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Elon Musk Should Be Held In Contempt For Tweet, SEC Tells Judge (fastcompany.com)
The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a federal judge to hold CEO Elon Musk in contempt for breaking terms of a settlement agreement with a tweet. The SEC cited an "inaccurate" February 19 tweet about production. Musk tweeted alongside a photo: "4000 Tesla cars loading in SF for Europe." He replied to the tweet adding: "Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019." Fast Company reports: It's that "will make around 500K in 2019" part that angered the SEC, which had this to say in legal papers filed with a Manhattan federal court: "He once again published inaccurate and material information about Tesla to his over 24 million Twitter followers, including members of the press, and made this inaccurate information available to anyone with Internet access." The SEC says the tweet violated an agreement that was part of a settlement Tesla made with the regulator last year. Musk promised to consult with Tesla's board before he made any statements on social media that could affect the stock price of the company. Tesla also agreed to pay $40 million in penalties and Musk agreed to step down as chairman of the board.
As Elon pointed out, he gave that figure in the last earnings report way before that tweet....
Like Musk said - how embarrassing for the FCC! It sure does seem like someone there has it in for Tesla, very likely someone at the FCC is compromised by some large short holder that is sweating bullets.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
he is his own worst enemy
To see if he was right before saying this tweet was wrong? He did correct himself and say it was closer to 400k but would end with a run rate of 500k (10k / week).
and Trump appointees trying their best to tear him down.
Can't anything he says affect stock price?
All those government TLA's start to blend together, what can I say.
I would complain about lack of the ability to quickly correct a misspelling, but hell if even Twitter can't manage it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
he can say we will make a billion of this things,, but doesnt mean all will sell lol
Kwis weimaw gave $71 in restituton fow waiding da silicow vawwey food bawnk, bweats pwizon
The only way to win is not to play. It's not worth it.
Indeed, give Elon a break please!
Creimette does it all the time about his multiple ventures and he never got any trouble from SEC yet!
If mush tweets a personal opinion, or an aspiration, etc it should be covered by "free speech" - Lotsa bureaucrats don't like that whole Constitution thingy but somebody needs to challenge them all the way to the Supreme Court over this sort of regulatory farce.
The SEC might well be free to jump on him if Musk had put this into a prospectus, but it was a serious error for Musk to cave in when they went after him for the earlier tweet, which set him up for the settlement which now can be used to go after him for any future statements.
Keep in mind that this is the exact same SEC that did NOTHING to the executives who drove all the other US car makers (except Ford) into government bailout terrirory in 2008. Had the Bush admin not used tax dollars to bail out GM, Chrysler, etc in 2008 and had Obama not further bailed them out when he got into office, they all would have gone to ZERO on the stock market. Why has the SEC not gone after one damned one of those executives for any of their pre-2008 meltdown statements, INCLUDING OFFICIAL STATEMENTS TO INVESTORS? Same for the Wall Street bankers, none of whom were spanked by the SEC, but the big car makers are an apples-to-apples comparison to Musk.
People need to contact congresscritters and demand answers to why the SEC is treating Musk so diffrerently.
CD Reimer gave $71 to Second Harvest Food Bank to show VOX Media and The Verge. #SomethingPositive
Soros isn't a literal Nazi.
He is what the Communists call a 'fellow traveler.'
It was obvious to me from the outset that the conditions of the settlement effectively place a gag order on Musk that forbids him from mentioning virtually anything about Tesla, since almost anything he might publicly say could affect stock prices.
If I were him, I'd quit. Sell off his shares of the company to the highest bidder and get as far the hell away as possible from such a blatantly oppressive work environment that only seems to want to ruin the guy. He made his fortune once.... he's a smart guy, he can do it again somewhere else.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Trump is never held accountable for any of his tweets. I'm waiting for him to start WW3 over Twitter. Why should Musk be held to a higher standard? To be clear, his comments were pretty stupid for any senior executive to make.
NotElon :)
[($)]
Ah, yes, narc'ing on his fellow Jews, calling it "the best days of my life." Any idiot villain with half a brain would know to obscure out any ideas like that to not show his true colors. But not Soros!
OMG excellent +1
Even if what Musk is doing is somehow unethical, it's bullshit. The SEC goes ripshit on him for puffing himself up on Twitter, but never says boo about normal everyday fuckery that is far worse. This is the agency that gives a dumb smile and a thumbs-up through every fraud-driven speculation bubble, every stock manipulation, and every business destruction by buyout and offloading of debt, all of which the news just makes up dumb garbage to explain. (For example, your gas prices pretty much never go up because of an actual supply problem, and Sears didn't implode because of Amazon.) The institutional gangsters of high finance are pulling this shit 24/7, and they're never at risk of more than a wrist slap because the next job they're most likely to have is a position at the SEC. They go after Musk because he had the audacity to make companies that disrupted some of their favorite scam factories. Fuck them.
Real summary: criminal gets wrist slap from SEC. Breaks law again a few months later in same way. Internet moron think criminal is victim.
???
... then it's *definitely* not the tweet that is fucked-up.
That is *exactly* why stock trading should be illegal and punishable by banishment from the country.
Imaginary fantasy prices ruining real-world lives. And being able to make real people work with money that came from pure delusional *belief* of something being worth that. Usually self-manipulated.
Like theft or fraud, but worse on a whole new level.
Me, I'm kinda surprised why the usually toothless SEC is being so nasty to Tesla. But then, the people that work there are usually fishing to get employed by one of the bigger banks the SEC "oversees", not electric car companies. Or maybe the people at the SEC just have a hard-on for non-electric American car makers.
We should all be far more concerned that people are basing financial decisions on something posted on Twitter of all places.
-- sigs cause cancer.
i think you lost your train of thoughts somewhere midway through your metaphor:
why would one need "decontamination" after sitting in microwace combined with UV bed ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Unless you and I are super-genius too.
Anyone can say "I'm gonna build a mars rocket", but the diffference is if you personally think up how to do it, or if you just hire a bunch of *actual* smart people and nag them to come up with it (or be fired and replaced).
As far as I can tell, Musk only did the latter. For all of his companies. Which puts him in the same set of figures as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Sorry, but saying you will do cool stuff is not visionary. Most school kids have just as cool fantasies.
The only difference is, that they don't have the money or staff to actually come up with a solution for them!
Those are the most likely outcomes. Otherwise its jail time.
https://www.wired.com/story/el... was a pretty good long read.
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If he is found to be bragging on twitter without evidence for his tweets being at least informally correct, he's definitely doing it wrong as a CEO. HOWEVER, as alluded to your "Fake News", while that orange shitstreak in the oval is tweeting any random fact free ludicrous imaginary fiction it can pull from its shattered ego, the courts should be told to fuck off and deal with the problem equally: the president should be MORE beholden to the law about not lying about your job and responsibility than the CEO of a big multinational.
They should both be hit by lies in tweetland.
But while the courts refuse to even acknowledge the lies, they should STFU about Musk.
Your claim about the SEC is based on what you want to be true and what would have to be true for the court/SEC complaint to be true. HOWEVER, you do not consider whether it IS true or not. Since public info already stated previously the 500k produced figure, the SEC is inherently and plainly wrong.
And your assertion about what the SEC know is pure fiction.
PRODUCED. The lower figure you gave was SOLD. Dumbass trying to attack a tweet that was in documents without a "this is the upper end of the estimate" caveat while ignoring the orange shitgibbon's "mine was the biggest inauguration" tweets.
Oh, he isn't. Your claim is irrelevant. Musk is the duly elected CEO of Tesla. Until you demand that the court put that shitgibbon to task for his lies you have no space to proclaim that "this is different", all that is different is musk is left of far right and therefore a commie pinko liberal to you, therefore the enemy, whilst your commie traitor president hates and slates those you hate and want to slag off, so you like him.
Unlike collusion or lying outright like your orange hitler does every single hour he's awake, sweating chip fat.
But MAYBE the court did not read the quarterly report and it's sure as shit the case that the SEC who have a hard-on for someone disrupting both big oil and the entrenched US car manufacturing industry AND the car salesmen won't be pointing out that Musk is only repeating in tweet form what an earlier quarterly release said.
500k was in the official report issued much earlier. Therefore it was not incorrect.
OPTIMISTIC, or UPPER BOUND is not "incorrect". Just like when your ISP claims "up to 50Mb/s" is not a lie. Or will you be demanding that the courts get onto that right away too?
So quite why do you claim that it's different and therefore wrong? Oh, I get it.
Big Oil
Solar power
Green economy
Car salesmen fucked over
Car mfgs fucked over.
Got it.
Tesla still has a long way to go, but when Ford recalls nearly 2 million vehicles.... I dunno...I guess when Ford recalls 2 million vehicles I'm glad I drive a Chrysler.
You are aware that Chrysler is generally at or near the bottom of the quality rankings and that they have numerous huge recalls of their own... right?
So Ford just recalled 1.8 million vehicles which nearly equals their annual production of 1.9 million vehicles.
Umm... You might want to check your figures. Ford sells more than that in the US alone each year with global production around 6 million per year.
The SEC need to shut their mouths and quit crying over spilled milk. Any reasonable person can recognize Musk's statement as a colloquialism.
No, you wouldn't. You're a narcissist, but not nearly of the sociopathic category as Musk. The guy did a crime, and since he's rich, he got off with a slap on the wrist and a pinkie promise to not do it again. And ... he's done it again. Musk has taken billions, with a B of dollars from the public, and what we've gotten is subsidized sports cars for rich people and subsidized space launch for the government. "Oh, but SpaceX is cheaper" you say ... yup, if you ignore indirect costs. It's showy that he's reusing 90's era Boeing technology to land rockets, but he also got the congresscritters to prevent his competition from changing their rockets. Keep worshiping your hero, but realize that the emperor has no clothes.
Especially impressive because you earn so little money and have no retirement savings.
My takeaway from this is that Musk cannot competently be part of Tesla, and should be discharged from the company as soon as fucking possible, for everyone's sake.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Maybe, just maybe, stockholders should not react to random tweets. Made on a most doubtful site used by grown-up teenagers and the president and his russians in an attempt to rule the US. What has happened to good, old press releases? Let Elon Musk express his mind on anything and be estatic if needs be. Let him tell a few lies like the president - contrary to the president, Elon does not lead 330 million people down the drain while ignoring the global climate change crisis.
Just watch commercials sent on most tv channels 20 minutes each hour - CGI and lies, broadcasting stupidity should be a crime. There is of course a large difference between "simple consumers" and "high-end stock traders". Only poor people watch tv while stock traders are supposed to be wealthy.
I like Elon Musk and I own Tesla stocks too. The man is capable of a lot of things and including influencing the stock prices. Of course he should be careful about his utterances, but there is no need for punishment or restrictions. He might say something of broader interest. Most things on the internet are lies. Tweet freely at will.
He should be taken out behind the shed and shot.
So big surprise here that they are attacking Musk. Elon Musk saw first hand what a fool Donald Trump is and bailed out of Trump's advisory council in a very public way. Yes, the ManBoy President is fanatical about that kind of thing. ex. Search for Richard Branson's article of his first meeting with Donald Trump. It/he was so whackadoodle Sir Richard Branson felt he had to publicly expose what happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Securities_and_Exchange_Commission#Commission_members
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If that ever happened not without a fight.
Why? There's no evidence that this was done with any thought or deliberate intent to violate the court order... it's simply a guy who was happy and excited about the direction the company was going.
Yes, he should have cleared this before saying it, but I don't think he intended to violate the court order, so I don't think this should be treated the same as contempt.
Reasonably, I think that the consequences for this should be that he not be involved with Tesla in *any* capacity, ever again. His shares should be sold at current market value, he pays a percentage of that as a penalty for his careless tweet, and is allowed to go on his way. He still would be under NDA to not disclose anything he knew about where Tesla was heading, but as Tesla moves forward without him, such knowledge would become either public knowledge or increasingly irrelevant with time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Once Musk got into hot water with the SEC, he should have turned all his social media posting over to a small group of professional outreach people with a lawyer on the team. Why he kept control of it himself is a mystery to me. You do NOT screw with an SEC order like that. Ouch, what a dumb lesson for a very intelligent person to have to learn the hard way.
.... federal judges have REAL power. What was he thinking?'
Kind of reminds me of the Roger Stone situation. This is a VERY media-savvy guy. For some reason, he thought that he could get away with posting physically threatening imagery aimed at a federal judge, and violate a gag order at the same time. But this is frikkin federal judge we're talking about. Forget about "I'm famous in the tabloids and slightly rich"
Same thing goes for people like Trump and Manafort, thinking that they can somehow get around Mueller with a little bit of politicking and misdirection.
Come on, people. Learn to identify the real heavyweights or get squashed.
Was this a settlement violation or a consent order violation? There is a big difference depending on whether the "settlement" is a contract or consent order.
You can't be held in contempt for breaking a contractual settlement, but it might make the settlement void and allow them to refile charges. On the other hand, violating a consent order is quite different.
Also, if Tesla agrees to a consent order, that does not bind Elon Musk in his personal capacity. Did the SEC make sure Elon Musk was a party to that settlement or was it just between them and Tesla? I doubt that they would be stupid enough not to bind Elon Musk, but it wouldn't surprise me too much.
He’s a scum bag and should be killed for the betterment of society. The world will be a much better place when this shitbag is dead.
I pointed out that the SEC was enabled to go after him this time as a result of his earlier settlement, which I believe was a mistake. He should have fought the earlier case all the way to the supreme court.
Yes, officers of a publicly traded company should be liable to investors for any OFFICIAL financial statements (for example on a prospectus, a tax form, a statement to the board in a board meeting), It is insane to say that officers of a publicly traded company lose their free speech rights to make public aspirational or opinion statements in informal forums like Twitter. If any investor is making decisions about tesla based on Musk's Twitter feed rather than official documents of company performance, that person is no investor at all; that person is a gambler.
The First Amendment guaratee of Free Speech is explicit and in the US Constitution's Bill of Rights.
The SEC is not mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution; it's a creation of the Congress. Congress may certainly creates agencies/bureaus/commissions and give to them some of the powers of the congress, but it's not possible for such an entity to transgress the Constitution without an enabling Amendment (which has not been written, passed, and ratified). The fact that the SEC and other such goverment agencies have become so bold as to assert powers the Constitution does not grant them, and the fact that decades of congressional and judicial laziness have ignored the overreach, does not make any of it valid.
Many of the worst things the US Federal government does are enabled simply by the act of people with the responsibility and power to oppose them failing to do so, and thereby establishing a precedent. Sadly, our courts love the concept of precedent - it enabled them to be lazy. Precedent, of the legal variety, has gradually become a staple of the US legal system, but it too is also not specified in, nor required by, the Constitution. The government generally, and the courts specifically, are not required by the Constitution to observe or respect precedent - they can rule on every case on its own merit if they choose and they prove this every time they decisde to overturn a precedent.
the poster you responded to with a rant, simply pointed out a simple truth: the sort of "agreement" Musk made for the earlier statement about taking Tesla private was hardly a voluntary thing.
If you are so dedicated to the idea that Elon Musk should be jailed for whi Tweets, then please explain why none of the executives of the big banks or any of the other car companies were jailed for any of their statements about the health or future prospects of their companies which they made in the months or years before the 2008 meltdown. Something stinks here, and it's not Musk.
I suspect Tesla has fewer lobbyists in DC than GM, Chrysler, etc.
NOTHING in this discussion is about President Donal Trump.
There is something seriously wrong with people who turn every damned thing into an anti-Trump rant.
Right wingers did not do this during the 8 years of Obama. One could watch any TV show or movie and not see anti-Obama rants. One could read internet blogs and message boards without seeing anti-Obama rants in every discussion thread.
Seek professional help before you start self-harming.
free speech does not permit fraud in certain cercumstances (though the Supreme Court has actually allowed a rather obnoxious fraud in the form of "stolen valor" cases where some civilian pretends to be a decorated military vet).
The question here from that particular perspective then would be: is a personal opinion expressed on Twitter, as opposed to a statement officially distributed to investors, possibly "fraud"? If that's the new standard, then a huge number of people had better lawyer-up because Musk is hardly the only exec of a publicly traded company to have publicly said stuff in casual statements that could affect the value of their stock.