Nobel Prize-winning economist: Elon Musk is essentially a real-life Ponzi scheme

Golden Ten Data June 19th｜On the first day of SpaceX's listing, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in human history. On the same day, 2008 Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman published an article, "Elon Musk, Human Ponzi Scheme," directly labeling Musk as a "real-life Ponzi scheme." Krugman's accusations targeted three core aspects:Selling false promises: Hyperloop, full self-driving, Mars program—all repeatedly delayed. Musk’s skyrocketing wealth relies on "self-fulfilling beliefs" rather than tangible, delivered products.Manipulating financial shell games: Covering the losses of X with the AI boom and then packaging X into SpaceX, which has real business operations. This is a continual process of using new assets to mask old holes—a "left hand passing to right hand" scheme.Corroding rules and forced buying and selling: Collaborating with Wall Street to modify inclusion rules for index funds like the Nasdaq, forcing countless ordinary families, unaware, to take the baton at his astronomical valuations. In the business world, there is no absolute right or wrong, only perspectives and flows of interest. He points out that, if we strip away emotional interference and examine the cards on the table, we’ll find: this is a scheme that absolutely privatizes profit and compulsorily socializes risk. Krugman states bluntly: “Elon Musk’s massive Ponzi scheme will inevitably collapse.”