King Zuck 👑
  It blows my mind how we all throw around the word "nor'easter" with a straight face, as if it's not a very silly word. Anyone else? Anyway, let's get into it. 📈 MUSKY MUSK  All right, I give up. I've run out of clever ways to try to visualize how bonkers Elon Musk's wealth is. Because his personal wealth keeps growing and it has reached levels that are just plain stupid.
Consider this: The guy made more than $36 billion on Monday. Thirty-six billion. In a day. That's thanks to Tesla's market cap soaring past $1 trillion, making it more valuable than pretty much all major car makers combined.
Because the majority of Musk's personal fortune is tied up in Tesla shares and options, Monday's 13% stock price surge vaulted its CEO, already the richest person on the planet, even farther into the stratosphere of the Bloomberg Billionaires List.
So, to be fair, it's not as if that $36 billion sitting in his bank account — it's all tied up in equity. But even for someone whose wealth regularly waxes and wanes billions of dollars at a time, that's a good day.
OK *cracks knuckles* here's the only way I can wrap my head around the fact that Elon Musk is worth $289 billion:
MY TWO CENTS Never mind that Musk's unfathomable net worth is a pretty clear sign of a broken system — we can get into that another day. But if you're gonna be an uber-billionaire, you don't get to also be a cheapskate, nor do you get to whinge about potentially paying your fair share of taxes.
Musk went on a "philanthropy spending spree," as Vox put it, at the start of the year, giving about $150 million directly to charities. That is a teeny, tiny fraction of the $36 billion he made this past Monday alone.
Today, meanwhile, Musk had the audacity to disparage a Democratic proposal to tax the richest Americans. Under the plan, according to an economist's analysis for the Washington Post, Musk would pay as much as $50 billion in taxes over the first five years. Sounds steep… until you remember that this guy made nearly that much on Monday.
Elon: If you're reading this, congratulations and, please, come off it.  🤝 SPONSOR CONTENT BY COMPARECARDS  Pay No Interest Until 2023 with a Better Credit Card Our credit card experts hand selected the cards below because of their long 0% intro APR interest offers.
#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY 70 It's Greed Season, bebe! The CNN Business Fear & Greed Index, which looks at the VIX volatility index and six other measures of investor sentiment, hit 70 on Tuesday, on the edge of "Extreme Greed" territory. Just a month ago, the index was not far from Extreme Fear levels. So what's changed in the past month? Corporate America has impressed Wall Street with third-quarter earnings, and perhaps more importantly, in its guidance for the fourth quarter and 2022, my colleague Paul R. La Monica explains. 📝 ZUCKY ZUCK  Throughout thousands of pages of leaked Facebook documents, there's an uncomfortable refrain echoing from the company's own employees: Something must be done. Someone must be held accountable.
So now is the moment Mark Zuckerberg comes forward to accept responsibility and hand control over to an outsider with experience managing global corporations. El oh ellll, I'm just messin with you.
On an earnings call Monday night, Zuck sought to reframe the Facebook Papers as a "coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company."
Oh really, Mark? This is Facebook — Facebook — suggesting that media outlets reporting on the documents are cherry-picking content to illicit emotional engagement from our readers? Do you … do you hear yourself?
Here's the thing: Someone, maybe even several someones, could soon become the fall guy for this mess. But Zuck, the 37-year-old who built Facebook into a nearly trillion-dollar company on the mantra "move fast and break things," almost certainly won't be among them.
That's because Facebook's tiered stock structure makes ousting Zuckerberg practically impossible. Although he owns less than half the company's stock, the class of shares he holds vote with much more power than common stock. Zuck controls a majority of the company's voting shares, so even if the board and every shareholder united against him, he'd still control enough votes to get his way.
"He's a king, he's not a CEO," former Facebook employee Yael Eisenstat told Time earlier this month.
And besides, shareholders aren't likely to complain too much. Facebook, for all its faults, has made them immensely wealthy.
Although Facebook stock has lagged behind tech competitors like Apple and Google, shares are up nearly 75% since October 2019. On Monday night, the company posted more than $9 billion in profits for the most recent quarter — up 17% from the previous year.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? 💉 Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted overwhelmingly to recommend the Pfizer vaccine in children between 5 and 11.
🎞️ I haven't even seen "Dune" yet and Warner Bros is already announcing that the sequel, "Dune: Part Two," will be released on October 20, 2023.
❄️ Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire CEO of private-equity giant Blackstone, said he expects high energy prices this winter to spark social unrest around the world. Which is why he plans to winter on his yacht in Maldives — just kidding, he didn't say that last bit.
🍓 A Kellogg's customer filed $5 million lawsuit alleging that Pop-Tarts don't have enough strawberries and are masquerading as health food. Seriously!
🔌 SHAMELESS PLUG This Thursday, October 28, at 12pm ET, CNN Business presents Foreseeable Future: Housing Market Madness.
Join CNN Anchor and Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans for a conversation about the future of the housing market with Barbara Corcoran, the founder of Corcoran Group, followed by a panel discussion with Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, Cadre Founder & CEO Ryan Williams, and Realtor.com CEO David Doctorow.
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