It's completely insane that he did this again. Part of his previous settlement with the SEC was that he would get all of his tweets about Tesla pre-approved (and then he wasn't doing it anyway and...
If the SEC doesn't force him to resign as CEO this time, Tesla's board/shareholders definitely should, or at the very least force him to delete his Twitter account. He has no self-control.
Manipulation is intentional conduct designed to deceive investors by controlling or artificially affecting the market for a security. Manipulation can involve a number of techniques to affect the supply of, or demand for, a stock. They include: spreading false or misleading information about a company; improperly limiting the number of publicly-available shares; or rigging quotes, prices or trades to create a false or deceptive picture of the demand for a security. Those who engage in manipulation are subject to various civil and criminal sanctions.
It should make for an interesting court case. It'd be interesting to see lawyers trying to define "shitposting" in a formal setting, and having pages of animated gifs submitted as evidence.
It should make for an interesting court case. It'd be interesting to see lawyers trying to define "shitposting" in a formal setting, and having pages of animated gifs submitted as evidence.
While not solely about that particular tweet, the SEC fined him $40M, and forced him step down as chairman of Tesla for his behavior... so I would say that counts as getting in trouble. Clearly it...
While not solely about that particular tweet, the SEC fined him $40M, and forced him step down as chairman of Tesla for his behavior... so I would say that counts as getting in trouble. Clearly it wasn't enough of a punishment though, since he obviously didn't learn his lesson.
Sure is interesting how Elon Musk can just do whatever he wants and face no repercussions. But I guess once you have enough money, the types of laws that apply to us normal folks don't matter....
Sure is interesting how Elon Musk can just do whatever he wants and face no repercussions. But I guess once you have enough money, the types of laws that apply to us normal folks don't matter.
Sure would be nice if he faced some pretty hefty fines for violating the law.
And because Musk isn't Bezos a closer comparison: If you earned the US median salary of approx US$50,000 in 2019, and Musk earned $2,000,000,000 in 2019, even excluding the bigger issue of assets where the % difference is FAR higher, Musk's fine was the equivalent of a $1,000 fine. Except oops! Half of that fine was paid by Tesla, not Musk, so it was actually $500.
And that doesn't even begin to cover the depth of the difference - because a person on a median salary might be unable to pay rent/mortgage or buy clothes for their kids if they were hit by a $500 fine, where Musk is quite obviously in no danger of becoming homeless or otherwise being materially inconvenienced by the fine in any way.
Depends on what you consider "hefty". He paid $40m and has a worth of $36.6B which is 0.1% of his personal wealth. That's hefty to us, probably not something he's even blinking at.
Depends on what you consider "hefty". He paid $40m and has a worth of $36.6B which is 0.1% of his personal wealth. That's hefty to us, probably not something he's even blinking at.
I would consider $40 million hefty. It doesn't seem appropriate to me to charge somebody based on how rich they are, rather than based on the severity of their crime. It's also worth mentioning...
I would consider $40 million hefty. It doesn't seem appropriate to me to charge somebody based on how rich they are, rather than based on the severity of their crime.
It's also worth mentioning that he lost some control over his company. That could be very significant in the future.
Yeah we just aren't going to agree on this point. IMO one of the major injustices in our criminal system is that financial charges don't take net worth into account. Musk lost $40m. As @vakieh...
It doesn't seem appropriate to me to charge somebody based on how rich they are, rather than based on the severity of their crime.
Yeah we just aren't going to agree on this point. IMO one of the major injustices in our criminal system is that financial charges don't take net worth into account. Musk lost $40m. As @vakieh pointed out he made $2B in 2019, which is about $5,479,452.05 a day. So Musk lost 0.1% of his wealth that he regained in ~ a week. Obviously a lot of rounding and hand-wavy math there, but the general principle is Musk manipulated the stock market and got fined one week's pay. Personal wealth not being a factor in financial crimes is why rich people don't give a fuck about getting caught doing crimes. They either pay a negligible amount to hire an expensive lawyer to get them off, or they pay a negligible fee that does nothing to deter them in the future. It creates a system that punishes the poor for being poor and lets the rich get away with anything they want because they have money.
It's a difficult comparison because we're really talking about completely different crimes. The poor don't commit securities fraud, and the rich rarely commit petty crime. Yes expensive lawyers...
It creates a system that punishes the poor for being poor and lets the rich get away with anything they want because they have money.
It's a difficult comparison because we're really talking about completely different crimes. The poor don't commit securities fraud, and the rich rarely commit petty crime. Yes expensive lawyers can help in either case, but that's different than the fines or other punishments that we're talking about.
My intuition is that charging people based on their wealth rather than a legal standard is unethical at best, and ripe for abuse at worst.
I see it the exact opposite way... IMO it's completely unethical to fine the ultra-wealthy mere fractions of a percent of their income for committing non-violent crimes, when non-violent crimes...
I see it the exact opposite way... IMO it's completely unethical to fine the ultra-wealthy mere fractions of a percent of their income for committing non-violent crimes, when non-violent crimes committed by poor people typically result in fines amounting to weeks/months/years worth of wages, often with jail sentences to go along with that as well.
I can see both takes. It's similar to arguments on income tax. In one respect it's less fair to tax big earners because they're being "punished" for doing well. In another respect it's more fair...
I can see both takes. It's similar to arguments on income tax. In one respect it's less fair to tax big earners because they're being "punished" for doing well. In another respect it's more fair because it helps everyone, and income is often not directly proportional to work performed.
I stand on the side of aggressive tax brackets, so perhaps my opinions here are contradictory. Certainly I wasn't expecting the divide on this issue to be so one-sided. But as I said that view was my intuition, so it's by definition not reasoned.
Ultimately if the goal of the fine is punitive, and designed to discourage future behaviour, then I agree with you that it can only work if it does actual damage. I've not fully come around to the idea that that's a good thing, or how our justice system should work, but I agree with the premise at least.
I'm glad this is a conversation we're having on Tildes. I can only imagine how quickly off the rails it'd have gone elsewhere.
we do this stuff because it works. for what is a fine if not to disencourage future bad behaviour. just compare which countries use day-fines and which countries have least death per inhabitant...
fining is punishment to disencourage a behaviour, if it does not hurt no matter your wealth it does not work. so it is actually unethical to fine poor people the same than rich.
punishment for vengance or for punishments sake is bullshit. in the end we all want a fair society (whatever that means for each one) but fining rich people less is inherently unfair as it does not disencourage said behavoir
What might be instructive here is thinking about punishment vs. reparations. Reparations just get easier to pay the wealthier you get, as they should. You earn more, you got more cash to make...
What might be instructive here is thinking about punishment vs. reparations. Reparations just get easier to pay the wealthier you get, as they should. You earn more, you got more cash to make someone you harmed whole. This is fine, because there's an obvious number to attach here: The amount of damage. I wreck your car, I fix your car. No matter if I'm rich or poor.
Punishment on the other hand is designed to either deter or to avenge. Now I don't believe in vengeance, I prefer to keep the justice system focused on rehabilitation and away from "justice boners". But it works the same with vengeance as with deterrence. You want it to hurt. Either for educational purposes, or for hurt itself. Either way, you have to adjust to the recipient's pain tolerance, or what you're doing won't work.
Generally, the government receives the penalty and the victim the reparation. I think in this case, the SEC/govt pocketed the money, so it's a penalty. If it was dispensed to the harmed stock holders, that'd be a reparation.
Honestly, if I were "allowed" to do some big-boy defrauding for .1% of my wealth, I might. If it'd cost me 40m, I very definitely wouldn't.
Here's a link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1256239815256797184 This only happened an hour or so ago and TSLA has dropped 12% already.
It makes you wonder if the insanity of the CEO has now been priced in to the stock. Like, can you imagine if any other CEO took to Twitter and shitposted like Musk did? Imagine Tim Cook saying...
It makes you wonder if the insanity of the CEO has now been priced in to the stock. Like, can you imagine if any other CEO took to Twitter and shitposted like Musk did? Imagine Tim Cook saying Apple stock is too high, or taunting the SEC. It'd be a maelstrom.
With Musk, it's just like, "yeah, time to take his twitter away again".
Matt Levine writes that CEO's are allowed to express their opinion about the stock (though usually they say it should be higher) and this doesn't seem to violate the SEC settlement.
Matt Levine writes that CEO's are allowed to express their opinion about the stock (though usually they say it should be higher) and this doesn't seem to violate the SEC settlement.
I'm trying to wrap my head around why he'd even do that? Does he have anything to gain from stock prices falling? Some long-term scheme? Or is this just as random and self-destructive as it...
I'm trying to wrap my head around why he'd even do that? Does he have anything to gain from stock prices falling? Some long-term scheme? Or is this just as random and self-destructive as it sounds? You'd think if he wanted to manipulate the price, he'd try to manipulate it up.
My guess is manipulate it down, people-totally-not-associated-with-Elon buy up stocks, Elon stops tweeting or Tesla makes an announcement so stock prices climb,...
My guess is manipulate it down, people-totally-not-associated-with-Elon buy up stocks, Elon stops tweeting or Tesla makes an announcement so stock prices climb, people-totally-not-associated-with-Elon make a ton of money and maybe some of it just so happens to get donated to Elon or a fundraiser at some point.
I find it difficult to believe this is some part of a master plan. Dude is clearly stressed and doesn't always react well to things. How can we forget the whole cave fiasco and the submarine and...
Exemplary
I find it difficult to believe this is some part of a master plan. Dude is clearly stressed and doesn't always react well to things. How can we forget the whole cave fiasco and the submarine and the pedo comment? Or previous SEC tweets? Those had no master plan, it was just Elon being himself. I don't see how this is any different. This is probably a backlash to criticism for him wanting to reopen Tesla factories from those claiming he only cares about money and this is his own twisted view of proving that's not the case. If he only cared about money why would he tweet and destroy billions in value of his own wealth?
Occam's razor probably applies here, and the simplest answer I can see is that he really doesn't care that much about his own wealth or even his image. He cares far more about his companies, Tesla and SpaceX.
I mean, isn't that one of the few things money people actually go to jail for? If you'd genuinely want to do that, you wouldn't do it through some lol-random tweet, right?
I mean, isn't that one of the few things money people actually go to jail for? If you'd genuinely want to do that, you wouldn't do it through some lol-random tweet, right?
In a way this is kind of hilarious. Most of his wealth comes from his ownership of TSLA stock. Really not sure if he's just trolling or being erratic or if he has some type of disorder and can't...
In a way this is kind of hilarious. Most of his wealth comes from his ownership of TSLA stock. Really not sure if he's just trolling or being erratic or if he has some type of disorder and can't help himself.
My wild guess is he got used to his companies often being on the brink of disaster and misses or got desensitized to risky situations. Maybe after the bigger rockets are ready for humans, he will...
My wild guess is he got used to his companies often being on the brink of disaster and misses or got desensitized to risky situations.
Maybe after the bigger rockets are ready for humans, he will go in person.
It's completely insane that he did this again. Part of his previous settlement with the SEC was that he would get all of his tweets about Tesla pre-approved (and then he wasn't doing it anyway and bragged about it, causing him to get charged with contempt of court as well).
If the SEC doesn't force him to resign as CEO this time, Tesla's board/shareholders definitely should, or at the very least force him to delete his Twitter account. He has no self-control.
I don't know about resigning, but I expect that the SEC is building a case for more severe penalties and will go after him again soon.
Dude needs some shut eye.
he needs to do less psychedelics
SEC.gov - Manipulation?
It should make for an interesting court case. It'd be interesting to see lawyers trying to define "shitposting" in a formal setting, and having pages of animated gifs submitted as evidence.
If the funding secured thing didn't get him in trouble I don't know what will.
While not solely about that particular tweet, the SEC fined him $40M, and forced him step down as chairman of Tesla for his behavior... so I would say that counts as getting in trouble. Clearly it wasn't enough of a punishment though, since he obviously didn't learn his lesson.
A mere slap on the wrist cfab!
I agree.
Did he deceive though? I mean, the above definition sounds like truth would be a defense here. So if Tesla was overvalued...... I mean, he would know.
Sure is interesting how Elon Musk can just do whatever he wants and face no repercussions. But I guess once you have enough money, the types of laws that apply to us normal folks don't matter.
Sure would be nice if he faced some pretty hefty fines for violating the law.
Didn't he?
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
OOH BOY 40 MILLION BUCKEROONIES.
There's a post here on this Tildes group making the rounds that should put that in some perspective: https://tildes.net/~finance/oc5/1_pixel_wealth_wealth_in_the_united_states_shown_to_scale#comments
And because Musk isn't Bezos a closer comparison: If you earned the US median salary of approx US$50,000 in 2019, and Musk earned $2,000,000,000 in 2019, even excluding the bigger issue of assets where the % difference is FAR higher, Musk's fine was the equivalent of a $1,000 fine. Except oops! Half of that fine was paid by Tesla, not Musk, so it was actually $500.
And that doesn't even begin to cover the depth of the difference - because a person on a median salary might be unable to pay rent/mortgage or buy clothes for their kids if they were hit by a $500 fine, where Musk is quite obviously in no danger of becoming homeless or otherwise being materially inconvenienced by the fine in any way.
It's an absolute farce.
Depends on what you consider "hefty". He paid $40m and has a worth of $36.6B which is 0.1% of his personal wealth. That's hefty to us, probably not something he's even blinking at.
I would consider $40 million hefty. It doesn't seem appropriate to me to charge somebody based on how rich they are, rather than based on the severity of their crime.
It's also worth mentioning that he lost some control over his company. That could be very significant in the future.
Yeah we just aren't going to agree on this point. IMO one of the major injustices in our criminal system is that financial charges don't take net worth into account. Musk lost $40m. As @vakieh pointed out he made $2B in 2019, which is about $5,479,452.05 a day. So Musk lost 0.1% of his wealth that he regained in ~ a week. Obviously a lot of rounding and hand-wavy math there, but the general principle is Musk manipulated the stock market and got fined one week's pay. Personal wealth not being a factor in financial crimes is why rich people don't give a fuck about getting caught doing crimes. They either pay a negligible amount to hire an expensive lawyer to get them off, or they pay a negligible fee that does nothing to deter them in the future. It creates a system that punishes the poor for being poor and lets the rich get away with anything they want because they have money.
It's a difficult comparison because we're really talking about completely different crimes. The poor don't commit securities fraud, and the rich rarely commit petty crime. Yes expensive lawyers can help in either case, but that's different than the fines or other punishments that we're talking about.
My intuition is that charging people based on their wealth rather than a legal standard is unethical at best, and ripe for abuse at worst.
I see it the exact opposite way... IMO it's completely unethical to fine the ultra-wealthy mere fractions of a percent of their income for committing non-violent crimes, when non-violent crimes committed by poor people typically result in fines amounting to weeks/months/years worth of wages, often with jail sentences to go along with that as well.
I can see both takes. It's similar to arguments on income tax. In one respect it's less fair to tax big earners because they're being "punished" for doing well. In another respect it's more fair because it helps everyone, and income is often not directly proportional to work performed.
I stand on the side of aggressive tax brackets, so perhaps my opinions here are contradictory. Certainly I wasn't expecting the divide on this issue to be so one-sided. But as I said that view was my intuition, so it's by definition not reasoned.
Ultimately if the goal of the fine is punitive, and designed to discourage future behaviour, then I agree with you that it can only work if it does actual damage. I've not fully come around to the idea that that's a good thing, or how our justice system should work, but I agree with the premise at least.
I'm glad this is a conversation we're having on Tildes. I can only imagine how quickly off the rails it'd have gone elsewhere.
we do this stuff because it works. for what is a fine if not to disencourage future bad behaviour. just compare which countries use day-fines and which countries have least death per inhabitant for traffic accidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
fining is punishment to disencourage a behaviour, if it does not hurt no matter your wealth it does not work. so it is actually unethical to fine poor people the same than rich.
punishment for vengance or for punishments sake is bullshit. in the end we all want a fair society (whatever that means for each one) but fining rich people less is inherently unfair as it does not disencourage said behavoir
What might be instructive here is thinking about punishment vs. reparations. Reparations just get easier to pay the wealthier you get, as they should. You earn more, you got more cash to make someone you harmed whole. This is fine, because there's an obvious number to attach here: The amount of damage. I wreck your car, I fix your car. No matter if I'm rich or poor.
Punishment on the other hand is designed to either deter or to avenge. Now I don't believe in vengeance, I prefer to keep the justice system focused on rehabilitation and away from "justice boners". But it works the same with vengeance as with deterrence. You want it to hurt. Either for educational purposes, or for hurt itself. Either way, you have to adjust to the recipient's pain tolerance, or what you're doing won't work.
Generally, the government receives the penalty and the victim the reparation. I think in this case, the SEC/govt pocketed the money, so it's a penalty. If it was dispensed to the harmed stock holders, that'd be a reparation.
Honestly, if I were "allowed" to do some big-boy defrauding for .1% of my wealth, I might. If it'd cost me 40m, I very definitely wouldn't.
That's a fine of .00125% of his net worth. And he might not be chairman, but he's still de facto in charge of the company.
Here's a link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1256239815256797184
This only happened an hour or so ago and TSLA has dropped 12% already.
It makes you wonder if the insanity of the CEO has now been priced in to the stock. Like, can you imagine if any other CEO took to Twitter and shitposted like Musk did? Imagine Tim Cook saying Apple stock is too high, or taunting the SEC. It'd be a maelstrom.
With Musk, it's just like, "yeah, time to take his twitter away again".
Matt Levine writes that CEO's are allowed to express their opinion about the stock (though usually they say it should be higher) and this doesn't seem to violate the SEC settlement.
I read his tweet as "Tesla stock price is too high lmao" and was sure he was just shitposting while high. Kind of bummed this wasn't the case.
I'm trying to wrap my head around why he'd even do that? Does he have anything to gain from stock prices falling? Some long-term scheme? Or is this just as random and self-destructive as it sounds? You'd think if he wanted to manipulate the price, he'd try to manipulate it up.
My guess is manipulate it down, people-totally-not-associated-with-Elon buy up stocks, Elon stops tweeting or Tesla makes an announcement so stock prices climb, people-totally-not-associated-with-Elon make a ton of money and maybe some of it just so happens to get donated to Elon or a fundraiser at some point.
I find it difficult to believe this is some part of a master plan. Dude is clearly stressed and doesn't always react well to things. How can we forget the whole cave fiasco and the submarine and the pedo comment? Or previous SEC tweets? Those had no master plan, it was just Elon being himself. I don't see how this is any different. This is probably a backlash to criticism for him wanting to reopen Tesla factories from those claiming he only cares about money and this is his own twisted view of proving that's not the case. If he only cared about money why would he tweet and destroy billions in value of his own wealth?
Occam's razor probably applies here, and the simplest answer I can see is that he really doesn't care that much about his own wealth or even his image. He cares far more about his companies, Tesla and SpaceX.
I mean, isn't that one of the few things money people actually go to jail for? If you'd genuinely want to do that, you wouldn't do it through some lol-random tweet, right?
In a way this is kind of hilarious. Most of his wealth comes from his ownership of TSLA stock. Really not sure if he's just trolling or being erratic or if he has some type of disorder and can't help himself.
My wild guess is he got used to his companies often being on the brink of disaster and misses or got desensitized to risky situations.
Maybe after the bigger rockets are ready for humans, he will go in person.