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The Elon Musk-Twitter drama keeps taking sometimes bizarre, unexpected turns so whatever I write here could be moot not long after the ink dries. <\/p>\n
It’s always been dangerous to talk in absolutes about Musk. He is said to be genius-level smart but he’s done some really dumb things (weird tweets nearly got him jammed up for libel and caused him problems with the Securities and Exchange Commission). His baby di lui, the electric-car giant Tesla, was woefully mismanaged, plagued by production issues, and nearly declared bankruptcy. It miraculously survived and came back stronger, making him the world’s richest man.<\/p>\n
More recently, he famously put down a \u201cbest and final\u201d offer for financially shaky yet ubiquitous social media company Twitter. The price: $ 44 billion or $ 54.20 a share (which included a pot reference; \u201c4:20\u201d is the \u201ctime to toke\u201d in weed-smoking culture). It was a hefty premium to its stock price then and even heftier now after the market sell-off.<\/p>\n
Twitter’s board ultimately realized that Crazy Elon was offering a once-in-lifetime payday for its beleaguered investors and took the deal.<\/p>\n
Musk was on the verge of buying what he called the world’s public square. He would be the king of all media by taking Twitter private and fixing its manifold business flaws (for all its influence, it has no cash flow and no earnings).<\/p>\n
Until suddenly he wasn’t.<\/p>\n
Somewhere along the line, he got into his head that he was overpaying for a dog with fleas. He put the deal on hold indefinitely. His hardly believable reason for threatening to walk: There are too many fake accounts on Twitter that can’t be monetized by him or anyone else. He also said Twitter was hiding this bot problem, something tantamount to fraud. He wants to take a deeper look at the books.<\/p>\n