Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Elon Musk's Chicago Tunnel Makes a Dumb Idea Even Dumber

But it sounds so cool!

The mark of a con man is someone who makes incredible-sounding promises, doesn't deliver when it comes time, and then makes even bigger promises to shift the conversation.

The Boring Company / Elon Musk is going to revolutionize the field of civil engineering, to do things no one has ever managed to do. ... K. I wish him luck in that endeavor. As long as it doesn't come at my expensive (a la his other companies), let him squander his own money, or the money of anyone dumb enough to fund his BS.

 

He's a carnival barker.

Put the carnival barker thing aside, though. If you don't need other people's money, you are perfectly within your rights to tell people asking questions to pound sand. This guy, though, is not only a bullshit artist, he acts like an entitled ass. Write a critical story about one of his cars (a factually correct one) and he attacks you. Ask questions about his dogshit balance sheet and he says you're "boring." His company has burned through billions of dollars of other people's money (and as I have made clear on this thread, it pissed me off that our government put all of his on the hook for some of that money by giving him corrupt preference / cash). In the past three months alone, his company burned through yet another billion dollars of other people's money. It doesn't take a genius to incinerate cash. If there is any genius to him, it's his ability to bullshit others into giving him money.

But fine. After getting a pass for how many years, he finally was facing some investors saying, "You are really close to running out of money, and you aren't hitting any of the projections you gave us for profitability and cash flow. What's the plan here, because looking at these numbers, your company is bankrupt within a year?"

Can there be any more legitimate line of questioning for the person who is stewarding an investor's money?

In a world of bubble finance the last 7, 8 years, in which central banks had the credit spigots flowing -- and blowing bubbles / creating zombie companies (with this being the poster child for what they did) -- he had no trouble finding capital. Not just capital. Very cheap capital. There was a lot of stupid money being incentivized to chase riskier and riskier things. That is what happens when some appointed czars price fix the most important price in capitalism -- interest rates. That is changing now. After that performance last night, I am sure the fixed-income world took notice. *IF* he is still able to access the debt markets, it should be at extreme Shylock rates. His bonds coming due next year are already trading way below par, so it should be a no brainer.