Elon Musk isn’t on his Twitter leash yet, so he’s taunting the SEC

Enlarge (credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars Technica)

On Saturday, Elon Musk settled a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission claiming that he had violated federal securities laws by tweeting that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Now, days later, Musk has tweeted out a sarcastic message to the SEC:

Just want to that the Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work. And the name change is so on point!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2018

Musk has long waged a rhetorical war against shortsellers—investors who borrow shares of Tesla in order to profit if the price drops. Here he’s suggesting that the agency—whose mission is to protect investors from CEO misconduct—is actually harming the value of Tesla’s stock by enforcing securities laws against Musk and Tesla.

In June, Musk wrote that shorts “have about three weeks before their short position explodes”—presumably a prediction that Tesla’s strong quarterly results would cause Tesla’s stock to rise.