I mean, this doesn’t tell us about Trump’s finances. Trump doesn’t want to work. He just wants to be paid for being Trump. Being on Twitter’s board won’t get him money for being Trump.
1 Like
I’m pretty sure doing something to increase the value of a company is quite legal.
Manipulating the value of a security (up or down) for personal gain is illegal. Check the SEC website.
6 Likes
…I am pretty sure a very wide variety of types of fraud fall under the umbrella of increasing the stock value of a company. Including pretty much every type of stock manipulation that isn’t about decreasing the stock value of a company.
7 Likes
But it made money for someone already vastly wealthy, so it’s okay… /s
10 Likes
I mean even if it’s not illegal, you’d think the idea that someone could buy things without even spending money to do so by virtue of being sufficiently rich would set off some warning bells about how our society allocates property.
10 Likes
Yep, you’d think so, as it’s clearly set up to benefit some at the expense of the rest of us… But, sadly, some people are perfectly content with how our society allocates property, because they are in the group who are the primary beneficiaries, so the rest of us can get fucked. They feel it’s a morally justified system, because they like the trappings of Calvinism (that those who prosper are those who deserve it) without all the god-bothering (it’s the market, rather than god who has made these moral judgements). These folks will close their eyes if it lines their pockets, no matter how people are brutalized, beaten, raped, enslaved, killed, etc, etc, because their “god” deemed it good and just… They’re no different, in other words, from religious zealots and there is plenty of cross-over between those two groups.
6 Likes
it strikes me how these are equivalent. some bank thinks you or your estate are worth the risk - or you are already so indebted to them they can’t risk you going bankrupt - so you can be in the red in all practical sense and still have money enough for cars, houses, food, and stock buyouts
in reference to their whole family’s complete lack of empathy and their lack in understanding of how much housing, safety, and 3 square meals really matters to a human being
8 Likes
But increasing the value of a company in which you own shares is of course completely legal.
No one was ever charged for actions that increased the value of stock they own is a weird assertion.
Who improperly manipulates the value of stock they don’t own?
6 Likes
I think that you are confusing the value of a company with its share price (market capitalization). These two get confused a lot.
2 Likes
The law is really complicated, and a great big long list of things, far beyond the scope of any glib generalization, are against the law
6 Likes
Exactly. Not being a Musk fanboi, I don’t see how he adds much real underlying value to Twitter even with the board seat. As with his other businesses he’s more of a promoter, which has its uses but in a healthy company is far outweighed by the contributions of other roles.
He’s juiced the price by appealing to the fanbois and suckers long enough to profit on paper and has assured himself that he won’t get banned from the platform. Otherwise, though, there’s not much he has done or really can do to increase the company’s value.
7 Likes
6 Likes
Oh definitely. But I’d say the glib generalization is saying that him buying into the company and joining it’s board with the anticipation of profit is against the law. (Not that you are, but that was the assertion I was questioning).
Musk’s personal profit taken from buying Twitter stock != adding value to Twitter as a company.
And as others have pointed out there are plenty of well-known scenarios where buying stock in anticipation of profit (or doing so in a non-complant way) would indeed be illegal. Pump-and-dump schemes immediately come to mind.
Musk isn’t doing anything illegal here, but it is weird and potentially dodgy. Especially if his reporting isn’t in compliance.
4 Likes
Wow. Yeah, you should really research this further before you embarrass yourself more. Even corporate board members have restrictions on what they can do to affect stock prices. Some rando investor (which is what Musk was at the time) who affects stock price can get in big trouble with the SEC.
Considering Musk has already run afoul of these regulations, he doesn’t have an excuse that he didn’t know.
5 Likes
I dunno I think if something is already in the sphere of legal uncertainty enough that it will likely be contested in a court then it’s as fair to speculate that it will be found illegal as it is to speculate otherwise…
6 Likes
Whatever happened to the lovely idea that Trump was being propped up almost entirely by Deutsche Bank, and they were finally actually not-kidding this time really going to pull the rug out from under him?
I’d wager it was made up.
