Elon Musk on the Big Beautiful Bill

I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore.  

This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. 

Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.  You know it.

~ Elon Musk, tweet, June 3, 2025

(Reported in "Elon Musk slams Trump's spending bill: Here's what to know," CNBC, June 3, 2025)

Vitaliy Katsenelson on Tesla: 80% of Tesla's value is based on Elon Musk's dreams

Tesla has a market capitalization as of this writing of $780 billion.  It made around $14 billion of profit in 2023 and $7 billion in 2024.  A good chunk of profit comes not from selling cars but from regulatory credits.  It sold fewer cars in 2024 than in 2023. Unless we see a significant shift change in battery capacity, speed of charging, and improved quality and availability of charging infrastructure, we have reached peak EV penetration (I wrote about this earlier). 

However, today Tesla is not trading based on car sales but on future dreams of self-driving robo-taxis, robots, semis, and whatever else Elon dreams up.  The car company may be worth $100–180 billion; the rest is what investors are willing to pay for Elon’s dreams.

[...]

China looked like a great opportunity for Tesla, but may turn into a liability if the trade war intensifies. Finally, though at times he seems superhuman, Musk is constrained by the number of hours in the day.  As of today he is running Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter (x.com), xAI (the maker of Grok – a ChatGPT competitor), The Boring Company, Neuralink, and oh, yes, DOGE.  The EV market is getting more, not less, competitive.  Tesla needs an undistracted Musk. 

~ Vitaliy Katsenelson, "Current thoughts on Tesla," The Intellectual Investor, April 23, 2025

Bill Strong and Stephen Rahl on comparative advantage, trade deficits and reserve currency status

“The reality... is that the international trade system is designed to cheat us... every country around the world cheats us.” 

~ Peter Navarro, Counselor to the President of the United States 

“Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks... Navarro is truly a moron.  What he says is demonstrably false.”

~ Elon Musk, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States

David Ricardo was not “dumber than a sack of bricks.”  Rather, the brilliant, early 19th-century British economist developed the theory of comparative advantage, in opposition to the then, widely accepted, mercantilism.  In his “Principles of Political Economy and Taxation” (1817) he proves that countries running trade surpluses are not “cheating” their trade partners and that free trade benefits both parties, regardless of which runs a surplus/deficit. 

Since Ricardo’s era, in the modern globalized trading world the country that has the world reserve currency must, by necessity, sustain a current account deficit.  This is because the extra demand for its “international” money must overvalue its currency.  This ensures that said country sustains more imports than exports, penalizing its net trade balance into long-term deficit.

Hence, the American dollar’s global trade dominance status provides the US with an “exorbitant privilege”—permitting only Americans to enjoy a permanent trade deficit and allowing us to live better than we otherwise would.  The idea that eliminating our current account deficit would “make America wealthy again” is exactly backwards. 

Rhetoric surrounding the radical “Liberation Day” tariff regime ignores Ricardo and harkens back to the good-old-days of tail fins and American manufacturing dominance.  We remember Dad’s made-in-Detroit 1957 Chrysler Windsor, and “good” as those days seemed at the time (real GDP per capita was about one quarter of today’s), they pale in comparison to the 21st century—partly because consumer goods were inferior and much more expensive then.  The idea that Trump’s (now paused) drastic tariff regime would improve Americans’ standard of living is a complete fantasy.

~ Bill Strong and Stephen Rahl, Eschaton Opportunities Fund Quarterly Letter Q1 2025

1957 Chrysler Windsor

Stephen Mack on how defense spending is off limits for DOGE

Is the DOGE initiative a delusion? 

The DOGE initiative promulgated by Elon Musk is being widely celebrated for all of the savings that it has realized.  Much of that savings is attributed to cancelled government contracts across the various federal agencies and departments.  A table of the savings can be found at the DOGE web site [see here].

An analysis of the savings shows that the Department of Defense (DOD) has been essentially untouched by DOGE.  As of 3/20/2025, of the 5,630 cancelled contracts on the list, only 25 (0.44%) are associated with DOD.  Of the notional $19 Billion in total savings, DOD contract cancellations only contribute $10 Million (0.053%) to the total. 

[...]

It must be noted the waste, fraud and abuse at DOD has been documented over many years with many acquisition boondoggles and profligate dysfunctional financial management.  The Pentagon has "failed" all recent audits.  But little has been done to correct the systemic dysfunction in the Pentagon.  DOGE appears to be strangely reluctant to address the pathological elephant in the fiscal living room.

It should also be noted that Elon Musk sees DOD as a target rich environment for his companies.  Is the DOGE interest in addressing the fiscal pathologies in the Pentagon inversely proportional to Elon Musk's interest in making a lot of money from the Pentagon?

~ Stephen Mack, LinkedIn post, March 21, 2025

Tom Bernhardt on AOC's comment that Elon Musk is "a billionaire con man"

I’ve seen this meme posted on X and Facebook by many active Dems.  It’s remarkable on several levels.

Long before Musk’s recent sojourn into politics, I considered him to be the most consequential person this century.  He changed payments with Paypal, propelled the electric car business from niche to mainstream in Tesla, radically reduced the cost of space lift with SpaceX, gave us low-latency global internet with Earthlink, advanced AI at OpenAI, Boring Company provides new tunneling tech, evolved Twitter to being a better free-speech platform with X, and Neuralink advanced brain-computer interface giving hope to victims of neurological damage.  He is a business polymath and tech visionary by any definition.

Contrary to AOC’s post, Musk is a brilliant engineer.  Several years ago, I recall listening to Musk on Lex Fridman’s podcast where he talked in depth about topics such as rocket engine design and autopilot AI for over four hours.  I was very impressed.  But it is his extreme ability to spot opportunity, hire top talent and fearlessly execute that sets him apart. 

Entrepreneurs significantly differ (on average) from the general population in several of the Big Five personality factors, notably being far lower in Agreeableness (going along with others) and Neuroticism (negative emotions such as anxiety) and higher in Openness (curiosity and attraction to the novel).  You see this in spades with Musk, Jobs and others (Gates, Ellison, etc.).  They are very difficult to work for, but the results speak for themselves. Geniuses such as Musk are also often quite eccentric. 

Musk was a hero of the left when he was a lifelong Dem.  Now he is the victim of metastasized TDS.  It’s not surprising that an ex-barista would say something this dumb.  What is surprising is that Dems are picking this up as some piece of important insight.  Until they emerge from this psychopathology, the electorate will shake their collective heads in disbelief and vote otherwise.

~ Tom Bernhardt, Facebook post, March 22, 2025

Porter Collins on the shift right in world politics

Trump is a walking volatility machine.  He is driving Democrats and the Democratic Party insane.  It's in complete disarray at this point...  Look at all the big donors.  All the big donors switched sides immediately.  Elon [Musk], who was Mr. green, Mr. ESG, now he's a hard core right-wing guy.  Tim Cook, Mr. DEI himself, was front row at the inauguration.

And so not only have the politics swung, but the money has swung.  Always follow the money.  The money [has] gone all-in on the Republicans: Facebook, Dana White, all this stuff.  The rest of the world's kind of moving right, too.  A lot of Latin American politics, European politics, all moving to the right.

~ Porter Collins, co-founder, Seawolf Capital, interview with Danny Moses, On The Tape, February 12, 2025

Cathie Wood on supply and demand slowing Nvidia's growth

Q: What other factors could drag on Nvidia’s growth? 

A: China is working hard on developing its own chips, and so are the cloud-service providers such as Google, Amazon.com, and Microsoft.  Tesla is also designing its own chips since they are mission critical for autonomous driving.  Tesla has already pulled some Nvidia chips out of its cars. 

A lot of demand for chips was pulled forward as companies double- or triple-ordered from Nvidia during the chip shortage, trying to get enough supplies.  That cyclical dynamic could play out in the next few months.  Elon Musk recently said that he’s not having trouble getting chips anymore.

~ Cathie Wood, "Cathie Wood Thinks Nvidia Has More to Prove. Her Favorite AI Stocks—and Why She Still Loves Tesla.," Barron's, April 13, 2024

Elon Musk on the response to the October 7 Hamas attack most conducive to long-term peace

This is strictly my opinion: the goal of Hamas was to provoke an overreaction from Israel.  They obviously do not expect to have a military victory, but they really wanted to commit the worst attrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel, and then leverage that aggressive response to rally Muslims worldwide for the cause of Gaza and Palestine, which they have succeeded in doing.  So the counterintuitive thing here, I think the thing that should be done, even though it is very difficult, is that I recommend that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible...  That is the actual thing that would thwart the goal of Hamas.

[...]

If you're not going to just outright commit genocide against an entire people, which obviously shouldn't be acceptable to anyone, then you're going to leave a lot of people alive who subsequently hate Israel.  So the question is "for every Hamas member that you kill, how many did you create?"  And if you create more than you kill, you've not succeeded...  And it's safe to say that if you kill somebody's child in Gaza, you've made at least a few Hamas members who will die just to kill an Israeli...  If the goal ultimately is some sort of long-term peace, one has to look at this from the standpoint of over time are there more or fewer terrorists being created?

~ Elon Musk, "Elon Musk on Israel-Hamas War," Lex Clips, 0:40 mark, November 9, 2023

Bradley Tusk: "Tesla's share price is based on hype and the pixie dust"

Is Tesla a great company that produces a great car?  Absolutely.  Is Tesla worth what General Motors should be or Ford or Toyota should be?  Of course not.  So much of Tesla's share price is based on hype and the pixie dust that Elon Musk is so good at putting out there.  When he risks puncturing that image, it doesn't just reflect on Twitter but Tesla, SpaceX, and everything else he is doing.

~ Bradley Tusk, veteran venture capitalist, Yahoo!Finance Live interview, December 15, 2022

Elon Musk on ESG

I am increasingly convinced that ESG is the Devil Incarnate.

~ Elon Musk, tweet, April 3, 2022

Elon Musk on staying out of politics

In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness.  That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics.

~ Elon Musk, tweet, September 2, 2021

Andrew Ross Sorkin on Elon Musk

I would say betting against Elon Musk is betting against humanity.  It's real.

~ Andrew Ross Sorkin, CNBC discussion with Becky Quick and Joe Kernan, World Economic Forum in Davos, January 22, 2020

(Tesla's market capitalization reached $100 billion for the first time later in trading.  At the time of the comment, TSLA was trading at roughly $580/share in pre-market trading.)

Bethany McLean on Tesla's Gigafactory 2 boondoggle in Buffalo, NY

In public, Musk doesn’t talk much about Tesla’s factory in Buffalo—a place he once, in better times, dubbed Gigafactory 2. Gigafactory 1, of course, is Tesla’s much-hyped futuristic electric car plant outside Reno. Gigafactory 2, which is shrouded in silence and secrets, was a controversial side venture: a high-stakes move to dominate America’s growing market for solar energy. Tesla bought the factory’s main tenant, SolarCity, for almost $5 billion in 2016. The plan, in true Muskian hyperbole, was to turn the plant in Buffalo into what was billed as the largest manufacturing facility of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. SolarCity would build 10,000 solar panels per day and install them on homes and businesses across the country. In the process, it would create 5,000 jobs in an area that very much needed them. “This is one of the poorest cities in the country,” Scott says. “You get a big company here, and it’s a big deal.”

From the outside, the sheer scale of the Buffalo plant sparkles with promise. At 1.2 million square feet, it stands at the point where the Buffalo River bends through the city. The building is gleaming white, as if to signify its freshness amid a landscape of abandoned grain elevators and sprawling, desolate steel mills. The area around the factory is hardscrabble working class; until SolarCity was built, people only drove through it when the fierce wind off Lake Erie shut down the highway that residents take from the southern suburbs to downtown. Now three flags fly in front of the factory: those of the United States, New York State, and Tesla.

But three years after Tesla bought SolarCity, there are serious doubts as to whether the plant will ever fulfill its promises. The website CleanTechnica, which is mostly supportive of Musk, calls SolarCity “a disaster waiting to happen.” A potentially costly lawsuit alleges that Tesla acquired SolarCity at the expense of its own shareholders. And former employees want to know what happened to the massive subsidy Tesla received. “New York State taxpayers deserved more from a $750 million investment,” a laid-off employee named Dale Witherell wrote to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. “Tesla has done a tremendous job providing smoke and mirrors and empty promises to the area.”

~ Bethany McLean, "How Elon Musk Fooled Investors, Bilked Taxpayers, and Gambled Tesla in Order to Save SolarCity," Vanity Fair, August 25, 2019