valuation is reasonable. Musk even called out Gates for shorting TSLA stock

Musk definitely really dislikes short sellers, no doubt about that. However that is different from pretending that TSLA valuation is reasonable.

--

[1] A decent example is the 2021 Kara Swisher interview, where he states I have literally gone on record and said that our stock price is too high. https://youtu.be/O1bZg7frOmI?t=2450

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