"60 Minutes" did 16 minutes of Elon Musk interview. A fair piece, it is more aimed at those who don't have a clue about Musk. Bob Wilson
Apparently Jim Cramer had a hissy-fit: https://www.thestreet.com/video/jim-cramer-says-that-tesla-s-a-cold-stock--14805639?puc=yahoov&cm_ven=YAHOOV&yptr=yahoo . . . Cramer said that the comments that Musk made about the SEC is an "above the law reference." If you make money buying and selling stocks, the SEC is your friend. But if you make money making and selling the best car on the market, anything that doesn't help is a hindrance. Not part of the interview, Musk has pointed out that "short" sellers are free to publish the most biased and often wrong rumors without ever facing SEC enforcement (aka. Inside Business, Cramer.) So the anti-Tesla crowd is free to spread bovine fecal matter and never face the SEC. Bob Wilson
Cramer said that the comments that Musk made about the SEC is an "above the law reference." Cramer? The guy who admitted he repeatedly used his TV program to manipulate stock prices, to benefit a stock fund he managed? A guy who is no longer allowed to manage any stock fund, because of his criminal market manipulation? The maxim is: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I don't think Cramer qualifies. (◣_◢)
Oh, for the record: I agree with Musk re the SEC. They let professional short-sellers perform rampant stock market manipulation on a constant basis. Even worse, the SEC ignores how large financial companies regularly practice market manipulation with pump-and-dump schemes. The SEC never goes after them. And yet they go after Musk for posting a couple of tweets (as I recall, it was two and not just one) because of the effect on the market. Now, I'm not saying they should go after every Tom, Dick and Harry who short-sells TSLA and posts FUD to Seeking Alpha. Nobody would take seriously most of what's posted anonymously to an online forum, and certainly no sensible and reasonable person would take personal investment advice from a random anonymous internet post. But when you have professional stock fund managers and "analysts" like Edward Niedermeyer, Mark B. Spiegel, and Jim Chanos, professionals who deliberately promote utterly and completely baseless smear campaigns intended to damage Tesla's reputation in an attempt to manipulate Tesla's stock price, then I think they should be every bit as subject to investigation and criminal charges by the SEC and/or the Justice Dept. as a CEO like Elon Musk. What they do is fraud, and it should be investigated and prosecuted just like any other fraud. I consider it a real injustice that they're not. All just my opinion, of course.
Their only saving grace is it caused me to research their claims by reading the Tesla quarterly reports. The light came on and I withdrew part of my 401k and invested. Then I took profits from a 30% sale and diversified into gold. Funnily enough, both have gone up ~25% since the first week of November. <GRINS> Bob Wilson
Apparently there was some editing done: https://electrek.co/2018/12/11/elon-musk-misleading-edit-tesla-interview-60-minutes/ Bob Wilson
It's to be expected, frankly, that any interview which isn't shown in full is going to be edited in a way which makes it as controversial as possible, or at least presents a distorted picture which is more controversial than an objective summary would be. All my personal experience with the news media fits this pattern, including a local TV news interview with my father, where they edited several minutes of an interview down to just a couple of sound bites. Editing to make news "stories" more "interesting" -- i.e., more controversial -- than a "we just want the facts, ma'am" reporting, is one of the reasons people distrust mainstream news to the extent that we do. It's not like this is anything new, either. Why do reporters and journalists call it a "story" if it's just factual news? Sensationalized tabloid reporting goes back at least to the Victorian era and The Illustrated London News.
