Most billionaires like to cultivate the image that they are self-made men and women (though they are usually men for various reasons). And yet there's almost always the government enabling them in the background, and an aggressive fight to keep it that way. 
Elon off Twitter sounds a lot like Elon on Twitter. Is that true?
Only a few minutes into his deposition, and Elon is already a combative witness who won't admit an obvious, negative fact.
Unreal.
Elon finally answers, by lying under oath. Compare his answer to a graph by @TESLAcharts based on information provided by $TSLA. (The deposition took place in June, before the last bar on the right was known.)
@TESLAcharts On page 37 of his deposition transcript, Elon admits "We were wrong, obviously" and then makes what appears to be a a forward-looking statement so apparently dangerous it had to be redacted.
@TESLAcharts Then this: after purchasing SolarCity, Elon had to cannibalize it because otherwise $TSLA would have gone bankrupt.
@TESLAcharts Elon's dream appears to be a kind of roof-in-a-box. Why get a roof that actually fits your house when you can have the roof Elon thinks you should have?
@TESLAcharts In which Elon tells an experienced lawyer that he would have been better off as a factory worker.
@TESLAcharts Why didn't investors deserve to know about Elon's decision to completely kneecap SolarCity and appropriate virtually all of its resources—including so many executives Elon can't remember them all—for Model 3 production and deployment? You know, it was "minor."
@TESLAcharts On page 37, he just said it would have bankrupted the company not to do it, which generally means a 100% impact "on the total financials of the company."
@TESLAcharts This is pathological. There's no other word to describe this kind of behavior.
@TESLAcharts It's actually painful to read this. The degree of condescension by Elon Musk toward anyone who is not an absolute zealot, let alone someone who actively dares to question or disagree, is off the charts.
@TESLAcharts Three years of law school for this, Jonathan? Really?
@TESLAcharts Elon is so proud of failing to inform his shareholders that the company perpetually hangs by a thread that he's willing to cop to even more ways in which he's been untruthful and evasive.
@TESLAcharts According to Elon, if telling the truth requires adding one more sentence for which there is room, you can't, as that requires the same effort as authoring and publishing a bound volume comprising hundreds of pages. They are exactly the same, so the truth is not worth telling.
@TESLAcharts Again, as pointed out by @Paul_M_Huettner, *signatures matter*. The last update for Q3 2019 *was not signed by anyone*. This is Elon's way of telling you that he does not personally stand behind anything in it.
If this transcript is any indication, we will probably one day learn that there was an explicit discussion about why Elon SHOULD NOT sign the update. Notably, as a result of this fraudulent conduct, $TSLA was able to add billions of dollars to its market capitalization in days.
This interview was only a few months ago, and Elon repeated this over and over. Now he talks about anything else. The Model 3 is still having considerable problems according to litigation, and it's not profitable. So should one conclude from his own words that $TSLA is dead?
Elon admits that it was difficult to do a good job as both CEO of Tesla (and SpaceX) and Chairman of SolarCity. So naturally, he wanted even more responsibility managing them all daily.
How could one possibility think that in any scenario, a reduction in the total cost of installation of Product X would offset a decrease in demand due to the phase-out of a tax credit? It just makes no sense!
The total cost of installation going down was and is key for SolarCity/$TSLA because if the price stays the same, the business might actually profit. But if the price stays the same, it doesn't boost demand. Passing the additional savings on to the customer defeats the purpose.
In which Elon literally advocates selling himself short. It's the exact same point the very short sellers he hates have been making for years.
What on earth is going on here... Elon thinks he can out-strategize opposing counsel against himself and they'll believe him?
Quite the admission coming from someone who recently e-mailed PlainSite's founder, "Does the psych ward know you have a cell phone? Just curious." And who wipes his own phone like a drug dealer. Right, @ElonMusk?
@elonmusk Elon may not be factoring in the fact that "a lot of good people at Tesla" have left and never want to work with him again on anything. Either way, the lawyers don't want us to know his predictions for the future, which are of zero interest to the attorney examining him.
These excerpts are coming from Document 328, Attachment 2, Exhibit 9 at plainsite.org/dockets/32atfy….
It is indeed "shocking," and the jury is still out on "success" given the lack of sustained profits. And at this rate that may one day be a literal jury in a criminal proceeding.
The attorney asks if there was an actual plan to deal with the solar tax credit phase-out (as it was omitted from some models that made the acquisition appear better than it should have). Instead of "no," Elon responds with an aphorism about "plans" WHICH ASSUMES THEY EXIST.
What actually happened here? (Fortunately, there's video.)
In other words, do not trust end-of-quarter cash numbers. Virtually every large public company with access to a credit line exploits it to pump up the number.
With Elon Musk on a conference call as this is being written, statements on conference calls can just be so confusing... What does a statement even mean?
Perjury is a problem when words allegedly have no meaning.
Let's not talk about Elon's companies investing in each other.
This entire page is outrageous.
Let's also make sure not to say a word about the ratings agencies. Right, @MoodysInvSvc?
@MoodysInvSvc Elon knows that no matter what, the retail investor will be there to bail him out. So who cares?
@MoodysInvSvc This is not how depositions are supposed to work.
@MoodysInvSvc Says Elon Musk, who has never been to law school, but is nonetheless an expert on the "standard issue" curriculum.
@MoodysInvSvc It's hard not to think that this sounds childish coming from the CEO of what is today a company valued at over $50 billion.
@MoodysInvSvc Now why might that be... Oh right. He keeps saying that the company was on the verge of going bankrupt.
@MoodysInvSvc In terms of the actual legal case, this might be the most important passage in the Elon Musk deposition so far. Did he know of the liquidity issues? Well, yes. But he decided to pay for SolarCity anyway so that his *other* illiquid company could leech off of it for the Model 3.
@MoodysInvSvc The @WSJ just wrote an article about this, involving Greater Fools willing to provide capital to cash incinerating businesses, except it was about WeWork, and the Hamptons instead of Lake Tahoe, and Adam Neumann instead of Elon Musk. Otherwise, the same. wsj.com/articles/the-f…
Elon Musk responds with "I don't recall" 65 times in his deposition, including to basic questions such as whether SolarCity board meetings were mostly conducted by phone or in person. This is also perjury.
One would have thought that given that Elon *knew* he was going to be sued in advance because his conduct was so blatantly illegal, he would have brushed up on his facts ahead of time.
And it ends with the lawyers yelling at and threatening each other. Wow.
There's a part II! Is it possible Elon is not as much of an expert on solar roof fire risk as he thinks he is? $WMT certainly doesn't trust his judgment at this point.
This statement sounds like it might have a lot of assumptions built in.
E-mails like this, below, make one wonder why a company reporting $5.3 billion in cash is still engaged in litigation with an electrician for $2,500 and an electronic motor supplier for under $2 million.
