A jury has found Elon Musk liable for misleading investors by deliberately driving down Twitter’s stock price in the tumultuous months leading up to his 2022 acquisition of the social media company for $44 billion. But it absolved him of some fraud allegations, finding that he did not “scheme” to mislead investors.
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- ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish9 hours
Drop in a bucket. He should be fined of the money he paid to buy Twitter.
- All Ice In Chains@lemmy.mlEnglish10 hours
Cool, so when this reaches Appeals court (which is where it’s absolutely going next because they’ll definitely appeal it), that 2.1B$ fine will get knocked down to 10$ and a blowjob (for Elon).
But hey, the Washington Post or whatever can get a nice little headline out of it where they pretend billionaires face any sort of punishment in this Capitalist hellscape for 5 seconds so that’s nice.
- mechoman444@lemmy.worldEnglish17 hours
I don’t understand why these courts charge a set fine for stuff like this. This is clearly an extremely unique case. The man is 20% shy of being a trillionaire.
What really needs to be done is they need to charge a percentage of his profits. Say 20 to 30%.
- MrSulu@lemmy.mlEnglish1 day
For the rest of us, there would be a seizure of assets and a prison term.
- 9 hours
Basically, and it’s not even like this is a corporation that has some level of money machine go burr, it’s straight up one man who did this and is responsible it should be cut and dry and he should be spending the next few decades in prison.
- TronBronson@lemmy.worldEnglish19 hours
Ya for about 10% of that cost the lawyers will keep working hard to contest.
- wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish17 hours
I don’t know how much he has liquid. The article says that “most” of his 814B is tied up in Tesla stock. Selling a couple of billion worth of stock isn’t trivial.
- 1 day
If the punishment is a fine, it’s only illegal for poor people.
The only war is class war.
- cannedtuna@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Considering he’s made $400B since acquiring Twitter, this was just a minor cost of doing business.
- 18 hours
I could change the world for the better with this sum. Hell, even with the fee. Oh well, I’m sure it’s best that he has that money 🙄🤮.
- LedgeDrop@lemmy.zipEnglish1 day
Considering he’s made $400B since acquiring Twitter…
Serious question: How?
AFAIK, Twitter wasn’t terribly profitable before they sold to Musk. Then after he purchased it, the enshittification accelerated.
How on earth does this result in $400 Billions in profit?!?
- halcyoncmdr@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
He made $400B, not Twitter. That’s almost entirely from Tesla and other ventures, not Twitter.
Last I’ve been able to find Twitter was valued at $33B when xAI bought it. But that was clearly an overvalued sale. Just look at the valuation over time.
And that’s just raw valuation which is easily manipulated, not revenue or profit, which can be easily manipulated.
- teyrnon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish22 hours
It’s not real money, and Musk isn’t the richest person in truth, not by a long shot. This is theoretical money based on overpriced companies that are propped up by what I suspect are some rather shady practices and investors using it as a casino stock.
- theolodis@feddit.orgEnglish20 hours
The money doesn’t have to be real for Elon to be able to use his stock as collateral for billion dollar loans. So he in fact has real money, that banks gave him, and that he will never pay back.
- theolodis@feddit.orgEnglish20 hours
It will only restrict his ability to get new loans, and make his collaterals worthless. But he probably spent most of the money they gave him, and like with twitter, he shifted the assets around in his network of companies, like a thimblerigger.
But that’s kind of like saying that inflation will make the rich poor, which is also not true.
- teyrnon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish18 hours
When stocks crash, his loans that are backed by those stocks get margin called, and he will have to sell other stock. If the government didn’t bail him out, and they will so this is academic, although he will have to pay them bribes secretly obviously that goes without saying, he would see a cascading effect from a recession because his companies are all so overpriced.
- DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.worldEnglish19 hours
Actually worst than imaginable if you delve deep the psychology of the rich is akin to tumour development. Never forget these rich fuckheads would bet over your misery like a game.
- Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish20 hours
“Wake me” when anything at all happens…? The point is, they have the power.
- then_three_more@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Some are, but they often have maximum caps.
So for a UK speeding fine he’d get a £1000, but if it’s wasn’t capped it would be somewhere in the region of 340 million.
Your Speeding Offence Details
Speed Limit: 30 mph Recorded Speed: 35 mph Excess Speed: 5 mph Offence Band: A Road Type: Standard Road What This Means For You
Your offence falls into Band A, which carries a fine of 50% of your weekly income. Based on your weekly income of £640,000,000, your calculated fine is £320,000,000. This has been capped at the maximum of £1000 for standard road offences.
- 1 day
Why would any such fines be capped, unless the entire point is to effectively legalise crime for the ultra rich?
- 1 day
More chagrined than anything else. Having dual citizenship with US and UK is like having one foot in the grave and another foot in the toilet sometimes.
21 hoursFinland has similar thing, but it is not capped. There’s a ton of 100 000+€ fines given around here. Obviously with Musk it would be a bit different, since the fine is based on actual income, not some imaginary monopoly money on the stock market.
That part is fixable though. Base the fine on valuation of assets.
- 1 day
Disclaimer: I know you’re probably only trolling, but I’ll answer anyway:
…not assessed in a way to be of sufficient size to not just be considered a cost of doing business. In other words, pricey enough to take away the incentive to not only take away the profit but to also deal a significant blow to the wealth of the richest person on earth.
- Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish12 hours
Believe it or not, everyone who you disagree with or misunderstand is not “trolling”.
There is no reason they couldn’t assess fines a different way…
Certainly the fines were sufficiently sized in the 90s era when they dropped the hammer on Microsoft.
- Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish21 hours
No one is “trolling”, you jackass. Just assess them in a different way, is the very obvious point that I was getting at.
Percentage of profit accrued from the offense. They are static values.
- Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish19 hours
Just because they’re currently assessed that way doesn’t mean they can’t be assessed a different way…
The class the class that writes laws have decided they don’t want that.
- Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish11 hours
I don’t understand what your point is. No one is saying it’s going to happen tomorrow. The point is that fines themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is corruption and cronyism. Fines are totally effective when implemented properly.
It should be % based of his income. Otherwise it’s not a punishment
- yabbadabaddon@lemmy.zipEnglish22 hours
This does not work because he will find a way to have 0 income (legally). I don’t know how we can make the billionaires pay, but we should tax the assets not the incomes.
- 9 hours
A gun works pretty good, or maybe something like Logan’s run but instead of it being age based it’s wealth based.
- BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.todayEnglish17 hours
How much as he made from his Twitter deal? He made it illegally, confiscate it all.
- TronBronson@lemmy.worldEnglish19 hours
That’s the problem with Mr. musketeer he doesn’t actually show income. That’s why we’re always complaining about how billionaires don’t pay income tax.
- MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish15 hours
It should be the amount he made from it + a fine. It’s how the middle class gets handled.
They should repossess it and place it in the hands of a responsible steward…
- 1 day
admit any wrongdoing.
So, the Trump school of leadership.
- frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish1 day
Except he almost certainly won’t be paying anywhere near that amount, if anything.
- org@lemmy.orgEnglish1 day
Right, he’s just not gonna pay. It’s not like they’re gonna go get the money from his bank account. Can you imagine Elon Musk being garnished? Never gonna happen
- 13igTyme@piefed.socialEnglish22 hours
I wasn’t invested in Twitter, but when I heard he was trying to get out of it I bought some stock. I knew he couldn’t get out of the deal because it doesn’t work like that and he’s a dumb ass.
My only regret was not buying more. Thanks for the money, idiot.
- Insekticus@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
That’s a fine of $2 out of a total of $800.
I’d speed past cameras if I was running late, and that was the fine.
- minorkeys@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
He’s made billions more after and because of it so he doesn’t give a shit about a meaningless, billion dollar fine.
- blady_blah@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
It’s an ego thing, he’ll hire a bunch of really expensive lawyers and drag it out as long as he can. This is what the rich do.
if you drag it out, a billion dollar fine becomes a million real fast
- minorkeys@lemmy.worldEnglish22 hours
That’s a power thing. Avoiding accountability to the rule of law.
