Toothless
Elon Musk isn't afraid of the SEC. And why should he be?
He brazenly bought his way onto Twitter's board of directors and already made $154 million of that money back. Why stop now?
This is getting absurd.
Elon Musk now sits on Twitter’s board of directors after secretly buying a nearly 10-percent stake in the company last month for almost $3 billion. In two weeks’ time, it appears likely he illegally made a fifth of that money back. A couple months from now, his wealth will probably return to pre-Twitter investment levels, while still having an outsized influence on one of the most chaotic, toxic, popular social media platforms on the internet.
I feel it’s important to reiterate that there’s solid evidence that Elon Musk weaseled his way onto Twitter’s board and is currently recouping the cost illegally. The Technoking purchased his shares on March 14, but did not file the proper paperwork or inform the public until this past Monday. “By delaying his disclosure of his stake in Twitter, Musk bought it at an artificially low price,” reads the subheading of an article from The Washington Post published last night. “I really don’t know what’s going through his mind. Was he ignorant or knowledgeable that he was violating securities law?” finance professor David Kass asks in the same piece.
The easy, obvious answer? It doesn’t matter — there is literally no incentive to obey the law when you are personally worth more than the entirety of Algeria and know that the SEC’s fines will only be “limited to hundreds of thousands dollars” according to legal experts.
LOLing his way to the offshore bank — Wealthy white men operating with virtual impunity is nothing new, of course. I’m in no way shocked to see people like Musk continue to fail upwards. But we’ve reached a point of no return when it comes to just how wealthy and unaccountable these white men have become.
Musk isn’t even trying to hide his disregard for financial law and fair competition anymore — like Donald Trump, he is fueled by the feeling of immunity, as well as his cultists’ unabashed glee when they see them get away with it. Think they should play the game more carefully? Show me a single time when they truly felt consequence from regulators or the law. Until more financial loopholes are closed, until bodies like the SEC are granted at least some real and consequential power against Big Tech oligarchies, we’re going to see Musk and men like him continue amassing empires while swatting away fines like flies.
At this rate, though, I’m not confident there will be regulatory bodies strong enough to rein them in by the time actual reform comes our way.
