Elon’s Folly, Fed Clues, & Zaz on the Edge

PREVIEW VERSION

Start a free 7 day trial to unlock unlimited access to Puck.

Happy Sunday, and welcome back to Dry Powder.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the opening act of Elon’s Twitter Regime has been an absolute cluster-you-know-what. It’s hard to see how his baffling decisions—firing some 50 percent of the workforce; naming and shaming apprehensive advertisers; bullying “blue check” power users—might salvage the business, but in today’s issue, I try to make sense of it all, or at least his predicament. Plus, some notes on JayPow’s latest round of inflation management and thoughts on WBD’s dismal Q3 earnings report.

Can’t see the full story? You're receiving the free version of Dry Powder at . For full access to Puck, and to each of my colleagues, you can subscribe here.

Learn More

Elon’s Folly, Fed Clues, & Zaz on the Edge

News and notes on the most astonishing Wall Street stories of the week: Silicon Valley’s deep freeze, JayPow’s hidden message, and the Warner Bros. Discovery mess.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

It’s high beta time at Twitter, where Elon Musk seems to be taking the approach that to save the village square you have to first blow it up. And he certainly is free to do literally whatever he wants at Twitter. He owns something like 75 percent of the company now, has no board of directors, at least as far as we know, and has no one running the operation as his C.E.O. So it’s all Elon, all the time, now at Twitter.

And he’s just going for it, for better or worse. I mean, who in their right mind would fire 50 percent of the workforce in his first week of ownership while threatening to “name and shame” companies that have pulled their advertising and bully “blue check” power users off the platform? These are precisely the...

Keep Reading with a Free Trial

FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT