Elon Musk on 60 Minutes: “I do not respect the SEC”

Enlarge (credit: CBS)

If anyone thought that Elon Musk had turned over a new leaf following a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over illegally manipulating Tesla’s stock price, think again. On Sunday, CBS’ 60 Minutes interviewed the Tesla CEO, which gave Musk an opportunity to let the world know exactly what he thinks about SEC. Spoiler alert: not much.

As you may recall, this all started in August, when Musk took to Twitter to tell his 23.6 million followers that he had secured funding to return Tesla to private ownership via way of an oblique drug reference.

Despite adding “Funding secured,” it turned out there was in fact no such commitment. The resulting yo-yo effect on Tesla’s stock price led to a deluge of complaints with the SEC from investors both short and long who lost money as a result, and it caused us to question whether or not Musk’s presence at Tesla was actually a good thing for the company.