[lazide]

Hah, the reason Musk is able to do what he wants on this front is because for these leasing companies, their choice is either him or…. Vacant.

He’s just calling their bluff.

If they thought they could get another tenant, they already would have.

Commercial real estate in many areas of the US is so crazy delusional right now (and has been for years) it’s all about who blinks first and who has leverage.

[tardy_one]

That's a Musk summary of his distorted reality. What happened in their international real estate is that they vacated key real estate where they had leases. They've pissed off the people that will do their long term leases on prime showrooms to BYD, not just the desperate highway belt office park admins.

Even if people in that part of the real estate market are desperate relative to their normal they have tricks to ignore business they don't want to deal with and take a lower offer from someone they either trust or at least don't distrust.

Making it obvious that the US is no longer a country of laws and contract law will work against people like him in the long run, so his take for a lot of future costs is irrational and I think he should finally deal with his mental problems.

[lazide]

Uh, sure.

Except this has always been a risk in commercial real estate. And has played out over and over again with a wide variety of tenants.

Is it a dick move? Sure.

Good thing landlords never try and pull any dick moves eh?

Nice try on the ‘law and order’ bit though.

Not sure how calling your counterparty crazy helps the bottom line, it just seems to make it more obvious someone didn’t actually think through the deal they were making, and is sore about it. Speaking of delusion….

A lot more folks are starting to look down now this summer, and it’s looking a lot scarier eh?

[tardy_one]

Yeah.. Everyone should expect every publically traded corporation to end up controlled by someone in the same mental decline as McAfee and never make a long term contract they don't expect to spend millions enforcing internationally.

Ruining such people's future prospects whenever this happens to reduce the future risk has been such a good strategy that countries like the US introduced credit rating bureaus to emulate this for managing risk with less famous people.

We are naturally in a very unusual time, but things will shift back and the facts will stay and reputational meaning will be interpreted correctly then.

There are always enough idiots to do business with if you are a famous connman, but your business is always of a certain limited category.

If he were poor and did this I think you'd admit he is a putz. I live in a free country where I can choose which market participants to deal with and see no reason to feel intimidated by the buying power of a putz I won't ever be foolish enough to depend on. The more significant someone is in the society the more likely they are to be able to afford my position and not risk yours.

[lazide]

Eh, public companies the dynamics are different - the CEO rarely has the shareholders by the balls, it’s usually the other way around. Private Equity or private corps? Always been this way, albeit they’re usually a lot more careful about PR and CYA.

Howard Hughes did things like Musk though. It’s part of his brand. Anyone doing business with him that didn’t expect some kind of shenanigans if things changed was being willfully ignorant.

If he was poor and did things this way, he wouldn’t have leverage and it wouldn’t work. Same if he didn’t have the shareholders by the balls.

What works is what matters eh?

Or as they say, he’s not crazy - he’s eccentric. When/if he ends up poor, we can call him crazy again.

Long term, Karma/reputation wise, I would hope you are correct. It is often how it has worked in the US.

If you were in Russia in the 90’s and assumed that is how it worked going forward, you’d be in pretty bad shape though eh? Hopefully you’d only end up broke/bankrupt and not in a Gulag or thrown out a window.

At the point someone is writing commercial leases, the kid gloves have been off a long time ago, and it’s hard for anyone to shed any tears for the outcomes.