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It's really concerning that theres essentially a giant liability, Elon's personal debt, that doesnt show up on the balance sheet. As the article discusses, a ma

It's really concerning that theres essentially a giant liability, Elon's personal debt, that doesnt show up on the balance sheet. As the article discusses, a margin call would be devastating, and hopefully any irresponsible decisions in his personal lifestyle choices don't spill over to put Tesla or SpaceX at risk. Especially considering how powerful a force they've been in driving consumer changes in vehicles and in developing the commercial space market.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Very unlikely, but if necessary Tesla would go through a Chapter 11 reorg, not a 7 liquidation. The brand, charging network, and manufacturing capacity has too much value to throw away. When Tesla was on the brink of insolvency years ago, he had a handshake deal with Larry Page (they jetpooled together) for Google to acquire Tesla and for Musk to continue to run day to day operations. Wasn’t necessary, but there are options. Elon will be fine.
- Alupis 6y ago
  Either that, or Musk fails and brings down all the things propped up by his charisma and enthusiasm... and the world learns a lesson.
  - api 6y ago
    The lesson learned would be "don't do new things, and don't believe in anyone who suggests that you do new things." That's not a positive lesson. The other lesson could be "maybe we shouldn't rely on one person's charisma to drive us to do new and interesting things," but that's not likely to be the lesson learned.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      I'd think it's the second lesson that will be learned. Musk has been on the verge of failure for years, and cracks are showing now more than ever before. I'd hate for everyone to stop dreaming for tomorrow just because one guy couldn't pull off everything imaginable. For all the good things Musk does, he also does a lot of bad things. Including but not limited to dreaming up absurd fantasies to "reinvent" industries he has literally zero experience in (aviation comes to mind, drilling tunnels, underwater rescue, etc) - and everyone fixates on that imaginary solution because he said it. Not to mention taking credit for all the hard work the actual aerospace, mechanical and other engineers are doing under Musk. Very seldom do you hear Musk talk about how incredible the team is and how lucky he is to have them working on these problems. No, instead he has the gall to call himself Lead Designer this, or Chief Architect that. We all know he's not sitting down and crunching math to design rockets and cars and more. Look at Hyperloop. People are still wasting money, energy and resources on it, regardless that what we have in testing today are just Maglev trains in tubes... a far cry from what Musk originally dreamt up. Nevermind how impractical or prohibitively expensive and uneconomical it would be to build trains across the US, oceans, across the world all connected. People want to dream. Fine. But trusting all of the future to just one guy... I'm not so sure.
      - mcot2 6y ago
        Theres a lot of B.S. in your post but I just wanted to point out that Elon constantly praises the Tesla and SpaceX teams on Twitter, Quarterly conference calls, Podcasts and in other investor presentations. There is for sure a cult of personality like there was for Steve Jobs.
      - kiba 6y ago
        Not to mention taking credit for all the hard work the actual aerospace, mechanical and other engineers are doing under Musk. Very seldom do you hear Musk talk about how incredible the team is and how lucky he is to have them working on these problems. He constantly praise or give credit to his teams, even full credit where it is due. No, instead he has the gall to call himself Lead Designer this, or Chief Architect that. We all know he's not sitting down and crunching math to design rockets and cars and more. Yes? All the bucks stop with him. He makes engineering decisions, bad or good. It doesn't matter if he doesn't have the relevant degree or did the calculation on a particular project.
      - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
        What cracks are showing more than ever before?
      - ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago
        I honestly know a lot of scientists who get really upset because Elon shows you don't need a degree to do any of that.
      - bronz 6y ago
        so how long have you been following elon musk? how long have you been paying close attention to him? cracks are showing now more than ever before? this implies you have been looking for cracks for at least ten years. or perhaps you are yet another casual onlooker who, after reading a few articles about elon musk in the washington post over the past three years, doesnt know what the hell they are talking about? > takes credit for all the hard work the actual [employees] do he literally addresses this exact sentiment multiple times in many interviews, gushing with praise and admiration for the thousands of engineers who make tesla and spacex possible. literally yesterday he stated in an interview "it would be impossible for me to [build rockets] without my employees [...]." but you dont know any of this because, surprise, you dont know what the hell you are talking about. > absurd fantasies about industries he has LITERALLY no experience in ie automobiles and rockets? > hyperloop did you even read the white-paper? oh, im a musk fan-boy. good thing too, because you might have had to use critical, logical thought instead of dismissing me. saved you some energy. before i or anyone else heard of elon musk or the roadster, i was an electric vehicle person. i was an advocate for electric vehicles. everyone in my small camp knew that an electric vehicle revolution (like the one we are experiencing today) was possible but nobody seemed to get it. then elon musk came and did it. did it despite facing intense resistance, criticism and pushback, being called a carpet-bagger (ahem) and even having the new york times sabotage him. back when nobody knew who elon musk was, i had a front row seat to his first rodeo with "the haters." he is single-handedly responsible for getting EVs to where they are today. none of the manufacturers were doing it -- they were in fact sabotaging progress intentionally. and if anyone counters with "nissan leaf," they are only betraying how little they know about electric vehicles. sorry but he did amazing work and he has earned the right to not be subject to inaccurate facts and characterizations. i dont like everything elon musk does. he cheated on a married man for example. but he has earned the right to factual consideration of him and his activities.
    - dagnabbit 6y ago
      That's silly. Nobody who criticizes Elon Musk does so on the basis that he does new things.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tehjoker 6y ago
  The people in charge in America only fail upwards, never down.
  - RhysU 6y ago
    Is that statement tautological?
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      No. In a healthy society, when the people in charge fail, they are demoted or shunned depending on how badly they did. For example, should Judith Miller still have her job at the NYT after cheerleading the march to war in Iraq based on fake evidence? Obviously not. People that perform well and are correct should have the top seats. It helps to compare the harsh treatment of the average worker to the soft humanized treatment reserved for the bosses and war criminals.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  If Tesla goes through Chapter 11, there's no way in hell Musk will be running it afterwards. He gets away with all his shenanigans because he's a rain maker. If his incredible run of success dries up, the narrative is going to shift hard.
  - avmich 6y ago
    > If his incredible run of success dries up, the narrative is going to shift hard. I remember how Apple kicked out Jobs. Any chance Tesla will suddenly find a competing company in EV market which it can buy with certain conditions?..
    - na85 6y ago
      I know it's fashionable of late to lionize Jobs, but was it really him or was it just the "second-generation effect"? Look at Microsoft under Ballmer, or Google after Page/Brin. All seem(ed) to be hollow shells of what once was.
      - adtac 6y ago
        Google has been anything but a hollow shell from a shareholder's perspective. They've gone from strength to strength.
      - vkou 6y ago
        Google was wildly successful under Eric Schmidt.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - lowdose 6y ago
    Yes Elon has a reality distortion field but that's allowed when pushing for real progress. A reality distortion field becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and it has the ability to change the fabric of our reality. I didn't expect the kind of naysayer here on HN.
  - 6y ago
- SquishyPanda23 6y ago
  With Google tightening its belt to appease Wall Street, I doubt investors would look kindly on Google acquiring a struggling business just because too friends shook hands on an airplane.
- ydb 6y ago
  I hope Elon will be fine. The future depends on benevolent billionaires like himself to get us out of the financial mess the governments of the world have put us in. If we have any hope of tackling climate change, Tesla will be front and center in that battle. Besides, he just had a child! What a wonderful gift to the world. I hope his child grows up to be as wise and down-to-earth as his father. :)
beervirus 6y ago
> Tesla’s board has capped how much Mr. Musk can borrow at 25% of the value of whatever shares he pledges as collateral. The value would have to decline a LOT before he got a margin call.
zozbot234 6y ago
Didn't Elon just tweet a few days ago that he'd be selling a lot of his personal stuff? That seems like he's being quite prudent and responsible if anything.
- robbiep 6y ago
  That’s literally the article?
- mire_rustling 6y ago
  Everything he does is for PR. That tweet came out right before he got his bonus payout. He's had controversy with the virus and his factories. By tweeting that out, he gave off a "billionaire doesn't care about money" vibe. What got more coverage? His payout or his rambling tweets. He would have got more flak if the press covered his payout while he has been pushing his workers to get back into the factories.
  - gpm 6y ago
    > Everything he does is for PR. That tweet came out right before he got his bonus payout. This is overly cynical. A fair bit of what he does is about PR - but not all of it. He's still human and it's pretty clear that he uses twitter as a stress relief mechanism (for better or worse). Whether that was for PR or not is pretty unclear. It was basically simultaneous with him (according to him) having a fight with his girlfriend a few days before his child was born, and in the middle of him tweeting a bunch of nonsense that definitely wasn't for pr.
    - new_realist 6y ago
      The nonsense wasn’t PR, it was drugs.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
pmorici 6y ago
Seems like they are over hyping the margin call risk. It says in there that his total borrowing is ~500 million and his paper assets are estimated at $39 billion. The debt is a lot in absolute terms but relative to his assets it is less than 2% of his wealth which seems really low to me.
hourislate 6y ago
Perhaps Starlink will save him. It does have the potential to become a money printing machine.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

Very unlikely, but if necessary Tesla would go through a Chapter 11 reorg, not a 7 liquidation. The brand, charging network, and manufacturing capacity has too much value to throw away. When Tesla was on the brink of insolvency years ago, he had a handshake deal with Larry Page (they jetpooled together) for Google to acquire Tesla and for Musk to continue to run day to day operations. Wasn’t necessary, but there are options. Elon will be fine.

Alupis 6y ago
Either that, or Musk fails and brings down all the things propped up by his charisma and enthusiasm... and the world learns a lesson.
- api 6y ago
  The lesson learned would be "don't do new things, and don't believe in anyone who suggests that you do new things." That's not a positive lesson. The other lesson could be "maybe we shouldn't rely on one person's charisma to drive us to do new and interesting things," but that's not likely to be the lesson learned.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    I'd think it's the second lesson that will be learned. Musk has been on the verge of failure for years, and cracks are showing now more than ever before. I'd hate for everyone to stop dreaming for tomorrow just because one guy couldn't pull off everything imaginable. For all the good things Musk does, he also does a lot of bad things. Including but not limited to dreaming up absurd fantasies to "reinvent" industries he has literally zero experience in (aviation comes to mind, drilling tunnels, underwater rescue, etc) - and everyone fixates on that imaginary solution because he said it. Not to mention taking credit for all the hard work the actual aerospace, mechanical and other engineers are doing under Musk. Very seldom do you hear Musk talk about how incredible the team is and how lucky he is to have them working on these problems. No, instead he has the gall to call himself Lead Designer this, or Chief Architect that. We all know he's not sitting down and crunching math to design rockets and cars and more. Look at Hyperloop. People are still wasting money, energy and resources on it, regardless that what we have in testing today are just Maglev trains in tubes... a far cry from what Musk originally dreamt up. Nevermind how impractical or prohibitively expensive and uneconomical it would be to build trains across the US, oceans, across the world all connected. People want to dream. Fine. But trusting all of the future to just one guy... I'm not so sure.
    - mcot2 6y ago
      Theres a lot of B.S. in your post but I just wanted to point out that Elon constantly praises the Tesla and SpaceX teams on Twitter, Quarterly conference calls, Podcasts and in other investor presentations. There is for sure a cult of personality like there was for Steve Jobs.
    - kiba 6y ago
      Not to mention taking credit for all the hard work the actual aerospace, mechanical and other engineers are doing under Musk. Very seldom do you hear Musk talk about how incredible the team is and how lucky he is to have them working on these problems. He constantly praise or give credit to his teams, even full credit where it is due. No, instead he has the gall to call himself Lead Designer this, or Chief Architect that. We all know he's not sitting down and crunching math to design rockets and cars and more. Yes? All the bucks stop with him. He makes engineering decisions, bad or good. It doesn't matter if he doesn't have the relevant degree or did the calculation on a particular project.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
      What cracks are showing more than ever before?
    - ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago
      I honestly know a lot of scientists who get really upset because Elon shows you don't need a degree to do any of that.
    - bronz 6y ago
      so how long have you been following elon musk? how long have you been paying close attention to him? cracks are showing now more than ever before? this implies you have been looking for cracks for at least ten years. or perhaps you are yet another casual onlooker who, after reading a few articles about elon musk in the washington post over the past three years, doesnt know what the hell they are talking about? > takes credit for all the hard work the actual [employees] do he literally addresses this exact sentiment multiple times in many interviews, gushing with praise and admiration for the thousands of engineers who make tesla and spacex possible. literally yesterday he stated in an interview "it would be impossible for me to [build rockets] without my employees [...]." but you dont know any of this because, surprise, you dont know what the hell you are talking about. > absurd fantasies about industries he has LITERALLY no experience in ie automobiles and rockets? > hyperloop did you even read the white-paper? oh, im a musk fan-boy. good thing too, because you might have had to use critical, logical thought instead of dismissing me. saved you some energy. before i or anyone else heard of elon musk or the roadster, i was an electric vehicle person. i was an advocate for electric vehicles. everyone in my small camp knew that an electric vehicle revolution (like the one we are experiencing today) was possible but nobody seemed to get it. then elon musk came and did it. did it despite facing intense resistance, criticism and pushback, being called a carpet-bagger (ahem) and even having the new york times sabotage him. back when nobody knew who elon musk was, i had a front row seat to his first rodeo with "the haters." he is single-handedly responsible for getting EVs to where they are today. none of the manufacturers were doing it -- they were in fact sabotaging progress intentionally. and if anyone counters with "nissan leaf," they are only betraying how little they know about electric vehicles. sorry but he did amazing work and he has earned the right to not be subject to inaccurate facts and characterizations. i dont like everything elon musk does. he cheated on a married man for example. but he has earned the right to factual consideration of him and his activities.
  - dagnabbit 6y ago
    That's silly. Nobody who criticizes Elon Musk does so on the basis that he does new things.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tehjoker 6y ago
The people in charge in America only fail upwards, never down.
- RhysU 6y ago
  Is that statement tautological?
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    No. In a healthy society, when the people in charge fail, they are demoted or shunned depending on how badly they did. For example, should Judith Miller still have her job at the NYT after cheerleading the march to war in Iraq based on fake evidence? Obviously not. People that perform well and are correct should have the top seats. It helps to compare the harsh treatment of the average worker to the soft humanized treatment reserved for the bosses and war criminals.
reitzensteinm 6y ago
If Tesla goes through Chapter 11, there's no way in hell Musk will be running it afterwards. He gets away with all his shenanigans because he's a rain maker. If his incredible run of success dries up, the narrative is going to shift hard.
- avmich 6y ago
  > If his incredible run of success dries up, the narrative is going to shift hard. I remember how Apple kicked out Jobs. Any chance Tesla will suddenly find a competing company in EV market which it can buy with certain conditions?..
  - na85 6y ago
    I know it's fashionable of late to lionize Jobs, but was it really him or was it just the "second-generation effect"? Look at Microsoft under Ballmer, or Google after Page/Brin. All seem(ed) to be hollow shells of what once was.
    - adtac 6y ago
      Google has been anything but a hollow shell from a shareholder's perspective. They've gone from strength to strength.
    - vkou 6y ago
      Google was wildly successful under Eric Schmidt.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- lowdose 6y ago
  Yes Elon has a reality distortion field but that's allowed when pushing for real progress. A reality distortion field becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and it has the ability to change the fabric of our reality. I didn't expect the kind of naysayer here on HN.
- 6y ago
SquishyPanda23 6y ago
With Google tightening its belt to appease Wall Street, I doubt investors would look kindly on Google acquiring a struggling business just because too friends shook hands on an airplane.
ydb 6y ago
I hope Elon will be fine. The future depends on benevolent billionaires like himself to get us out of the financial mess the governments of the world have put us in. If we have any hope of tackling climate change, Tesla will be front and center in that battle. Besides, he just had a child! What a wonderful gift to the world. I hope his child grows up to be as wise and down-to-earth as his father. :)

beervirus 6y ago

> Tesla’s board has capped how much Mr. Musk can borrow at 25% of the value of whatever shares he pledges as collateral. The value would have to decline a LOT before he got a margin call.

zozbot234 6y ago

Didn't Elon just tweet a few days ago that he'd be selling a lot of his personal stuff? That seems like he's being quite prudent and responsible if anything.

robbiep 6y ago
That’s literally the article?
mire_rustling 6y ago
Everything he does is for PR. That tweet came out right before he got his bonus payout. He's had controversy with the virus and his factories. By tweeting that out, he gave off a "billionaire doesn't care about money" vibe. What got more coverage? His payout or his rambling tweets. He would have got more flak if the press covered his payout while he has been pushing his workers to get back into the factories.
- gpm 6y ago
  > Everything he does is for PR. That tweet came out right before he got his bonus payout. This is overly cynical. A fair bit of what he does is about PR - but not all of it. He's still human and it's pretty clear that he uses twitter as a stress relief mechanism (for better or worse). Whether that was for PR or not is pretty unclear. It was basically simultaneous with him (according to him) having a fight with his girlfriend a few days before his child was born, and in the middle of him tweeting a bunch of nonsense that definitely wasn't for pr.
  - new_realist 6y ago
    The nonsense wasn’t PR, it was drugs.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

pmorici 6y ago

Seems like they are over hyping the margin call risk. It says in there that his total borrowing is ~500 million and his paper assets are estimated at $39 billion. The debt is a lot in absolute terms but relative to his assets it is less than 2% of his wealth which seems really low to me.

hourislate 6y ago

Perhaps Starlink will save him. It does have the potential to become a money printing machine.