
Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency? - petethomas
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-elon-musk-sec-contempt-20190226-story.html
======
Despegar
>Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don’t
know about the company’s financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure
on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management
skills?

That seems very possible.

I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be
too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a %
of total vehicle sales is surprisingly low. If EV's do take off, it's likely
to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale
who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. And the most likely to drive the
S-curve adoption.

Being taken out by the SEC would be a way to keep confidence in Elon Musk Inc
going which would obviously be beneficial to his other companies. He could
even team up with Mark Cuban to rail against them on Twitter.

~~~
travisoneill1
> If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who
> are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the
> opportunity.

This is what I used to think, but every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill,
or even wound. I never even hear about the other EV's by themselves, only as
the competition to Tesla. Anybody who watches the news would have known that
the Model 3 was a colossal failure. But it wasn't. It was just 6 months late,
which is not bad given the scale of the project. The narrative is just not
reality here. Tesla has a head start on the industry. That doesn't guarantee
anything, but I think that it's a bigger advantage to Tesla than it would be
to any other car company because one of Elon Musk's strengths (Spacex too) is
iteration speed.

Last I heard they got the price down to $45K, so they are in striking distance
of the $35K target and won't stop there. EV's are mechanically simpler than
gas powered cars. Once the technology and economies of scale are there, they
will be cheaper. And I don't see any other company in a better position to get
there first.

Edit: Predicting that the established players being the ones to take the lead
in a new technology sounds like common sense, but it isn't:

> It's likely to be the established electronics companies who are good at
> making electronics that take the lead in semi-conductor manufacturing.

> It's likely to be the established mail order companies who are good at
> delivery logistics that take the lead in online retail.

> It's likely to be the established taxi companies who are good at running
> taxi fleets (and have a legal monopoly) that take the lead in ride sharing
> apps.

If the pattern holds (which is not by any means guaranteed), Tesla has more to
fear from a yet to be founded startup than it does from the legacy car
manufacturers.

~~~
lisper
> every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound

That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad
technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being
positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the
Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is
not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress their friends. But GM could
easily turn it into such a car. They obviously know how to make power seats.
All the heavy lifting has been done. I have no idea why they aren't doing it,
but GM has a long history of shooting itself in the foot when it comes to
electric vehicles.

~~~
travisoneill1
Yes I think you're right, but that may be an even harder gap to close than
tech.

Good Marketing: Crazy genius CEO who is always in the news, builds rockets in
his spare time, launches his car into space, smokes weed with Joe Rogan, and
constantly thumbs his nose at the authorities. Customers like this company so
much that the CEO can ask for volunteers and actually get a response. $0
advertising budget. All marketing by word of mouth. Direct to consumer sales
with transparent pricing.

Bad Marketing: Standard car company. Nobody even knows the CEO's name, and he
only speaks publicly in boring prepared statements run through a huge PR team.
Massive advertising budget producing totally boring car ads that are
indistinguishable from other companies. Sold through dealerships and sketchy
salesmen who negotiate a different price for each customer.

I can see the big companies beating Tesla on tech a lot more than I can see
them becoming like Tesla as a brand.

~~~
gamblor956
According to their SEC filings, Tesla spends between $60 and $100 million
annually on marketing, and they've definitely placed billboards in major
cities since I have seen several of them in the LA area.

~~~
travisoneill1
Was true for a while. I guess that's no longer the case.

~~~
spectrum1234
Which is true? They did and stopped, or started now?

------
krick
Maybe I'm naïve, but I'm actually buying the obliviousness of his behavior. I
don't really believe in Tesla and would gladly buy the whole "suicide by SEC"
thing, but reading what actually happened, this doesn't really sound like a
big deal. Musk has been having emotional moments for a long time now, at this
point it's really easy for me to just shrug off this as "he's always been like
this". The last ten years of Musk carrier are just non-stop publicity-stunt
drama, it's really easy to believe for me now that he honestly doesn't see the
boundary that seems obvious to all lawyery SEC folks and other properly
corporate people.

~~~
JauntTrooper
He's not oblivious. He's being obstinate and bristling at their authority.

He's been CEO of a public Tesla for 9 years now. Respecting the SEC and
securities laws is just part of the CEO job. He's got great lawyers that
remind him of this daily. And you'd think the $20 million fine and loss of the
Chairman role would be enough of a wake up call.

It's so frustrating to see, because I really want Tesla to succeed and I think
he's one of the great executives of our time, and he wastes his time and
attention on short-term inanities like short sellers and daily stock price
movements. If he just buckled down and built cars, he'd blow all of those
short sellers out of the water.

~~~
rejschaap
> Respecting the SEC and securities laws

He should respect the law, as in abide the law. But should he really show
respect, as in deep admiration to the law or the commission? I know America is
not the land of the free it used to be, but it is not a totalitarian state
yet.

~~~
mcv
It's a stupid fight to pick. He doesn't have to like the SEC or the law, but
they exist, and they exist for a good reason. If he wants Tesla to succeed, he
can't ignore or deny that.

And although I love Elon Musk, the SEC is right; he shouldn't be twittering
stupid things to temporarily boost his stock price. There's no gain for him in
it, it's misleading, and it undermines long term trust in him and his company.

------
Gibbon1
Knowing nothing but chatter on the internet I'd say Musk goes through manic
episodes.

~~~
api
Would also explain his energy level. Manics can sometimes "use" their episodes
to achieve hyperfocus, but as with synthetically induced mania (amphetamine)
there are side effects.

~~~
Gibbon1
A old DJ/Raver friend mentioned a friend of his went through episode where he
moved to Detroit (or some such) put together a Rap Band as their manager and
got it signed to a well known label. He knew absolutely no one in Detroit,
nothing about rap music, and had no contacts with anyone at a label.

He did that in three months.

~~~
api
LOL. I was huge raver from ~18-22 and saw lots of that type of stuff from both
natural and un-natural mania.

I had a friend once who had a (natural) manic episode and wanted to get rid of
a non-running car in his garage. He cut the car into small chunks with a large
Dremel-type tool and threw it away in the dumpster. I mean the entire car.
This took about 48 hours. The dumpster was so heavy they had to bring a
special truck, and someone had to ask who threw away a car. I think the
apartment complex forwarded him a bill for special industrial trash removal.

HN-worthy nerd tangent:

Remember all the discussion a while back about the threat posed to humanity by
runaway self-improving AI super-intelligences?

I've always thought that you don't need a super-intelligence in the IQ sense.
You just need something with the intelligence of a moderately smart human with
super-focus and super-motivation. Imagine something that ran by default in the
state you describe above but with no cognitive impairment side effects. That
would be super-human. A "race" of these would find conquering humanity trivial
even if their IQ-type intelligence were merely comparable to ours.

Most humans exist in a state of low-grade depression most of the time. I have
for years thought that the dopamine pathway is the rate limiter for human
achievement, not IQ or memory or anything else. It's one of the many reasons
I'm a moderate IQ skeptic. Our reward/motivation system is calibrated for a
very slow hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The problem is that we have not found a
good way to artificially boost this without side effects that impair cognition
in ways that result in things like dumb comments on Twitter that get you in
trouble with the SEC.

Amphetamine|coke|mania is a helluvadrug.

------
uptownfunk
Musk is another tortured CEO prodigy, as was Jobs. You can get rid of him, he
can inadvertently get rid of himself, but at the end of the day he _is_ Tesla.
Take him out of Tesla, and you get for electric vehicles what happened to the
iPhone / Apple after Jobs died.

Yeah they may pump out a few more Model X's, S's, 3's with some minor mods,
keep milking the cow (if it even is a cow, maybe a potential cow, and also if
they can even get to a point where they can scale) and eventually... who
knows? The scale problem hasn't even been solved yet. You're not going to find
another leader with that much raw energy, intellect, drive, and passion who's
going to have a chance at bringing us to that reality even close to as quick
as Musk can.

My only concern with the whole show is, can anyone (particularly seasoned auto
veterans) stand to work with him long enough for the scale and production
problems be addressed. As well as iron out all the wrinkles with the designs
(some notoriously faulty parts which take quite a long time to fix
sometimes..)

~~~
unityByFreedom
The Musk/Jobs companions is a bit of a stretch. Jobs had a profitable product
and company from the start. Musk never founded such a company, and was booted
as PayPal CEO after a short stint.

~~~
apexalpha
SpaceX.

~~~
bjl
We have absolutely no idea whether or not SpaceX is profitable.

------
smallgovt
I don't see how he can reasonably defend himself in this situation. His tweet
was both material and inaccurate. Tweeting material information without
clearance is obviously against his settlement.

What confuses me is that TSLA's price hasn't suffered. I have a hunch this
isn't as serious of a matter as is being reported, but I'm not sure why.

~~~
sonnyblarney
It's easy of you consider he's just promoting facts as any normal CEO would.

He's not yet used to the idea he has to be hyper specific with some data.

He's a showman, a salesperson, he's always going to err on the positive.

Constantly pitching, selling.

It's the SEC etc. that care about very specific details that could affect the
company.

So while you're right - as a CEO has has 'no excuse' \- the fact he would do
it makes perfect sense.

I don't think he's trolling anyone, he's the same as he ever was, probably
under a lot of stress, a little manic, and avoiding what he probably thinks is
the narrow confines of corporate culture and language.

~~~
anth_anm
He's been a CEO for 9 years and the settlement didn't say be more specific, it
said get your tweets approved.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Yeah, you are right. I'm not defending him, just trying to explain it.

------
xvf22
I'm honestly unsure what he has to gain by doing this. I can't imagine that
the departure of the counsel isn't related. Maybe the GC announced he was
leaving and that rattled Musk somehow? Very strange.

~~~
elliekelly
I suspect you have the cause/effect of the GC leaving backwards.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
Exactly.

On Feb 19 Elon Musk tweets 500K cars.

On Feb 20 Tesla General Counsel, after 2 months on the job, says "fuck this,
I'm too old to put up with this shit, I'm outta here".

Actually the GC was a little more diplomatic. As CNBC put it: _A person
familiar with the matter said he was not a good cultural fit with Tesla and
wanted to return to his family and law practice in Washington, D.C._

------
paulsutter
Personally I’d rather see him focus on SpaceX and the Boring Company.

The legacy manufacturers have all caught the bug, batteries are achieving mass
scale in China, and electric vehicles have irreversible momentum.

Mission accomplished.

~~~
aeternus
But which one of those legacy manufacturers would dare put rocket thrusters on
their next model?

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289)

------
11thEarlOfMar
It's pretty simple. Musk was hounded by short sellers who bet billions against
Tesla and then spread patently false information about the company's
activities and prospects[1]. Musk has one of those asymmetric senses of
fairness (like the one that drove Gates to tears during Microsoft's anti-trust
trials) that lost all faith in the SEC as it stood by and did nothing about
what he felt was clearly illegal behavior.

In his mind, he was treated 'super unfairly' by bullies while the guardians
stood by and did nothing. He really dislikes them for that.

Is his open disrespect a mature response? No. It's idealistic if not naive and
he could be about to find out that the SEC does have teeth.

[0]
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial_part_2/)
(sorry, couldn't find a better source)

[1] ?

"The SEC similarly should be leading the charge against purveyors of short-
and-distort schemes. Unfortunately, the commission inexplicably has been
reluctant to do so.Just like a pump-and-dump, a short-and-distort scheme
violates the Securities Exchange Act antifraud provisions, as well as SEC Rule
10b-5. In fact, it has brought hardly any enforcement actions targeting this
conduct."

~~~
mikejb
Just as a heads-up: Your 2nd link doesn't work for anybody but you (references
a file on your local machine), and leaks your user name on that machine.

Maybe this is the link you wanted to post (contains the quote you posted):

[https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner-
perrie/...](https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner-
perrie/weinerweberhsu.pdf)

~~~
dgellow
Maybe dang or another admin could fix his comment? Or at least remove the
personal information (first name, last name).

~~~
eitland
Flagged (for moderator attention, not for deletion)

------
Tomminn
This is a partial transcript of the Q4 2018 earnings call. There is a strong
case to be made that the information was not market moving.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer.

Colin Rusch

Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the geographic dispersion for
the guidance for 2019, where you're expecting the Model 3s to sell through as
well as the other models?

Elon Musk

Well, I think we did, actually. Yes, it's clear in our letter.

Deepak Ahuja

We indicated in Q1, we will start delivering Model 3s in Europe and China. And
we also shared a chart showing the potential market size for midsized premium
sedans in North America, Europe and Asia, suggesting those markets could be
even bigger. So I think that gives a good sense of where we'll be. And we'll
launch the right-hand drive version at some point to go to the other markets.

Elon Musk

Yes. Maybe in the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that
this year.

~~~
LiquidSky
It doesn't matter if it's market moving. Or rather, the terms of his
settlement are that all of his communications need to be pre-approved by
counsel to determine what is market moving. He didn't get the pre-approval so
he's broken the agreement.

~~~
pbreit
The actual settlement notice says "put in place additional controls and
procedures to oversee Musk’s communications" which appeared to happen in this
case. [1]

Also, since the 500,000 number was already public and referring only to Model
3s, it's entirely plausible that 500,000 total cars for the year is not
material. The SEC conveniently leaves out this exculpatory evidence.

1: [https://www.sec.gov/news/press-
release/2018-226](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226)

~~~
ceejayoz
The press release isn't the full detailed set of conditions.

I don't know that the contract is publicly released, but
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk-
sec-s...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk-sec-
securities-fraud-settlement) says:

> The company also has to employ a lawyer who will oversee all of Musk’s
> communications, including his tweets. This person will have to pre-approve
> any message coming from Musk that could have a material impact on the
> company’s stock price.

------
thaumasiotes
I liked Matt Levine's analysis:

> probably what will happen is that Musk will go to court and the judge will
> yell at him and he will say he’s sorry and then six minutes later he’ll
> tweet “my fingers were crossed and I am NOT sorry” and he’ll go on TV that
> night and be like “you know what I have contempt for? Court,” and everyone
> will just be like “ehhhhhhhhhh good enough.”

(
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-m...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-
musk-keeps-tweeting) )

~~~
LiquidSky
No, this doesn't seem right. Musk is clearly burning through the good will
he'd built up. There's going to be a limit to how much his aura can shield
him, and it seems like he's really pushing to find that limit.

~~~
gowld
Why do you think he's being intentionally descructive asnd not just not caring
what anyone (including the government) thinks?

~~~
_red
Because Tesla, as a company, is actually majority owned by the shareholders
that make up 80+% of the company.

A very small move of the SEC can destroy those investors chances of ever being
paid back.

------
tranchms
Tesla will not have a $35k EV anytime soon.

The battery pack alone costs more than $20k.

Tesla can’t produce that car for $15k and make a profit.

Gigafactory Battery production is expected to continue ramping up, with higher
throughput lines, but operating costs are still exorbitant, and battery
production is barely breaking even at current production. In fact, from what I
know they’re in the red.

I don’t see a $35k Model 3 until battery production costs cut in half, which I
won’t expect for another 3-5 years.

I know Tesla is beginning to manufacture it’s own batteries, but to be honest,
I don’t see them succeeding.

------
vgchh
Musk is clearly not making it any easier and I wish he would be more careful
(and continue to be on Twitter). It's not fun for investors. Please don't
create these fires.

I also hope that SEC would maintains an objective view of the issue and not
get offended at the lack of respect from Musk.

Finally, I would love for Tesla to continue to thrive under Musk's leadership,
unless he continues to shoot himself in his foot.

~~~
mikestew
_It 's not fun for investors._

It was fun for this investor when I sold calls not too long ago after Musk's
last meltdown. Probably not fun for the buyer of that contract who exercised
and is now $30/share in the hole.

------
api
What if he's burning out and doing this somewhat subconsciously in an attempt
to shed responsibilities?

------
aboutruby
What does he really risk if found guilty of contempt? I don't think the SEC is
going to settle again

~~~
ceejayoz
They could ban him from running Tesla and any other publicly listed company.
That threat got him to sign this settlement in the first place.

[https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec-
threat...](https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec-threatens-to-
ban-elon-musk-from-running-any-public-company)

------
anth_anm
He's a narcissist. He believes his own hype and he thinks he's untouchable.

That and they have about a billion dollars in debt coming due in a few days.
Gotta keep that distraction going.

------
baby
This sounds like a targeted campaign to discredit Musk. Careful about what you
read.

~~~
LiquidSky
Why this bizarre cultish paranoia? He's in this mess because he committed
securities fraud. He got a slap-on-the wrist sweetheart deal and he can't even
stick to that.

He's done all of this to himself, and he can't seem to stop.

~~~
stefanmichael
it's not really paranoia when you factor in how much short interest the $TSLA
stock has, there are literally tens of billions of dollars to be gained if the
people with these short positions can discredit or shift public opinion on
musk

~~~
ceejayoz
That's fairly minuscule, really. Short sellers can't make Musk bash the SEC or
call people pedos; that's on him.

Musk _himself_ has $55.8B in compensation tied to market cap at stake, which
gives him equally self-interested reasons to balance things out.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/tesla-shareholders-
approve-e...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/tesla-shareholders-approve-elon-
musks-multibilion-dollar-compensation-plan.html)

~~~
dallashoxton
>Short sellers can't make Musk bash the SEC or call people pedos; that's on
him.

But they certainly can engineer a fake rumor of an SEC requesting contempt of
court by manipulating journalists and forging documents, if sufficiently
motivated. Consider the SuperMicro story submitted to mainstream publications
last year that was obviously fake and caused a massive decline in their stock.
I don't think it's above a sophisticated actor to socially engineer a
journalist in service of a "short and distort" campaign. Even Jim Cramer laid
out the typical tactics of a short attack: get a short position open and then
spread false rumors to a "bozo reporter" [0][1]

I'm no big Elon Musk fan, but the funny thing is -- correct me if I'm missing
something -- I can't seem to find any evidence that the SEC ever published the
complaint[2] documents supplied by a USA today journalist on the sec.gov
website. Searching for "Case 1:18-cv-08865-AJN" only brings up the original
settlement from October 2018. That alone gives me pause.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6gxPCurDJs&t=1m43s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6gxPCurDJs&t=1m43s)

[1]:
[https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/2918951-g-hudson/1026551-...](https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/2918951-g-hudson/1026551-how-
the-big-players-manipulate-the-stock-market)

[2]: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-
Cause.h...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.html)

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
So, let me get this straight. You think short sellers are a massive cabal of
evil geniuses and they just go around forging court documents and duping
journalists? But just in the case of TSLA, not all the other companies it
would be possible to short? And you think that's more likely than that the SEC
asked the judge to hold Musk in contempt, _which he obviously is by a plain
reading of the settlement agreement_?

This is waayayayayayaaaayyyyy off the deep end. Please check your priors, they
are busted.

~~~
dallashoxton
You're acting as if market manipulation is some far-out conspiracy theory
rather than something relatively common. I don't think it takes a "kabal of
evil geniuses" to dupe a few credulous journalists who are incentivized and
looking for a scoop by forging some documents. There are far more complex
market manipulation conspiracies that are well-documented (see: LIBOR scandal)

Furthermore, why haven't we heard anything from the SEC? They are an
increasingly transparent organization. Why haven't they issued a press release
or published their court filings on their website? Are we supposed to just
trust a journalist's word and ability to verify that an anonymous "source
familiar with the matter" isn't just bamboozling them?

~~~
ceejayoz
C'mon, mate. Someone linked you to Musk himself commenting on this story. The
"faked court docs" conspiracy theory dies definitively there.
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376)

------
Calashle0202
He's gonna get a shareholder lawsuit if he isn't careful

------
ddtaylor
Tesla is gaining a lot of free publicity from this.

~~~
sokoloff
To what end though? Is there anyone plausibly in the market for a Tesla car
that doesn’t know about the company and cars at this point?

I’d guess their unaided awareness within target market must be over 50% and
aided over 95%.

~~~
jjoonathan
How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on
advertising regardless?

Brand awareness requires upkeep.

~~~
LiquidSky
The old saw that any publicity is good publicity isn't true. Tesla being in
the news because their leader is committing securities fraud and acting
increasingly erratic isn't helping the brand anymore than Coca Cola being in
the news for giving people food poisoning.

~~~
ordu
I wouldn't be so sure about it. We cannot speak in meaningful way whether
Musk's kind of publicity is good or it is bad without considering his target
audience first. Do we know some group of people who might cheer Musk's
behaviour?

I can think about just one possibility linked with age, but found it unlikely:
if average age of owners of S, 3 and X models was between 43 and 53 years[1],
it would be unlikely to drop significally. Didn't Musk promised for next
models to be cheaper (and more affordable for younger generations) than
previous?

Though idea of Musk running campain targeting younger and rebellous
generations seems implausible for me regardless of price.

[1] [https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income-
doubl...](https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income-double-
model-s/)

------
brian000
search "Elon Musk" at crazydaysandnights.net for a different perspective on
this guy

~~~
macinjosh
From that site's footer:

> Crazy Days And Nights Is A Gossip Site. The Site Publishes Rumors,
> Conjecture, And Fiction.

Not what I would use for gathering real information.

------
Animats
His behavior is not unusual for someone who is burned out and/or a pothead.
Ignoring consequences is typical stoner behavior. We'll have to see how this
plays out.

~~~
computerex
Ignoring consequences is closer to being drunk behavior than stoner behavior.
Also weed is used medicinally as well, and it's no good demonizing all those
medical users and labeling them as bums that ignore consequences. In general,
I'd advise against senselessly judging and stereotyping people.

------
sudoaza
> The SEC says Musk has manifestly violated an agreement reached in September,
> when he settled an SEC lawsuit by consenting to have his tweets preapproved
> by Tesla attorneys before sending them out on Twitter. > That didn’t stop
> Musk from issuing an unapproved tweet at 7:15 p.m. EST on Feb. 19,

Who the fuck this people are?!?! Besides, no one got the 420 stock price
joke???!?!!

------
motohagiography
Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude?

There is definitely a cabal gunning for him, what I don't understand is why.
There are funds short TSLA who are talking their books as well, but he seems
to have provoked a deeper coalition of interests that is hard to pinpoint. All
I can tell is much of the criticism seems contrived.

Maybe he's truly checked out because this is all just a simulation, and he
wants to test what is symbolic and artificial, and what is real because
philosophically and existentially it's the only meaningful problem to address,
but from an investor and mental health perspective, that's dissociation and if
that's really the case, I hope he likes painting in watercolors.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude?

They want him to follow the other terms of the settlement, presumably. The
fine's only a part of the punishment.

~~~
elliekelly
But it (aside from the $20 million fine) it isn’t even a _punishment_. Every
publicly-traded company has their tweets reviewed. Every. Single. One. It’s
_normal_. It’s reasonably prudent for both the CEO _and_ the shareholders. No
shareholder wants to wake up and find 5%+ of market cap has been wiped out
with a tweet.

~~~
anth_anm
Uh, he also got removed as a chairman.

Having the sense to review tweets is different than having an SEC settlement
enforcing such action.

~~~
elliekelly
Remember, the SEC's function is to protect _investors_. Likewise, the function
of the Chairperson of the Board is to represent _investors_ on the Board. The
SEC didn't remove Musk as Chair to punish him for his actions. The settlement
required Musk to step down as Chair to give investors the representation
they're entitled to because Musk didn't fulfill the fiduciary obligations of
the role.

