Tag: Business

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Business Elon Musk Social Media

Elon Musk Has Become The First Person In History To Lose $200 Billion

Twitter and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is, according to some, a great businessman who has an uncanny knack for making money in any market.

But it appears that reputation is nothing but hype, as Musk has now become the first person in history to ever lose $200 billion of their net worth.

According to Bloomberg, Musk’s sudden reversal of fortune is tied to the decline of value in Tesla stock, which has been tanking in recent weeks.

Musk, 51, has seen his wealth plummet to $137 billion after Tesla shares tumbled in recent weeks, including an 11% drop on Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His fortune peaked at $340 billion on Nov. 4, 2021, and he remained the world’s richest person until he was overtaken this month by Bernard Arnault, the French tycoon behind luxury-goods powerhouse LVMH.

How bad are things for Tesla? The company is now offering deep discounts on its electric vehicles.

Now Tesla’s dominance in electric cars, the foundation of its lofty valuation,  is in jeopardy as competitors catch up. It’s offering US consumers a rare  $7,500 discount to take delivery of its two highest-volume models before year-end, while also reportedly reducing production at its Shanghai plant.

Oh, there’s also the matter of Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter, which has been beset with one problem after another since he took control in October.

But to hear Musk tell it, every problem he faces is someone else’s fault.

Musk, for his part, has dismissed concerns about Tesla and has repeatedly taken to Twitter to criticize the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates at the fastest pace in a generation. 

“Tesla is executing better than ever!” Musk tweeted on Dec. 16. “We don’t control the Federal Reserve. That is the real problem here.”

And in what may wind up being the biggest irony of all, Musk has also warned not to take on large amounts of debt in such an uncertain financial market, remarking on the All-In podcast:

“I would really advise people not to have margin debt in a volatile stock market and you know, from a cash standpoint, keep powder dry. You can get some pretty extreme things happening in a down market.”

Too bad he didn’t follow his own advice.

 

Categories
Business Donald Trump Social Media

Investors Dump Trump’s Truth Social Site And Withdraw Millions As It Nears Financial Collapse

Failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s fledgling social media site, Truth Social, appears to be headed for a quick demise, much like nearly every business venture the Donald has attempted over the course of his life.

According to Reuters, major investors are now withdrawing millions of dollars in financing.

Some investors are backing out of Digital World Acquisition Corp’s (DWAC.O) plan to acquire former U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media firm Truth Social, the blank-check firm said on Friday.

Digital World said it had received termination notices from private investment in public equity (PIPE) investors ending nearly $139 million in investments out of the $1 billion commitment it had previously announced.

That move by some investors could lead to a complete collapse of the deal, which would mean Truth Social no longer has any operating capital. That would lead to the death of the site.

More investors could pull out in the next few weeks, sources said, as they can terminate anytime after the deadline. Many are waiting for DWAC to propose more preferred terms to PIPE investors, sources added.

Truth Social was created by Trump because he was permanently banned from both Twitter and Facebook. The plan was to serve as an alternative to those sites, but Truth Social has suffered numerous setbacks since it first launched.

The biggest problem for Truth Social, however, has been a lack of interest by potential users. So far, the site only has approximately 550,000 active daily users. In contrast, Twitter has 217 million.

Just last month, it was reported that Truth Social was unable to pay its bills, including for the server which hosts the site:

There are signs that the company’s financial base has begun to erode. The Trump company stopped paying RightForge, a conservative web-hosting service, in March and now owes it more than $1 million, according to Fox Business, which first reported the dispute.

The company also has struggled with some basics of corporate operation. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this month denied its application to trademark “Truth Social,” citing the “likelihood of confusion” to other similarly named companies, including an app, “VERO — True Social,” first released in 2015.

 

Categories
Business Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Guilty Plea By Trump Org. CFO Means ‘It’s All Over’ For Donald’s Company: Former Prosecutor

Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization is on the verge of reaching an agreement with prosecutors in which he will plead guilty to multiple felony charges, including tax fraud.

The Washington Post notes, however, that Weisselberg will not agree to testify against Trump:

The specific terms of any plea agreement were not immediately clear. One of the people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke Monday on the condition of anonymity, said they expected Weisselberg to be sentenced to about five months behind bars. The person also said Weisselberg is not expected to help with an ongoing inquiry into Trump, who is facing legal scrutiny from multiple directions.

Weisselberg was charged with more than a dozen felony counts when he was indicted last year, among them grand larceny and criminal tax fraud. Before the indictment, a person familiar with the investigation into Trump’s finances had said prosecutors hoped to convince Weisselberg to testify against the former president as part of a deal that would reduce his own legal jeopardy.

Despite no cooperation from Weisselberg when it comes to helping convict Trump, according to former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, the upcoming guilty plea is the end of Donald Trump’s company.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Weissmann explained:

“The reason that is important for Donald Trump is the Trump Organization is scheduled for trial in October. Once Allen Weisselberg pleads guilty, it is over for the Trump Organization. The crimes he committed, get imputed to the Trump Organization. So, the leverage in terms of the financial consequences to Donald Trump doesn’t mean he’s gonna go to jail, but the consequences for the Trump Organization are huge.”

Weissmann added that everything is falling apart for the disgraced ex-president on the legal front:

“This is a big deal. So, I think that would be number one, focus on the financial consequences of the Allen Weisselberg deal. And then, down the road, I mean, Lawrence, you laid out a litany of criminal and national security trouble, in Florida, in D.C., in Georgia. And this is a day where you saw a movement on all fronts. And to me, the thing that I thought was probably the most telling was the grand jury subpoena to Eric Herschmann. There is a guy who can completely corroborate what we heard from Cassidy Hutchinson. I am sure he has information.”

Could Donald Trump soon be facing imprisonment and the implosion of his corporation? It certainly looks that way, and it couldn’t possibly happen to a more deserving person.

Categories
Business Congress GOP

Lauren Boebert’s Shooters Grill Has Gone Belly Up

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) loves to brag about how she managed to start a small business even though she didn’t graduate from high school. To hear her tell it, she pulled herself up by the bootstraps and got her piece of the American dream.

But that dream — which Boebert named Shooters Grill — is now a failure and a little more than a bad memory, according to Colorado Pols:

As readers know, Shooter’s Grill lost hundreds of thousands of dollars during its few years of operation according to tax filings, and the eatery never lived down the 2017 incident in which Boebert’s food truck sickened dozens of spectators at a local rodeo. Quality food and service was never the draw of Shooter’s Grill, of course, bringing in customers (at least once for the novelty) with their armed and generally young female wait staff.

Boebert reportedly waited until after the June 28th primary to make the decision about closing Shooter’s Grill after the building’s landlord signaled his intention to cancel Boebert’s lease at the end of August. With Boebert’s Republican primary opponent dispatched, Boebert’s cash flow from her newfound fame looks secure enough to dispense with the dirty work of running a small-town greasy spoon–management of which Boebert had reportedly already farmed out to political supporters.

Join the good citizens of Rifle in wishing Shooter’s Grill a fond covfefe.

You probably recall one of the things that made Shooters so unique (not to mention absurd) is that all of the employees were encouraged to openly carry weapons in keeping with the right-wing belief that guns were given to us by God and therefore deserve to be worshiped like some sort of fire-breathing idol.

The closing of Shooters also deprives Boebert of her talking point about being a successful businesswoman. Instead, she’s a miserable failure, just like her tangerine lord and savior, Donald Trump.

Now that karma is catching up with Lauren in such a big way, we can also hope that voters in her district will kick her to the curb come November.

 

Categories
Business Social Media

Elon Musk Says He’s Terminating His Purchase Of Twitter – But Legally He Can’t

After today, Elon Musk may want to change his last name to Mush, because his self-hyped proffer to buy Twitter is now on the rocks, and his attempt to extract himself from the deal is likely to cost him a cool fortune and may not happen at all, according to legal experts.

On Friday, attorneys for Musk filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to void the $44 billion deal. They also sent a letter to Twitter’s board of directors announcing termination of the deal. Musk and his lawyers maintain that he has every right to pull the plug on acquiring the social media giant because the company hasn’t provided enough information about the company, writing:

“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.”

Twitter was in no mood to debate Musk and made it clear they will force him to go through with the deal by taking him to court, with board chairman Bret Taylor noting:

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Legal experts, the Washington Post reports, agree with Twitter that Musk cannot just void the deal and get off the hook for the $44 billion he pledged to pay:

His April agreement to buy the company included a commitment to go through with the acquisition unless there’s a major change to the business, and legal experts say nothing has happened to meet that threshold. Musk has previously threatened to scuttle the deal if Twitter didn’t give him more data to run his own analysis on how many spam bots it has, while Twitter has said it can’t give up personal information on its users like their names, emails and IP addresses, which it uses to come up with its own bot numbers.

Musk, according to those familiar with corporate law, agreed to buy the company as is, not some version of it after it met certain conditions that were never part of the original agreement.

Some suspect the real reason for Musk’s reluctance to complete the purchase is that he no longer has the capital needed due to significant losses of Tesla shares on the stock market. Those shares were a major portion of the money Musk put down to guarantee he was serious about the acquisition.

In the first six months of 2022, Musk’s wealth has plunged by $62 billion, and further reversals in the Dow Jones and Nasdaq indexes could more than double that amount by the end of the year.

Elon Musk is starting to sound like he’s almost as bad of a businessman as former president Donald Trump. But then again, no one is that incompetent.