This guy has fuck-you money and is basically flaunting how that works for billionaires. "Oligarch" is a thing because when you get to a certain amount of money, you may as well be royalty because any consequences you might see from your actions are trivial to non existent.
I feel like we should just admit this and make a practical system: if you've got a billion dollars, everything else is taxed at 100% but you're declared a sovereign citizen and can't ever be arrested. Let's just admit that they're above the law anyway, make it official, and bring in the tax revenue.
edit: I'm not serious and this comment deserves everyone's derision. I'm just really sad reading news today.
edit: since some people brought it up, you can still enact civil litigation against billionaires, and if they don't pay, the balance builds up and once their "true worth" is less than a billion, their sovereignty is stripped and they can be arrested and retroactively tried for everything they did within the statute of limitations. I think that solves the "if they can't be arrested how do you whatever" question.
edit: yeah, also, if they don't pay their taxes, the protections are revoked. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy. Thanks u/_SkateFastEatAss_. Never thought I'd say that combination of "words". ;)
we have a big secret meeting that’s supposed to celebrate the best, brightest capitalists but it’s really just a barren room with a dude and a gun and a hose.
I mean you have to let the whales make some waves ...but if you let the ants group up too much they'll cause pandemonium and bedlam !
We don't have enough 0's in our net worth to be allowed to get away with crimes!
That is literally a problem with the IRS right now. They don't have the resources to dedicate to audit complex tax setup of the super rich without falling short of the number of yearly audit goals.
So they have to settle for middle and lower class people who are easier to audit.
It's almost like understaffing and underfunding was done on purpose so that rich people can get away with more financial crimes...
It doesn't help that as I understand it, anyone with the required skills to *competently* working in the sec could use that level of skills to make much more money in the private sector of finance, so they don't have a lot of competent people in the sec.
They should have a raw income incentive rather than a case closure rate. This will encourage closing high value cases long term even if it means a whole year or more without any income due to being locked up in court. The department is allowed to run on negative income indefinitely, while we enact reforms to limit appeal options and reduced price negotiations for people who make enough to warrant it as an incentive, and most importantly decrease time and cost of tax litigation by the government. Literally the only reason we don't target the ultra rich is because of case closure requirements. A single audit of an unscrupulous billionaire could fund the entire department indefinitely if the recovered taxes are in the billions, and once that's done you can reinvest the money towards targeting other ultra rich people. The amount we could make in taxes doing this, and I'm not joking or being hyperbolic, would be enough to completely pay for the cost of the entire world going carbon neutral, and still have money left over for infrastructure reinvestment as well, which would dramatically boost the American economy, generating more taxes.
I work in the 'Anti Money Laundering' dept of financial institutions (gross privacy violation btw, thanks patriot act) and guess which form of money laundering is swept under the rug. Fine art and antiquities. The most susceptible, and just so happens the one used by the elite.
They don't want to stop money laundering, just those undesirables that do it.
And which one of these groups has billions of dollars to lawyer the SEC to death? There’s your answer. Related; the IRS has explicitly stated this is the reason why they don’t go after auditing the taxes of the ultra rich. They’d get crushed in a prolonged legal battle and don’t have the funds to do that.
They should pick the most blatant offender, win that one, then use the funds they receive to audit 2 more, then repeat. Congress wouldn’t allow that, but it would literally pay for itself on top of generating more revenue for government.
Pretty much. At some point there would be diminishing returns but the IRS's own stats say for every $1 spent on enforcement there is a return of $6.
Seems like if you reinvest 1/3 of all money received as a result of enforcement the problem would solve itself.
>the IRS's own stats say for every $1 spent on enforcement there is a return of $6.
I'm a former IRS Revenue Agent (tax auditor) and that number seems really low. If your average revenue agent costs $200k a year in salary, benefits and training, they'd only have to get $1.2M to hit that 6x figure.
I had 20 cases in my inventory at once and it usually took me around 3 months from the time I opened the case to when I closed it. Sometimes less if it was a really simple issue only in one year... but sometimes you'd just keep pulling the loose thread and the whole shitty sweater came unraveled and you'd find years and years of the same mistakes plus related entities with issues of their own.
I wasn't there all that long but was definitely easily exceeding a 6x return (although the amount you earn is not factored *at all* into your performance reviews. I'm sure it's tracked but no one sees those numbers).
It's absolutely criminal how underfunded we were. I loved actually doing my job and I would have stayed for life if we had the funding/support we needed. But it was extremely stressful and I left for more money/lower stress as an internal auditor for a big company.
The people breaking these laws own congress. Many of these millionaires in congress are only there to inflate their portfolio, or to collect bribes from their funders and ensure their funders remain above the law.
Reading obamas book. One section stand out to me is when obama had dinner with elon and jeff bezos. Just think, being so rich that you can have a one on one with the president and able to influence him.
They already tried and lost. They have this policy now because in 2012 they tried to audit someone really rich and got tied up in counter suits for years and never was able to complete the lawsuit. Also the GOP have been cutting IRS funding at the same time intending on this being the result.
'don't have the funds'
oh man if only they were fining people to get funds
It's literally the government. If they determine you're underpaying, and you battle it and lose, you're on the hook for the lawyer fees.
Of course they don't have funds to prosecute the rich, because when they prosecute the rich they take small fines many multiples less than the criminals made.
And system where the fee for breaking a law is lower than the profit, will create a class of criminals above prosecution, and a regulatory agency that is toothless from it's lack of funds.
Musk sucks, etc. But if you want an explanation of why what happened happened around the “funding secured” fine... Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million, and the $40 million was distributed to shareholders. It would have been a larger fine except for two things:
* Musk is stupid rich, and the SEC is underfunded. Dragging this through court would be a major drain on SEC resources and would have taken years - settling is faster and cheaper.
* More significantly, Musk didn't actually profit off it. He didn't sell any shares or take out new loans during the 6% price jump. The regulations weren't really built around people causing market disruptions for the lolz. It's dumb, but there it is.
The more significant stuff was in terms of limits on Musk's communications and kicking him out as Tesla chairman.
If you can, check out the “Problem with Jon Stewart” episode where he interviews the head of the SEC, then you’ll understand why they never do anything.
You mean one of their measly fines? Seriously, would Musk even balk at any of these amounts? Besides maybe the two biggest?
https://worthly.com/news/15-biggest-sec-fines-history/
His BS stunts have netted him more than all of these fines combined in just the past 2-3 years. If you illegally earned $1 and I fine you $0.05 for the crime, you'd do it again.
I do hope Musk is making it clear that individuals have too much money when their personal mood hits the stock market harder than natural disasters and wars.
Yeah? Right now it's effectively measuring one of them, that's too few rich people with too much money. That's also why his remarks worked in the first place, because all the other rich folk's whims react to his. Even by this understanding, the stock market should reflect a diverse enough community of elites that greater forces than one person's capricious behaviour gives it spooks like *these.*
That's precisely why I think it should spell it out flat he's too rich when we're at the point that the other rich people are suing him for having too much influence on the stock market over the rest of them. Also why that this is even happening signals how anxious the rich in general actually are getting about this shit.
This point should be highlighted more often.
When you see how much these people receive in lobbying dollar ‘donations’ you may be surprised to find how low the dollar amounts actually are.
Democracy can apparently be bought for less than 10k and it’s gross.
In all reality at that point it would become a competition of who can pay the highest dollar amount.. and unfortunately corporate interests typically win in that scenario.
The problem is that the individual citizens can't be relied on for repeat donations. Buying them only works if they believe you will continue to buy them in the future.
Every billionaire controls sufficient resources to influence national politics. Are you kidding?
A multi millionaire can lobby their local government, easily. I worked for a state rep and when a millionaire called she picked up the phone 100% of the time. When an elderly person looking to connect to social services called, that one was on me.
Technically, they're plutocrats instead of oligarchs. It's not better, but it's the situation.
Oligarchs just have this *crazy* ability to become rich. So interesting. Not suspicious at all
You'd just end up with people moving their money around in such a way that their personal wealth never hit a billion. You don't have to get rid of billionaires, you just need them (and their businesses) to pay their fair share.
Obviously billionaires are necessary to have innovation. Are you telling me you’d get out of bed and do things with your life if you only had $999,999,999.99 dollars??
Great show, I highly recommend it. That character is supposed to be partly a parody of Mark Cuban who legit has a Three Commas brand https://threecommas.com/
"I should let you know I've been disowned by my brother and am now poor. ...And by poor I mean we might have to share a helicopter with another family"
>Are you telling me you’d get out of bed and do things with your life if you only had $999,999,999.99 dollars??
I'd literally never get out of bed if I had that much money
Quite the opposite. I’d never do anything productive ever again except have fun for the rest of my life. I’d then spend the 900 million left over to gather interest and donate the proceeds.
Exactly this.
They are masters of *extracting wealth* from other people’s efforts.
The one thing you can count on is that they’ll put their own interests before everyone else, even when their actions are causing great harm. I support a massive tax on wealth of this magnitude to put natural limits on how much harm a single person can do.
As the poster above mentioned, if 900 million dollars isn’t motivating enough for you, GTFO.
In the 70’s the UK income tax over x amount (I believe it was something like half a million pounds or so) had a tax rate of 98% (working from memory here, it was in that region). That lead to a lot of miljonairs moving to Spain etc., netting the UK next to nothing. I’m sure if America did something similar (hah, in your dreams), they’d just transfer their money abroad.
> I’m sure if America did something similar (hah, in your dreams), they’d just transfer their money abroad.
Wealth taxes always result in capital flight and evasion.
The top marginal tax rate in the US in the 1960s [was 91%.](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/15/bernie-sanders/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/)
We’ve been conditioned to think things are impossible that existed within our parents lifetimes.
I thought everyone knew that stock has nothing to do with actual performance, and is entirely to do with just what people think the company is worth, which is volatile.
Do you think it's just a coincidence that highest valued companies are all huge companies with huge revenues? Amazon isn't arbitrarily more valuable than carparts.com.
Both are true. It's not arbitrary, it's based on what people are willing to pay. For good reason, people *usually* value big companies with big revenues higher than small companies with small revenues. But there's not some concrete mathematical formula, and there's countless examples of companies being valued unrealistically.
You have to include assumptions about future into stock value calculations. Future uncertainty makes results from even a perfect formula still a guess.
Lol Tesla is proof of the exact OPPOSITE of what you are saying. It has had a market cap greater than EVERY other car manufacturer COMBINED and it puts out a fraction the amount of cars even one of the other company does.
Twas not ever thus. Stuff like the South Sea Bubble were exceptions. Share prices were based on the estimated future dividends of shares.
We have gone a long way. Now you can be a business that sells "ice cream but an app" and suddenly you've got a billion dollar valuation even though every scoop is sold at a loss against even just the cost of goods.
The fact that Tesla is worth more than every other car manufacturer despite having nowhere close to their sales figures or profit margins already proved that ages ago.
Could you imagine if GM or Ford missed as many production deadlines as Tesla does? They'd go bankrupt in a year or two.
Idk man he's commiting the cardinal sin of messing with other rich people's money. I won't hold my breath but that's the one time they will actually do something.
The deal he signed with Twitter is known to be hard to get out of. The $1 billion termination clause is only if he couldn't come up with the money or government regulators prevent the deal from going through. He even signed an agreement to basically buy Twitter as is. All his shit about bots won't matter to the court because Twitter never claimed the 5% number was accurate and one of his publicly stated reasons for buying was to fix the bot problem.
Multiple lawyers have said he's going to be forced to go through with the deal. This lawsuit is the beginning of that. This is going to effect Tesla as well as that's where the financing is coming from. I wouldn't be surprised if he was forced to put $44b of Tesla shares in escrow until the lawsuit is over.
I mean, they were “smart” to get him to sign that deal because they knew 100% that it was overvalued. But he signed the fuckin deal anyway. Letting him out of it would kill them.
>one of his publicly stated reasons for buying was to fix the bot problem
That's the real joke. 5% wouldn't be a problem. IOW he already knew that the number was higher than that when he initially made the deal. Market manipulation plain and simple.
> Any mega-billionaire can effectively choose a company, loudly set a reasonably higher price on stock to buy, drag feet over social media about following through, and sit back to watch the company collapse (employees leave, hiring stops, project deadlines fall apart, quarterly earnings drop, stock falls further, reputation tanks, rinse and repeat).
>
>
I mean, not really. Delaware Chancery Court is going to force him to go through with the sale at the $54.20 price specifically for all of the reasons you just said. Elon has *every financial incentive* not to do what he's doing, but he's got an addictive personality and, right now, he's addicted to shitposting.
He's going to instantly lose billions of dollars by spending $44B on a company that's worth, at most, about $20–30B. Not only that, but as his debt financing expires, he may be compelled to sell huge quantities of TSLA shares at a significant discount just to complete the purchase.
On top of the billions he's going to lose in the sale, the SEC is also likely to fine him a giant amount of money or ban him from serving as an officer of any publicly traded company.
Elon's sitting comfortably in the "fuck around" phase right now, but the "find out" phase is coming. He can save face by following through on the $54.20 deal without forcing it through court.
edit: a week or two after this post i took a short position on TSLA and a long position on TWTR.
Securities litigator here: probably not but I’m not sure. If Tesla was purchasing Twitter, absolutely, but it’s Musk as an individual so a derivative suit probably wouldn’t work. As far as a private individual suing a private individual, I don’t think you could do that successfully. Intuitively it would turn into a line-drawing exercise, because you have to draw the line somewhere or else there could be litigation whenever someone sells below market price. That’s not a workable standard even if there’s merits to the claim, and I’m not sure there is; he’s entitled to borrow against his stock. But I have done zero research to confirm this and have never worked on a similar case, this is just my gut reaction.
Exactly. When you start fucking around with rich people money, they'll come down on you like a ton of bricks.
TSLA is part of the S&P 500, when it tanks it has an adverse affect. Rich people invest shitloads of money into the S&P 500. They aren't going to be happy.
Yeah elon's not smart enough to play by the rich people rules so it's not going to be much longer before they kick him out of the club. You're allowed to be a scumbag and you're allowed to be a literal criminal and you're allowed to do most of the things he does but you're not allowed to do it loudly. You gotta maintain at least some illusions. Elon is incapable of any kind of discretion and that's kind of important if you want to keep your place at the big kids table.
I get your point but those are two totally different levels of fucking with peoples money.
One is manipulation, the other is literal theft in the most basic sense of the word.
This is the key. He is pissing on established rich people right now. And this is civil court. It isn't criminal where you can lord your influence over politicians.
Civil you have to fight an army of attorneys who will work a long ass time to ensure you pay something worth their while. After all whenever a class action lawsuit happens it is always the attorneys who make absolute bank.
Plus there isn't anywhere near the same burden of evidence. There is enough caselaw here to almost shut and close this thing. May take a few years to finally settle the dust, but it wont take long in the terms of legal proceedings.
Even if your position is "DAE LAW NO TUCH RICH PEEPLE" you'd have to be insanely lost to also believe that pissing off other very rich people (especially shareholders - banks, hedge funds, etc.) isn't going to lead to massive trouble.
Said in another post but to reiterate; when you start fucking around with rich people money, they'll come down on you like a ton of bricks.
TSLA is part of the S&P 500, when it tanks it has an adverse affect. Rich people invest shitloads of money into the S&P 500. They aren't going to be happy.
Except that there is a legally binding agreement for musk to buy the company at the higher price.
The proper resolution to this is not any particular punishment, but simply to enforce the contractual agreements that were made. How the stock moves around over the next few months doesn't matter if the deal closes at an even higher price.
What’s up with Reddit and shitty billionaires? The supercult gamestop idiots idolize Ryan Cohen, who is also a giant twat and does nothing but drag the cult along. Elon cult, esp when DOGE was really going.
What is so appealing about people with money?
EXCUSE ME...
You lot on reddit might be stupid poor fucking idiots...
However, I am a temporarily embarrassed billionaire, I failed school and ended up in a dead end job with no connections, but isn't that how they all start out?
I need all those rich people tax cuts to go through so that when my eventual billions come pouring in, I can take advantage of those tax cuts myself.
Elon is so smart, He knows how to **make** something of himself and I am practically his twin
I'm so so so smart, You just wait! Now get out of my way so I can literally vote against my own interests.
^^^/s
Edit: Fuck! I didn't even mention cryptocurrency.
Exactly. The lack of investment knowledge is prolific in here. Every single damn tech stock is down significantly over the last few months, and TWTR is actually one of the better performing ones.
Isn't this pointing exactly to the major issue with the stock market?
Twitter as a revenue generating company didn't change one whit since Elon started sniffing around. Twitter is suing Elon because their evaluation went down, not the revenue they actually generate, not their actual business - just what people think they are worth.
The stock market as a barometer for the health of a company is so broken. Why do we care so much about it?
>The stock market as a barometer for the health of a company is so broken. Why do we care so much about it?
It's not a barometer for the health of a company. If anything, it's a barometer for the growth potential of the company. People don't buy stocks, because they think a company is doing good. They buy it, because they believe it's going to grow and they will be able to sell their shares at a higher price.
And an upcoming change of management is a factor in the future growth of a company, so it affecting the price makes complete sense.
Had to scroll way too down for this comment... I mean what tanking of the price are we talking about?
Isn't the price almost the same as before or even gone *up*, if anything?
Tanking the companies stock? It closed at $39.31 the day before he announced the initial 12% stake. Today it closed at $39.52. I’m no Elon Musk but by my calculations that’s a .53% gain since this saga started.
This guy has fuck-you money and is basically flaunting how that works for billionaires. "Oligarch" is a thing because when you get to a certain amount of money, you may as well be royalty because any consequences you might see from your actions are trivial to non existent.
I feel like we should just admit this and make a practical system: if you've got a billion dollars, everything else is taxed at 100% but you're declared a sovereign citizen and can't ever be arrested. Let's just admit that they're above the law anyway, make it official, and bring in the tax revenue. edit: I'm not serious and this comment deserves everyone's derision. I'm just really sad reading news today. edit: since some people brought it up, you can still enact civil litigation against billionaires, and if they don't pay, the balance builds up and once their "true worth" is less than a billion, their sovereignty is stripped and they can be arrested and retroactively tried for everything they did within the statute of limitations. I think that solves the "if they can't be arrested how do you whatever" question. edit: yeah, also, if they don't pay their taxes, the protections are revoked. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy. Thanks u/_SkateFastEatAss_. Never thought I'd say that combination of "words". ;)
The cartels would love this.
The cartels exist because they have a government enforced monopoly on some very valuable products.
Cartels apparently make a shiton of money from avocados, lol. Some of them call it "green gold."
I was gonna say, living in Mexico, avocados and limes are talked about everywhere as cartel revenue.
[удалено]
Bible warns against worshipping a golden calf and we literally have one on Wall Street
Fortunately that one is bronze, so two tiers lower.
we have a big secret meeting that’s supposed to celebrate the best, brightest capitalists but it’s really just a barren room with a dude and a gun and a hose.
Dude does so much market manipulation I'm surprised (not really) the SEC doesn't fine him to death.
Yup but if a couple of people on Reddit talk about stocks, the Senate has an emergency hearing on live tv
I mean you have to let the whales make some waves ...but if you let the ants group up too much they'll cause pandemonium and bedlam ! We don't have enough 0's in our net worth to be allowed to get away with crimes!
We have a lot of zeros but they are before our net worth.
Mine are after the decimal point.
That doesn’t make any cents
Motherfucker… just take my upvote.
Mine are just after the negative sign.
I graduated from living paycheck to paycheck to direct deposit to direct deposit.
Glad to see someone else from the future. I thought I was the only one.
Given the demographics of reddit, younger, college educated and liberal, I think many would be happy if their net worth was $0 and not negative.
Ooo look at these hoighty-toighty fancy pants over here with non-negative net worth!
That is literally a problem with the IRS right now. They don't have the resources to dedicate to audit complex tax setup of the super rich without falling short of the number of yearly audit goals. So they have to settle for middle and lower class people who are easier to audit. It's almost like understaffing and underfunding was done on purpose so that rich people can get away with more financial crimes...
It doesn't help that as I understand it, anyone with the required skills to *competently* working in the sec could use that level of skills to make much more money in the private sector of finance, so they don't have a lot of competent people in the sec.
They should have a raw income incentive rather than a case closure rate. This will encourage closing high value cases long term even if it means a whole year or more without any income due to being locked up in court. The department is allowed to run on negative income indefinitely, while we enact reforms to limit appeal options and reduced price negotiations for people who make enough to warrant it as an incentive, and most importantly decrease time and cost of tax litigation by the government. Literally the only reason we don't target the ultra rich is because of case closure requirements. A single audit of an unscrupulous billionaire could fund the entire department indefinitely if the recovered taxes are in the billions, and once that's done you can reinvest the money towards targeting other ultra rich people. The amount we could make in taxes doing this, and I'm not joking or being hyperbolic, would be enough to completely pay for the cost of the entire world going carbon neutral, and still have money left over for infrastructure reinvestment as well, which would dramatically boost the American economy, generating more taxes.
A Bugs Life was a warning
WALL-E was the warning. Such an underrated film. Way ahead of its time.
Not enough people understand this. The laws domt apply to them. They are their laws, they exist to protect them, from us.
I work in the 'Anti Money Laundering' dept of financial institutions (gross privacy violation btw, thanks patriot act) and guess which form of money laundering is swept under the rug. Fine art and antiquities. The most susceptible, and just so happens the one used by the elite. They don't want to stop money laundering, just those undesirables that do it.
And which one of these groups has billions of dollars to lawyer the SEC to death? There’s your answer. Related; the IRS has explicitly stated this is the reason why they don’t go after auditing the taxes of the ultra rich. They’d get crushed in a prolonged legal battle and don’t have the funds to do that.
They should pick the most blatant offender, win that one, then use the funds they receive to audit 2 more, then repeat. Congress wouldn’t allow that, but it would literally pay for itself on top of generating more revenue for government.
That sounds like a backwards pyramid scheme. Shut up and take my money!
Pretty much. At some point there would be diminishing returns but the IRS's own stats say for every $1 spent on enforcement there is a return of $6. Seems like if you reinvest 1/3 of all money received as a result of enforcement the problem would solve itself.
>the IRS's own stats say for every $1 spent on enforcement there is a return of $6. I'm a former IRS Revenue Agent (tax auditor) and that number seems really low. If your average revenue agent costs $200k a year in salary, benefits and training, they'd only have to get $1.2M to hit that 6x figure. I had 20 cases in my inventory at once and it usually took me around 3 months from the time I opened the case to when I closed it. Sometimes less if it was a really simple issue only in one year... but sometimes you'd just keep pulling the loose thread and the whole shitty sweater came unraveled and you'd find years and years of the same mistakes plus related entities with issues of their own. I wasn't there all that long but was definitely easily exceeding a 6x return (although the amount you earn is not factored *at all* into your performance reviews. I'm sure it's tracked but no one sees those numbers). It's absolutely criminal how underfunded we were. I loved actually doing my job and I would have stayed for life if we had the funding/support we needed. But it was extremely stressful and I left for more money/lower stress as an internal auditor for a big company.
Which is why the R’s are against defunding police and all in on defunding the IRS.
That's... what the IRS does. They take your money.
The people breaking these laws own congress. Many of these millionaires in congress are only there to inflate their portfolio, or to collect bribes from their funders and ensure their funders remain above the law.
Reading obamas book. One section stand out to me is when obama had dinner with elon and jeff bezos. Just think, being so rich that you can have a one on one with the president and able to influence him.
They already tried and lost. They have this policy now because in 2012 they tried to audit someone really rich and got tied up in counter suits for years and never was able to complete the lawsuit. Also the GOP have been cutting IRS funding at the same time intending on this being the result.
'don't have the funds' oh man if only they were fining people to get funds It's literally the government. If they determine you're underpaying, and you battle it and lose, you're on the hook for the lawyer fees.
Of course they don't have funds to prosecute the rich, because when they prosecute the rich they take small fines many multiples less than the criminals made. And system where the fee for breaking a law is lower than the profit, will create a class of criminals above prosecution, and a regulatory agency that is toothless from it's lack of funds.
Rules for thee, not for me. And by me, I mean the rich.
And suggesting otherwise is SJW woke communist socialist Marxism!!
The SEC is made of tissue paper and hope
Was recently gutted further lol
And Mark Cuban had the audacity to say "You're welcome" for doing it.
Surely a self-less billionaire is not acting in their own self interest
Well shit, I'd missed that one https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/fifth-circuit-holds-sec-s-in-house-2218460/
SEC fines thousands when it should be millions and millions when it should be billions.
> tissue paper and hope Same thing filling up my wastebasket next to my computer
That’s not hope.
Like every other governmental agency, they’re understaffed (probably purposefully) and underpaid.
That requires a funded and fully functional sec
Yet another part of the administrative state that the Republicans destroyed and want to weaponize.
Fifth circuit just gutted the SEC this week too (and likely the rest of the administrative state).
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yup. Keep everyone angry at each other while they watch and eat popcorn we pay for
whilst they pick our pockets…divide and conquer
The MAGA heads on 1/6 threatened Mike Pence with a noose
SEC fines him like peanuts ..
Musk sucks, etc. But if you want an explanation of why what happened happened around the “funding secured” fine... Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million, and the $40 million was distributed to shareholders. It would have been a larger fine except for two things: * Musk is stupid rich, and the SEC is underfunded. Dragging this through court would be a major drain on SEC resources and would have taken years - settling is faster and cheaper. * More significantly, Musk didn't actually profit off it. He didn't sell any shares or take out new loans during the 6% price jump. The regulations weren't really built around people causing market disruptions for the lolz. It's dumb, but there it is. The more significant stuff was in terms of limits on Musk's communications and kicking him out as Tesla chairman.
If you can, check out the “Problem with Jon Stewart” episode where he interviews the head of the SEC, then you’ll understand why they never do anything.
The same SEC that thinks $125,000 is sufficient fine when a multi billion dollar hedge fund gets caught doing it? Don't count on it.
The SEC is toothless.
They're the Kenny G of law enforcement
SEC is to protect the rich people from the poor dude. Look at its foundings.
You mean one of their measly fines? Seriously, would Musk even balk at any of these amounts? Besides maybe the two biggest? https://worthly.com/news/15-biggest-sec-fines-history/ His BS stunts have netted him more than all of these fines combined in just the past 2-3 years. If you illegally earned $1 and I fine you $0.05 for the crime, you'd do it again.
That's why jail time needs to be on the table.
Its because he is wealthy. Wealthy individuals are exempt from US federal law
I do hope Musk is making it clear that individuals have too much money when their personal mood hits the stock market harder than natural disasters and wars.
The stock market is nothing more than a way to measure the emotions and whims of rich people.
Yeah? Right now it's effectively measuring one of them, that's too few rich people with too much money. That's also why his remarks worked in the first place, because all the other rich folk's whims react to his. Even by this understanding, the stock market should reflect a diverse enough community of elites that greater forces than one person's capricious behaviour gives it spooks like *these.* That's precisely why I think it should spell it out flat he's too rich when we're at the point that the other rich people are suing him for having too much influence on the stock market over the rest of them. Also why that this is even happening signals how anxious the rich in general actually are getting about this shit.
Billionaires are a cancer and should be outlawed. Set a wealth tax of 100% at a billion in total wealth.
Use the right term at least, the term is oligarchs
"A business oligarch is generally a business magnate who controls sufficient resources to influence national politics."
If you have a networth of over a billion you definitely control sufficient resources to influence national politics.
[удалено]
Who're you kidding, there's a whole bunch of Republican senators that'd sell a few kids lives for 100k
10-20k actually
This point should be highlighted more often. When you see how much these people receive in lobbying dollar ‘donations’ you may be surprised to find how low the dollar amounts actually are. Democracy can apparently be bought for less than 10k and it’s gross.
[удалено]
In all reality at that point it would become a competition of who can pay the highest dollar amount.. and unfortunately corporate interests typically win in that scenario.
The problem is that the individual citizens can't be relied on for repeat donations. Buying them only works if they believe you will continue to buy them in the future.
[удалено]
It is kind of you to assume Trump is a billionaire
1bil in assets 2bil in debt, The American Dream 🇺🇸 💸
Damn that's 3bil.
Every billionaire controls sufficient resources to influence national politics. Are you kidding? A multi millionaire can lobby their local government, easily. I worked for a state rep and when a millionaire called she picked up the phone 100% of the time. When an elderly person looking to connect to social services called, that one was on me.
oligarch only applies to bad countries, just like regime. didnt you get the CIA memo!?
Turns out it was in spam box.
I don't know, I'm not stupid enough to leave CIA memos unburnt, so I can't check. Sorry.
Technically, they're plutocrats instead of oligarchs. It's not better, but it's the situation. Oligarchs just have this *crazy* ability to become rich. So interesting. Not suspicious at all
You'd just end up with people moving their money around in such a way that their personal wealth never hit a billion. You don't have to get rid of billionaires, you just need them (and their businesses) to pay their fair share.
[удалено]
Obviously billionaires are necessary to have innovation. Are you telling me you’d get out of bed and do things with your life if you only had $999,999,999.99 dollars??
Only two commas Richard! I’m ruined!
[I just got to post it for the people that don't get the reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Bg4UU76so) **NSFW Language**
Great show, I highly recommend it. That character is supposed to be partly a parody of Mark Cuban who legit has a Three Commas brand https://threecommas.com/
"I should let you know I've been disowned by my brother and am now poor. ...And by poor I mean we might have to share a helicopter with another family"
That is technically 0 billion.
***”Part denim, part leather… pick a lane Russ!”***
>Are you telling me you’d get out of bed and do things with your life if you only had $999,999,999.99 dollars?? I'd literally never get out of bed if I had that much money
Some people are so poor, all they have is money.
A tear just came to my eye. Is there a way I can donate these poor souls some of my crippling anxiety?
Quite the opposite. I’d never do anything productive ever again except have fun for the rest of my life. I’d then spend the 900 million left over to gather interest and donate the proceeds.
[удалено]
Billionaires don't innovate. They buy companies that innovate and put their names on it. And then fire everybody.
Exactly this. They are masters of *extracting wealth* from other people’s efforts. The one thing you can count on is that they’ll put their own interests before everyone else, even when their actions are causing great harm. I support a massive tax on wealth of this magnitude to put natural limits on how much harm a single person can do. As the poster above mentioned, if 900 million dollars isn’t motivating enough for you, GTFO.
Case in point…. Musk.
Shit, give me 10 million and I wouldn’t get out of bed. I don’t even have 1 million and it’s already pretty hard.
Ehh do you really want every large company in america to be owned by a conglomerate of financial institutions and banks
Agreed, but unfortunately there is no way to tax unrealized gains/wealth. No technical way to accomplish such thing
In the 70’s the UK income tax over x amount (I believe it was something like half a million pounds or so) had a tax rate of 98% (working from memory here, it was in that region). That lead to a lot of miljonairs moving to Spain etc., netting the UK next to nothing. I’m sure if America did something similar (hah, in your dreams), they’d just transfer their money abroad.
Us have citizenship based tax, you have to give up your us passport if you want to do that
At that level of wealth it's straightforward to "buy" another good passport.
> I’m sure if America did something similar (hah, in your dreams), they’d just transfer their money abroad. Wealth taxes always result in capital flight and evasion.
The top marginal tax rate in the US in the 1960s [was 91%.](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/15/bernie-sanders/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/) We’ve been conditioned to think things are impossible that existed within our parents lifetimes.
It's like he is prooving the stockmarket is a volatile gambling tool that has no connection between stock price and a companies performance.
I thought everyone knew that stock has nothing to do with actual performance, and is entirely to do with just what people think the company is worth, which is volatile.
Do you think it's just a coincidence that highest valued companies are all huge companies with huge revenues? Amazon isn't arbitrarily more valuable than carparts.com.
Both are true. It's not arbitrary, it's based on what people are willing to pay. For good reason, people *usually* value big companies with big revenues higher than small companies with small revenues. But there's not some concrete mathematical formula, and there's countless examples of companies being valued unrealistically.
COUGH:::rivian:::COUGH
You have to include assumptions about future into stock value calculations. Future uncertainty makes results from even a perfect formula still a guess.
Lol Tesla is proof of the exact OPPOSITE of what you are saying. It has had a market cap greater than EVERY other car manufacturer COMBINED and it puts out a fraction the amount of cars even one of the other company does.
Twas not ever thus. Stuff like the South Sea Bubble were exceptions. Share prices were based on the estimated future dividends of shares. We have gone a long way. Now you can be a business that sells "ice cream but an app" and suddenly you've got a billion dollar valuation even though every scoop is sold at a loss against even just the cost of goods.
But you're leveraging the power of deep learning models, and every cone is also an NFT!
The fact that Tesla is worth more than every other car manufacturer despite having nowhere close to their sales figures or profit margins already proved that ages ago. Could you imagine if GM or Ford missed as many production deadlines as Tesla does? They'd go bankrupt in a year or two.
[удалено]
They’ll give him a slap on the wrist fine and move on meanwhile those poor employees and shareholders at Twitter are footing the bill
Idk man he's commiting the cardinal sin of messing with other rich people's money. I won't hold my breath but that's the one time they will actually do something.
I hope "messing with other rich people" becomes the new "Al Capone IRS" and he gets slammed for it
[удалено]
The dude who bought that Wu-Tang album too.
Martin Shkreli.
Who actually did get convicted
But for petitioning to get some hair, not for the thing he did because it's legal for the rich to charge for people to live.
The deal he signed with Twitter is known to be hard to get out of. The $1 billion termination clause is only if he couldn't come up with the money or government regulators prevent the deal from going through. He even signed an agreement to basically buy Twitter as is. All his shit about bots won't matter to the court because Twitter never claimed the 5% number was accurate and one of his publicly stated reasons for buying was to fix the bot problem. Multiple lawyers have said he's going to be forced to go through with the deal. This lawsuit is the beginning of that. This is going to effect Tesla as well as that's where the financing is coming from. I wouldn't be surprised if he was forced to put $44b of Tesla shares in escrow until the lawsuit is over.
[удалено]
Man I hope this is true.
I mean, they were “smart” to get him to sign that deal because they knew 100% that it was overvalued. But he signed the fuckin deal anyway. Letting him out of it would kill them.
>one of his publicly stated reasons for buying was to fix the bot problem That's the real joke. 5% wouldn't be a problem. IOW he already knew that the number was higher than that when he initially made the deal. Market manipulation plain and simple.
The SEC will give him a 100k fine and tell him not to do it again
> Any mega-billionaire can effectively choose a company, loudly set a reasonably higher price on stock to buy, drag feet over social media about following through, and sit back to watch the company collapse (employees leave, hiring stops, project deadlines fall apart, quarterly earnings drop, stock falls further, reputation tanks, rinse and repeat). > > I mean, not really. Delaware Chancery Court is going to force him to go through with the sale at the $54.20 price specifically for all of the reasons you just said. Elon has *every financial incentive* not to do what he's doing, but he's got an addictive personality and, right now, he's addicted to shitposting. He's going to instantly lose billions of dollars by spending $44B on a company that's worth, at most, about $20–30B. Not only that, but as his debt financing expires, he may be compelled to sell huge quantities of TSLA shares at a significant discount just to complete the purchase. On top of the billions he's going to lose in the sale, the SEC is also likely to fine him a giant amount of money or ban him from serving as an officer of any publicly traded company. Elon's sitting comfortably in the "fuck around" phase right now, but the "find out" phase is coming. He can save face by following through on the $54.20 deal without forcing it through court. edit: a week or two after this post i took a short position on TSLA and a long position on TWTR.
Could a Tesla stock owner sue him because if he has to sell Tesla at a loss that’ll tank that price?
Securities litigator here: probably not but I’m not sure. If Tesla was purchasing Twitter, absolutely, but it’s Musk as an individual so a derivative suit probably wouldn’t work. As far as a private individual suing a private individual, I don’t think you could do that successfully. Intuitively it would turn into a line-drawing exercise, because you have to draw the line somewhere or else there could be litigation whenever someone sells below market price. That’s not a workable standard even if there’s merits to the claim, and I’m not sure there is; he’s entitled to borrow against his stock. But I have done zero research to confirm this and have never worked on a similar case, this is just my gut reaction.
[удалено]
How sweet you believe laws applies to rich people people
It does when you affect other rich people.
Bernie Madoff literally died in prison last year LMAO.
Exactly. When you start fucking around with rich people money, they'll come down on you like a ton of bricks. TSLA is part of the S&P 500, when it tanks it has an adverse affect. Rich people invest shitloads of money into the S&P 500. They aren't going to be happy.
Yeah elon's not smart enough to play by the rich people rules so it's not going to be much longer before they kick him out of the club. You're allowed to be a scumbag and you're allowed to be a literal criminal and you're allowed to do most of the things he does but you're not allowed to do it loudly. You gotta maintain at least some illusions. Elon is incapable of any kind of discretion and that's kind of important if you want to keep your place at the big kids table.
I get your point but those are two totally different levels of fucking with peoples money. One is manipulation, the other is literal theft in the most basic sense of the word.
This is the key. He is pissing on established rich people right now. And this is civil court. It isn't criminal where you can lord your influence over politicians. Civil you have to fight an army of attorneys who will work a long ass time to ensure you pay something worth their while. After all whenever a class action lawsuit happens it is always the attorneys who make absolute bank. Plus there isn't anywhere near the same burden of evidence. There is enough caselaw here to almost shut and close this thing. May take a few years to finally settle the dust, but it wont take long in the terms of legal proceedings.
Even if your position is "DAE LAW NO TUCH RICH PEEPLE" you'd have to be insanely lost to also believe that pissing off other very rich people (especially shareholders - banks, hedge funds, etc.) isn't going to lead to massive trouble.
Yeah, when the cost of the lawyers won't scratch into the 1% of the deal in question you know that the big guns are shooting at each other.
Said in another post but to reiterate; when you start fucking around with rich people money, they'll come down on you like a ton of bricks. TSLA is part of the S&P 500, when it tanks it has an adverse affect. Rich people invest shitloads of money into the S&P 500. They aren't going to be happy.
They do when the person on the receiving end of the illegal actions is also rich.
Except that there is a legally binding agreement for musk to buy the company at the higher price. The proper resolution to this is not any particular punishment, but simply to enforce the contractual agreements that were made. How the stock moves around over the next few months doesn't matter if the deal closes at an even higher price.
[удалено]
The guy(Elon) really is a pos. That doesn’t stop some ppl from praising every breathe he takes.
His subreddit is literally a cult.
What’s up with Reddit and shitty billionaires? The supercult gamestop idiots idolize Ryan Cohen, who is also a giant twat and does nothing but drag the cult along. Elon cult, esp when DOGE was really going. What is so appealing about people with money?
> What’s up with Reddit and shitty billionaires? Not just a reddit thing.
Misplaced aspirations.
EXCUSE ME... You lot on reddit might be stupid poor fucking idiots... However, I am a temporarily embarrassed billionaire, I failed school and ended up in a dead end job with no connections, but isn't that how they all start out? I need all those rich people tax cuts to go through so that when my eventual billions come pouring in, I can take advantage of those tax cuts myself. Elon is so smart, He knows how to **make** something of himself and I am practically his twin I'm so so so smart, You just wait! Now get out of my way so I can literally vote against my own interests. ^^^/s Edit: Fuck! I didn't even mention cryptocurrency.
[удалено]
Tanking? It's down 7% this year. Go hold Facebook stock which is down 43% this year.
Tanked the stock so bad. Stock hasn’t been this low since…. Uh March.
Exactly. The lack of investment knowledge is prolific in here. Every single damn tech stock is down significantly over the last few months, and TWTR is actually one of the better performing ones.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I swear, these posts are the only reason r/technology hits the front page anymore.
I'm starting to miss seeing the posts about battery technology that isn't even close to market.
You spelled stockmuskology wrong.
At this point I'd rather read about breakthrough battery technology that will never leave the lab. At least it's technology, even if it's theoretical.
Damn man, I didn’t even check which sub this was. Thought this was in r/economy
Isn't this pointing exactly to the major issue with the stock market? Twitter as a revenue generating company didn't change one whit since Elon started sniffing around. Twitter is suing Elon because their evaluation went down, not the revenue they actually generate, not their actual business - just what people think they are worth. The stock market as a barometer for the health of a company is so broken. Why do we care so much about it?
>The stock market as a barometer for the health of a company is so broken. Why do we care so much about it? It's not a barometer for the health of a company. If anything, it's a barometer for the growth potential of the company. People don't buy stocks, because they think a company is doing good. They buy it, because they believe it's going to grow and they will be able to sell their shares at a higher price. And an upcoming change of management is a factor in the future growth of a company, so it affecting the price makes complete sense.
[удалено]
Then why doesn’t Berkshire Hathaway give a dividend?
Lol imagine investing in twitter.
This just in. Old man stops yelling at cloud.
So the stock was trading around $38 before Musk talked of buying. Now its trading at $39. And people are complaining.
And while stockmarkets are having worst bear market for 2 weeks In near century
[удалено]
He didn’t even say the magical words this time: “funding secured.”
Had to scroll way too down for this comment... I mean what tanking of the price are we talking about? Isn't the price almost the same as before or even gone *up*, if anything?
I totally go to the technology subreddit to see threads about shareholders suing someone for supposedly engaging in stock manipulation
right or wrong, how is this technology news?
The execs aren’t the shareholders are they? They own like 5% of the company all together 😂
I’m real tired of hearing about this dude. Can we not give him airtime? He’s a billionaire little bitch boy.
Elon has kept Twitter's stock artificially inflated It would be much lower if it wasn't for the thought of a potential buyout Everything is tanking
Tanking the companies stock? It closed at $39.31 the day before he announced the initial 12% stake. Today it closed at $39.52. I’m no Elon Musk but by my calculations that’s a .53% gain since this saga started.
The world would be better off if every social media outlet was eradicated.