Hard time is for suckers that can't afford the $40m fine.

>shouldn't Elon Musk be doing hard time?

He should be, but they basically gave him the same treatment they give a lot of people: a slap on the wrist.

And forced him to step down as chair in 2018.

Isn't that what everyone in CNBC is doing?

1. Because that's market manipulation.

2. SEC did something to Musk, maybe you forgot, maybe you don't think it was enough, but they did something.

> "The US Securities Exchange Act defines market manipulation as "transactions which create an artificial price or maintain an artificial price for a tradable security"."

They are 'manipulating the market' in an informal sense, but not in the sense that actually matters. There is nothing wrong with publicly stating that you think some stock is overvalued. Particularly not if you back up your claim with some evidence, which is what Hindenburg does.

Relatedly, how does a 17 day old account, with no submissions, attract 416 karma points? Not commenting on the quality of your writing, but it seems extraordinary. Unfortunately the market history on HN is private.

As speedybird points out, that's not market manipulation in the legal sense. And if it were, the Fortune 500 CEOs and CFOs should go to jail immediately, because they all have whole departments that release information to analysts and the public in ways intended to influence the stock price.

If that's what you're arguing for, I might be able to get behind it. But I'm definitely opposed to "pumping the market is fine but countering hype should be illegal".