The Unofficial "Elon Musk trying to "Save Everyone" from Themselves (except his Step-Sister)" Thread...

[Corcaigh]

Even allowing for Elon’s prior erratic behavior and enormous ego, I’m skeptical that he could be ****ing it up this badly, unless the end game is to do something like restructure the debt during bankruptcy. He must have people on his M&A team who put together the financing structure who knew where the risks were. But paying the premium he did it all seems too strange.

[PleaseBlitz]

2 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

Even allowing for Elon’s prior erratic behavior and enormous ego, I’m skeptical that he could be ****ing it up this badly, unless the end game is to do something like restructure the debt during bankruptcy. He must have people on his M&A team who put together the financing structure who knew where the risks were. But paying the premium he did it all seems too strange.

 

Have you considered that Musk just isn't nearly as smart as people seem to think he is?  That he is, actually, kind of dumb and primarily fueled, as you note, by his ego and pervasive need of attention?  And that, in the great equation of life, dumb + arrogant + vocal = trouble. 

 

This is going to seem pretty simplistic, but the whole situation reminds me of the old idiom, "his mouth wrote a check that his ass couldn't cash."  Except here, his ass could cash the check and was, in fact, forced to do so. 

[mistertim]

9 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

Even allowing for Elon’s prior erratic behavior and enormous ego, I’m skeptical that he could be ****ing it up this badly, unless the end game is to do something like restructure the debt during bankruptcy. He must have people on his M&A team who put together the financing structure who knew where the risks were. But paying the premium he did it all seems too strange.

 

I'm not convinced he had much of a "M&A team", or at least one he listened to. He jumped into the whole deal basically on a whim and threw a price out there, and then tried to weasel out of it with something that clearly wouldn't work. I can't imagine any lawyer or M&A expert of sound mind telling him those were good ideas.

 

Elon has spent decades thinking he's the smartest person in every room, and surrounding himself with people who all agree and tell him he is. It wouldn't surprise me if he basically ignored everything he was told by actual lawyers and experts because he thought he knew more than them.

 

I could maybe see some crazy long term plan where he did all of this on purpose to move towards bankruptcy and restructuring, but I think that's giving Elon too much credit. He's certainly more likely than Trump to be able to play 4D chess, but probably not by too much.

[Corcaigh]

No doubt he badly overpaid.

No doubt he had buyers remorse and tried to back out.

 

What I struggle with is the number of extremely capable investors who went along for the ride with Elon. Everyone knows online advertising is now a very tough game after Apples privacy changes and tools now available to discount bot/AI traffic.

 

So why did all these smart investors think it was worth putting billions into a company that didn’t generate enough cash flow to service its debt, and no real prospects to change that.

I still wonder if there is something else on the business model such as a payments platform, a verification platform that everyone else would use, or something else where he can afford to trash to content moderation and advertising piece but I can’t imagine why he paid the premium he did it if that’s the vision.

[tshile]

15 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

Have you considered that Musk just isn't nearly as smart as people seem to think he is?  That he is, actually, kind of dumb and primarily fueled, as you note, by his ego and pervasive need of attention?  And that, in the great equation of life, dumb + arrogant + vocal = trouble. 

 

 

this. 
 

at the end of the day he’s just another trump or snyder. 
 

people attach how much money someone has to their intelligence or goodness. Despite plethora examples to the contrary

 

ive been on this for a while. Most have or are starting to figure it out. 

[Corcaigh]

3 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

 

this. 
 

at the end of the day he’s just another trump or snyder. 
 

people attach how much money someone has to their intelligence or goodness. Despite plethora examples to the contrary

 

ive been on this for a while. Most have or are starting to figure it out. 

The difference is that no adult wants to work with Snyder or Trump and hasn’t for decades.

 

If Musk was that bad investment groups would know and stay clear of him. Musk got billons of dollars of investment from some of the best tech investors on the planet. Even with giant egos there had to be some semblance of a plan that made sense.

[tshile]

10 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

The difference is that no adult wants to work with Snyder or Trump and hasn’t for decades.

 

If Musk was that bad investment groups would know and stay clear of him. Musk got billons of dollars of investment from some of the best tech investors on the planet. Even with giant egos there had to be some semblance of a plan that made sense.

you would think so. 
 

I’m willing to bet they were just eager to jump on his coattails. 
 

why would supposedly the best tech investors sign off on a contract where the buyer they’re  backing waves all rights to back out of the contract  without having reviewed things?

 

and it was widely knowing twitter has and has had serious money issues as a platform. 
 

Im sure musk gave them a plan. It was probably not in writing. Probably worked off a ton of assumptions, and was very broad and general. And they ate it up thinking he’d make them tons of money. 
 

 

Edited November 14, 2022 by tshile

[CousinsCowgirl84]

1 hour ago, mistertim said:

Not sure if this has been posted yet or not

 

 

So basically within 2 weeks of the sale of Twitter, the banks already see the writing on the wall and are trying to sell their debt...but nobody wants it unless it's steeply discounted.

 

They may have lost about $5.2 billion in 2 weeks. If they actually do start to sell at that price, it means they think the whole thing is going to go bust and are just trying to get anything they can.

Interesting, I would have thought they would have tried to force Elon to sell his stake to cover his loan interest. Are the banks investors instead of loan providers?

[The Evil Genius]

 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

47 minutes ago, mistertim said:

 

I'm not convinced he had much of a "M&A team", or at least one he listened to. He jumped into the whole deal basically on a whim and threw a price out there, and then tried to weasel out of it with something that clearly wouldn't work. I can't imagine any lawyer or M&A expert of sound mind telling him those were good ideas.

 

Elon has spent decades thinking he's the smartest person in every room, and surrounding himself with people who all agree and tell him he is. It wouldn't surprise me if he basically ignored everything he was told by actual lawyers and experts because he thought he knew more than them.

 

I could maybe see some crazy long term plan where he did all of this on purpose to move towards bankruptcy and restructuring, but I think that's giving Elon too much credit. He's certainly more likely than Trump to be able to play 4D chess, but probably not by too much.

It was definitely on a whim, like his “taking Tesla at 420/share. Funding secured” tweet.

 

I don’t think he thought Twitter would accept the offer… when it was offered wasn’t it a little below the then current stock price?

 

I don’t think he planned this though at all or checked with anyone.

 

I still think he is very smart though. He has personally accomplished many world-changing things.
 

But I think his ego and mouth got him into trouble. I think after he made the mistake of announcing he was buying Twitter his legal team told him that not following through with the deal could put his ability to be the ceo of SpaceX and Tesla in jeopardy with the SEC, since he was already on double probation for the taking Tesla private thing… and so he forced himself into a corner where he tried to legally find a way to back out, then when that didn’t work, end up buying it.

 

in short, he made a whoopsie. 

Edited November 14, 2022 by CousinsCowgirl84

[tshile]

4 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

I don’t think he thought Twitter would accept the offer… when it was offered wasn’t it a little below the then current stock price?

 

If I recall it was slightly above - but the stock had generally been trending up at that point 

 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

2 minutes ago, tshile said:

If I recall it was slightly above - but the stock had generally been trending up at that point 

 

Yea, looks like April 13 it was trading at 44 and change and he announced to buy April 14 at 54.20

[mistertim]

15 minutes ago, tshile said:

you would think so. 
 

I’m willing to bet they were just eager to jump on his coattails. 
 

why would supposedly the best tech investors sign off on a contract where the buyer they’re  backing waves all rights to back out of the contract  without having reviewed things?

 

and it was widely knowing twitter has and has had serious money issues as a platform. 
 

Im sure musk gave them a plan. It was probably not in writing. Probably worked off a ton of assumptions, and was very broad and general. And they ate it up thinking he’d make them tons of money. 
 

 

 

Yeah, I think there's some overestimation of how smart some investors are and underestimation of the FOMO they feel when someone like Elon decides to do something, even if it's pretty dumb and seems, to any normal person, destined to fail.

 

People still give Trump money too. At least Elon has shown that he can run a business. Trump has a demonstrated track record of being ****ty at business and having most of his businesses fold, ending up with him having money in his pockets and his investors basically holding the bag.

 

Yet people still give him money.

 

5 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

It was definitely on a whim, like his “taking Tesla at 420/share. Funding secured” tweet.

 

I don’t think he thought Twitter would accept the offer… when it was offered wasn’t it a little below the then current stock price?

 

I don’t think he planned this though at all or checked with anyone.

 

I still think he is very smart though. He has personally accomplished many world-changing things.
 

But I think his ego and mouth got him into trouble. I think after he made the mistake of announcing he was buying Twitter his legal team told him that not following through with the deal could put his ability to be the ceo of SpaceX and Tesla in jeopardy with the SEC, since he was already on double probation for the taking Tesla private thing… and so he forced himself into a corner where he tried to legally find a way to back out, then when that didn’t work, end up buying it. 

 

I think Elon is very bright in a couple of very specific areas, but he also lacks a ton of common sense. Whether that's because his brain is just naturally hyper-niche (which actually does tend to be the case with people on the spectrum) or because over the years he's allowed his success to go to his head and started believing his own hype, that's hard to know.

[China]

Who Said It: Elon Musk or Mr. Burns?

 

The Simpsons character and the guy ruining Twitter often sound a lot alike.
 

The Simpsons’s Mr. Burns and Elon Musk share an eerie number of similarities. Each is the richest person in his respective universe—Springfield for the former, planet Earth for the latter. They boast about their green energy initiatives of electric cars and nuclear power plants, but use their power to advance right-wing politics and fuel their petty personal grievances. Test yourself below to see how well you can separate our cartoonish reality from the world of The Simpsons.

 

Click on the link for the full quiz

 

  I only got 58%.

Edited November 14, 2022 by China

[CousinsCowgirl84]

It’s really hard for a bank to say no to one of the richest people in the world, you risk being blacklisted from doing any business with them or any of their companies or possibly even suppliers companies in the future. I’m a little surprised but not that much that the banks agreed to do a bad deal with musk here, they will make money in other ways, and I don’t think they expected it to be as much of a dumpster fire as it is.

4 minutes ago, China said:

Who Said It: Elon Musk or Mr. Burns?

 

The Simpsons character and the guy ruining Twitter often sound a lot alike.
 

The Simpsons’s Mr. Burns and Elon Musk share an eerie number of similarities. Each is the richest person in his respective universe—Springfield for the former, planet Earth for the latter. They boast about their green energy initiatives of electric cars and nuclear power plants, but use their power to advance right-wing politics and fuel their petty personal grievances. Test yourself below to see how well you can separate our cartoonish reality from the world of The Simpsons.

 

Click on the link for the full quiz

 

  I only got 58%.

75 percent.

[PleaseBlitz]

10 minutes ago, China said:

Who Said It: Elon Musk or Mr. Burns?

 

The Simpsons character and the guy ruining Twitter often sound a lot alike.
 

The Simpsons’s Mr. Burns and Elon Musk share an eerie number of similarities. Each is the richest person in his respective universe—Springfield for the former, planet Earth for the latter. They boast about their green energy initiatives of electric cars and nuclear power plants, but use their power to advance right-wing politics and fuel their petty personal grievances. Test yourself below to see how well you can separate our cartoonish reality from the world of The Simpsons.

 

Click on the link for the full quiz

 

  I only got 58%.

 

83%, likely because I've watched A LOT of The Simpsons. 

[TradeTheBeal!]

Remember when he carried the sink in?  Maximum cringe.

[Jabbyrwock]

5 minutes ago, TradeTheBeal! said:

Remember when he carried the sink in?  Maximum cringe.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

[Corcaigh]

48 minutes ago, TradeTheBeal! said:

Remember when he carried the sink in?  Maximum cringe.

The Sink resigned today.

[China]

Everyone just misinterpreted why Musk brought in the sink.  It's because he was planning to sink the company.

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

Well, at least he is getting the help he needs.

[LD0506]

You scored 92%!

[Corcaigh]

He’s been complaining about how extremely busy he is as CEO of five companies, and here he is learning what the F12 key does (and also reviewing catering budgets), among other tasks a junior assistant could handle.

[The Evil Genius]