Elon Musk is speaking out on the potential of an economic recession — and he certainly isn't holding back.
Kathy Hutchins | ShutterstockThe billionaire, who is currently in the midst of a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, was asked by one of his followers on the social media platform if he thought that the U.S. was headed towards a recession in the near future.
Musk confirmed that he did in fact believe that a recession was imminent but dubbed it a “good thing” for the workforce.
“It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen,” the Tesla CEO wrote bluntly. “Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!”
One of Musk’s 95.3 million followers asked a follow up question about how long the billionaire expected the recession to last, to which Musk gave a surprising (and not so positive) response.
“Based on past experience, about 12 to 18 months,” he responded. “Companies that are inherently negative cash flow (ie value destroyers) need to die, so that they stop consuming resources.”
How about that for some uplifting pre-weekend banter!
Musk stated last week that his bid to purchase Twitter was “on hold” until Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was able to show proof to back up claims that only 5% of total Twitter users were bots and spam accounts, something Musk has been vocally adamant about fixing pending his takeover of the company.
However, per Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting that took place on Wednesday, Agrawal led investors to believe that the deal was in fact proceeding, though he did not directly address the pending acquisition in further detail.
"We are working through the transaction process," the Twitter CEO said. "For regulatory and other reasons, we cannot discuss the transaction today. Even as we work toward closing this transaction, our teams and I remain focused on the important work we do every day to serve the public conversation."