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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.

9 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Fake News by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why would a short be sweating bullets? The stock is down 15% over the last 12 months. You Musk cultists are something else. Jobs died and you had to find another "hero" I guess. You guys need to find better heros.

  2. Re:Shouldn't we wait by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It has nothing to do with the tweet being "wrong" or "right". The settlement is that his Tweets need to be approved, and they aren't.

  3. Re:Musk saving the world by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or he's another Silicon Valley hack out for world domination who has a bunch of friends and a mentality that he can get away with anything because he's rich. The regulations in place work to keep every other American down (you'd experience similar if you started a company making wild claims,) what's wrong with them applying to him?

  4. This is bullshit. by bistromath007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:It was inevitable... by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I were him, I'd be more careful what I post on Twitter. In fact, I wouldn't post to Twitter at all. There, problem solved.

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    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  6. Re:Fake News by No+Longer+an+AC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think Steve Jobs was an asshole, but I also consider him a hero and more importantly a genius.

    And I think Elon Musk is an idiot, but he's also a genius...and a hero. Okay, maybe not a hero, but I'm jealous of his success and I really do wish I had a Tesla and also a rocket that could launch me to Mars.

    I'll get a Tesla sooner or later. As soon as the transmission falls out of my 20 year old Detroit garbage which the "Check Engine" light tells me is due to happen any mile now.

    I do keep hearing horror stories about Teslas, but most of them sound overblown and I've been hearing horror stories about cars all my life. Did you ever hear the one about the Pinto?

    I only say Musk is an idiot because he sometimes blurts out stupid stuff that he probably wouldn't say if he weren't so stoned (kind of like me). All the problems with Tesla...quality control, production numbers, whatever...those are all expected from a relatively new car manufacturer and when was the last time a new car manufacturer ramped up to the level of Ford or GM?

    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.

    So Ford just recalled 1.8 million vehicles which nearly equals their annual production of 1.9 million vehicles. Holy shit! Can you imagine the bad press that would ensue if Tesla had to do that? But with Ford, hardly anyone blinks an eye.

  7. What you should get out of this article: by ZenShadow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We should all be far more concerned that people are basing financial decisions on something posted on Twitter of all places.

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    -- sigs cause cancer.
  8. Re:Fake News by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Q4 call: 350-500k Model 3s produced

    That's the problem right there. Between 350k and 500k. Musk tweeted that they will produce 500k. He forgot the range.

    Omitting the range suggests that Tesla is on target to produce 500k. Musk is not supposed to make statements like that any more, or at least not without prior review and approval.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  9. Re:Fake News by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What boggles the mind is that Musk just can't resist tweeting about Tesla production numbers even after he was told by a court not to and fined $40 million.

    How hard is it to just avoid tweeting about that stuff?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC