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With about $13 billion of debt taken up by Twitter in the deal with Musk there is increasing concern about servicing this debt, and the interest costs of about $1 billion a year far exceeding the $150 million previously borne. Musk says Twitter cannot rely on advertisers and he expects verified users to pay a $8 monthly fee for use of Twitter. "Its the only way to defeat the bots and trolls," says Musk of the subscription fees needed to pay the bills.

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The social media site Twitter frequently loses money and took on $13 billion in debt says this report in the NYT. Musk faces financial challenges a he takes over the company, and this report says the company would be unlikely to invest and simply be paying the bills. Twitter it says, has not made a profit for 8 of its past 10 years. 

Twitter's interest expense alone would grow from $50 million to $1 billion with the new debt. Company operations generated about $630 million in cash flow to fund operations. Twitter had $6 billion in cash before the buyout and a large part of this would have gone to close the acquisition. All the financial resources of the company will now go to service the debt. About $1.2 billion in marketing expenses mostly salaries are likely to be cut. And layoffs of a significant fraction of the total employees may be a way to conserve capital to service the added debt, this report shows.

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The economy, wages and cost of living, the failures in infrastructure and at Deutsche Bahn, migration or remigration are issues in Germany. During periods when there are Christmas market attacks in recent years  remigration has emerged as an issue. Migration is no longer the issue in Germany as it was during high levels of migration under Merkel following the wars in Syria and Iraq, unrest in North African countries such as Tunisia with Arab Spring.  The policies of CDU's Merkel tapping into potential migrant labor to meet shortages of manpower in the economy have been reversed by CDU and SPD+ Greens since 2020. Musk wades into this issue only to find Christian Democrats, Free Democrats cautioning him that he lacks understanding of what is happening. Remigration is now essentially accepted by the Social Democrats, and Christian Demcorats, advocated by Wagenknect Left and AfD right parties alike, leaving little room for AfD to grow except from unease.  CDU Merz polls at 30-36% but lacks answers to the Ukraine war. AfD is at about 20%. Wagenkenecht has taken positions opposing immmigration and migrants similar to Socialist parties in Denmark, which means most of the European Union across all parties have reversed position on migration similar to Labor in Britain under Keir Starmer. ...

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This NYT report covers the period around 2019 and since when Tesla established its first factory in China.  It is the remarkable story of how the intuition and rapid decisionmaking  of Huang Li, a top Shanghai official and now premier since 2022, helped China create its own EV industry from scratch. He did this by giving Tesla a start with a new factory in Shanghai with $1.5 billion in incentivized loans and building it in 1 year 2019-2020.  A top Shanghai official Huang Li hoped to attract Tesla to China in 2019 after contacts were opened through California officials. Tesla had its only factory at Fremont, California, and had worked with the state government on a program of emissions credits as a form of financing that it could use. California officials  advocated for a similar policy in China in 2019. With Mr. Li's backing the Tesla factory in Shanghai was built in 1 year, California style emissions credit were put in place in China. What Mr. Huang Li's intuition told him was that China was at a turning point it had to take strong steps for a emissions free auto industry to tackle climate change. A company like Tesla offered an opportunity to do this. The factory was built faster than Chinese time in 1 year and loans of $1.5 billion helped finance this. Li correctly sensed that local supplier chain had to be built giving China a way to build its own EV industry. CATL was a lead supplier to Tesla. By providing assistance to CATL and other suppliers and using China's rapid development model Li was able to build an entire EV vehicle industry from scratch. BYD became through work in the pandemic years the largest EV maker in the world, and CATL the largest battery maker. Tesla provided the impetus which Li took on with the idea of building its own versions to soon overtake Tesla in 4 years between 2020 and 2024. BYD went even further and developed its own in house battery technology to cut costs and bring prices down. ...

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How could banks lend so much money in billions of dollars when educational work to educate people gets so little money and when so many billions of dollars are simply wasted on projects that deliver so little to the people or the Nation?

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The confusion and dimming outlook surrounding Twitter and other social media companies is shown here in this report in the WSJ.

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Nigel Farage of Reform surges ahead in the UK. With Tories under Kemi Badenoch uncertain about the future. Labour under Keir Starmer tells Whitehall civil servants to focus attention on delivering results that help improve the lives of the people and to bring results that are visible and make a difference to people.

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Toyota ended its relationship with Tesla to focus on fuel cell technologies. Panasonic is taking up electric car batteries project in stages to limit risk. As Tesla focusses on a car for the mass market at $35,000, both the upside and the downside are evident, as shown in this report by Pulliam, Ramsey and Mullins of the WSJ. The reporters say the arrrangement of interconnected companies Solar City, Tesla, and SPace X through Musk's holdings and his personal loans to companies in difficulty such as Solar City- using his Tesla shares as collateral- is a risky business. This follows the way Valeant shares lost 14% in one day, as market perception changed. Venture capital companies such as Jurvetson with which Tesla has connections, and relatives, round up the ownership of these companies in a tightly knit arrangement with Musk as the key shareholder in an unconventional arrangement, says WSJ.

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Elon Musk and others who say MBA's are a problem for America. MBA training does not bring  the creativity and original ideas and doer approach America so desperately needs today. Asking Business school professors or lecturers about their opinion on MBA's does not make sense as this is how they earn their living. Musk is outspoken about this- "I think there is a MBA-ization of America, which I think is maybe not that great. There should be more focus on the product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials."