Apologies to GM’s Mary Barra and Ford’s Jim Farley, who I’ve long maligned as the auto industry’s worst CEOs. Turns out Jaguar Land Rover’s Adrian Mardell has them both beat.
Business
Why Larry Ellison Is No Elon Musk
The media last week breathlessly focused on Oracle founder Larry Ellison briefly overtaking Elon Musk as the world’s richest person. Only veteran Barron’s scribe Andrew Bary noted the very different ways they built their fortunes.
Ellison’s wealth rests on legal stock manipulation. Musk’s wealth was earned the old-fashioned American way: building innovative businesses.
Jamie Dimon’s Sgt. Schultz Jeffrey Epstein Plea
It’s heartening that the New York Times has published a detailed exposé exposing JPMorgan Chase’s culpability as one of Jeffrey Epstein’s enablers and showing the bank ultimately bears responsibility for some of the sex offender’s illicit activities. Regretfully, the Times seems short on editors who could have made the dense…
Built for Repairs: The Perils of Buying a Ford!
Ford has already recalled nearly 8 million vehicles in 2025 — more than it will sell worldwide. Here’s my PSA for anyone thinking of buying a vehicle with a Blue Oval on the hood.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s Headless Bodies
From tiki statues and “family” talk to 4,000 pink slips and an army of bots.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff calls this “progress.” I call it another entry in my CEO Hall of Shame.
Woke Pepsi Falls Prey to Elliott Barbarians. Karma!
Woke Pepsi spent years greenwashing, virtue signaling — and blowing billions on stock buybacks to fizz its share price. Paul Singer’s ruthless Elliott Investment Management has taken note.
Pepsi’s fate couldn’t happen to a more deserving management.
My Morning MVP: QB Patrick Mahomes’ Can of Joe
Patrick Mahomes has already established himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. In short order, he could also be more closely associated with coffee than Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol.
Mahomes helped concoct far superior coffee beverages.
Fuzzy Math, Fat Dividends, Put Ford Family First
The Ford family once tightened their belts to protect their company. Today? They’re milking it with generous dividends.
Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Weil — the first reporter to question Enron’s finances and a relentless critic of private equity’s “fishy” accounting — has sounded the alarm on Ford’s dividend math.
Weil’s take? Ford’s “adjusted free cash flow” is little more than cash flow before bad stuff. Wall Street has a less charitable term for Ford’s financial legerdemain.
Protect Children From Mark Zuckerberg’s Greed
Mark Zuckerberg spent $110M to wall himself off from his Silicon Valley neighbors. He could have used some of his billions to wall children off from Meta’s chatbots.
Reuters uncovered internal guidelines that allowed bots to flirt with kids and even write racist screeds. Meta’s response? The same rinse-and-repeat PR denial we’ve heard for years.
So far, only rock legend Neil Young has expressed outrage — and bolted from Facebook.
Enron Sleuth Jonathan Weil’s Private Equity Alarm
Pension funds. University endowments. Your retirement account. The Wall Street Journal reporter who first exposed Enron warns they could be the next victims of private equity’s “fishy” accounting.