Thursday, April 28, 2022

Elon and Twitter - 28 April 2022

Elon Musk did not like something about Twitter, so he threatened to buy it to take it private, and then change something or other.  He yarbled about "free speech" but did not make a coherent statement of the problem he sought to solve nor of the solution that he would impose to solve this hypothetical problem.  

After fussing publically for a bit, he actually came up with a $42B (billion) offer that the Twitter Board of Directors took seriously.  The press announced that Elon was buying Twitter.  The regressive party (so-called "conservatives") rejoiced that "free speech and the First Amendment" would be restored, that Donald Trump would be restored to his Twitter platform of awfulness, and that the voices that they did not like (the progressives) would finally be silenced.  (Yes, so much for "free speech.")

A few more days have passed and the details are coming out.  Elon planned to use Tesla and/or SpaceX stock for multibillion dollar loans to cover part of the purchase price, and he claimed he has some backers to cover the rest.  Well, except that Tesla (TSLA) fell from about $1000/share to about $800/share in a day or so, causing Elon to lose billions of dollars.  TSLA, itself, is currently about $900B in market cap, so it was over $1T (trillion) in market cap before Elon announced that he had secured financing.  I do not know how much Elon lost, but I am guessing he lost tens of billions of dollars in the slump.

It was reported today that Elon may have lost enough on TSLA that he can no longer afford the purchase.  The report suggested that there is a $1B (billion) penalty if the acquisition does not proceed.  

I belabor all this because Elon is a lucky jerk and a poor businessman.  He spoke off the cuff to the tune of billions of dollars and I hope he pays for his stupidity.  I cannot see that he has any idea how to improve Twitter (as much as it needs improvement) and he has skirted (broken) SEC regulations several times.  I hope he gets what he deserves in this instance.

Edit to add: here is Elon's view of the political world.  His self-proclaimed victimhood is on glaring display.  
If you plotted Dwight Eisenhower on Elon's chart, Dwight would today be far-left but he was a steady conservative in his day.  Now tell me again how the political spectrum has changed?

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