Liam Denning, Columnist

Elon Musk Has a ‘Super Bad Feeling.’ Should Everyone?

Tesla’s bloated workforce may help explain the CEO’s gloomy outlook.

June 3, 2022 at 2:01 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

He has a “super bad feeling.”
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t worry when the richest person in the world says he has a “super bad feeling” about the economy. It’s just worth taking a moment to consider the messenger and the wider context.

If Jamie Dimon can throw out stormy weather analogies, then Elon Musk is of course free to deploy the Silicon Valley “super” in a non-super way. Dimon’s “hurricane” comment caught attention because it jarred with earlier comments of his and, crucially, he runs the biggest bank in the biggest economy on the planet. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has myriad fingers in many pies (including that one Musk is cooking up with Twitter Inc.).