It's somewhat hilarious to think that even if Twitter were to settle modestly for $5bn, that would be more than double of all profit that Twitter has ever generated as a company.
Musk played everyone. I called it as soon as it was announced that he was just manipulating the markets. Hopefully SEC actually does something for once.
He didn't play anyone, he got played. There was a ton of way he could have sold stocks without being on the hook for a 44 billions purchase he doesn't want to close. And he even could have sold the stock without any excuses since the stock fell anyway.
He is not getting anything out of this that he couldn't have gotten in a better, smarter way. But they told him he couldn't so he let his ego get the best of him again and got himself trapped.
Even went ahead and threw out his right to due diligence, which is the part that confirms it was ego and not smart thinking, and the entire reason he cannot get a clean exit now.
>hopefully the SEC actually does something for once
They can’t when people like Musk are allowed to rip the few teeth they have out any time they try to hold wealthy individuals/companies accountable. Jon Stewart did a really interesting interview with a former SEC chair few months ago (“The Problem with Jon Stewart”), and while Jon clearly clearly tells him to not pass the buck/not make excuses, it’s also clear to him that the SEC is outgunned and a serious example of regulatory capture.
They can’t throw money at the problem, they can’t get clever or they’re sued for being “out of bounds,” and they’ve been successfully demonized to the public, so they have no support virtually anywhere.
It’s like the whole “tax the rich” battle cry. We won’t see it happen so long as the IRS is considered borderline an enemy of the people, because who could ever campaign on “increase funding for the IRS so they’ll be better at collecting taxes”?
