We may earn a commission from links on this page. Photo: SOPA Images / Contributor (Getty Images) Elon Musk Tells Fleeing Twitter Advertisers To “Go F***” Themselves We already knew Twitter’s financials were a mess. As soon as he took over, Musk intentionally turned the once-popular social media site into a playground for Nazis, alienating both users and advertisers. He later told those advertisers to go fuck themselves and then started suing when they didn’t immediately flock back to his platform. Dig a little deeper, though, and it starts to look like this deal was historically bad. Like, objectively worse than anything we’ve seen since the financial crisis. Advertisement As new data from PitchBook LCD shows, banks have kept those Twitter loans on the books for longer than any unsold deal in recent memory. Banks were dealing with a lot more hung debt in 2008 and 2009, but they were generally able to get it off their books in less than a year. Meanwhile, Musk’s debt is still hung nearly two years later. Steven Kaplan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago, told the WSJ that not only is this the largest hung debt since the financial crisis, but it’s also one of the largest he’s ever seen. Advertisement So how did the banks get themselves into this situation? Believe it or not, it reportedly came down to good, old-fashioned greed . Musk is rich, and the banks saw dollar signs when he showed up asking for money. Maybe the Twitter deal wasn’t great, but if they got in early, they might have a shot at a more profitable deal in the future, such as a SpaceX IPO. And there’s always the chance the Twitter deal itself could end up being a good investment. Things may look bad now, but Musk has been making his interest payments. In the incredibly unlikely event that he somehow turns things around at his online conspiracy convention, there’s always the chance he might actually pay off the principal, too. “At some price, they could sell it at a loss, but with Musk they could end up receiving 100 cents on the dollar, if things pan out,” Kaplan told the WSJ. Advertisement Will that ever happen? Anything is possible, but right now, there’s little evidence that it actually will. Revenue is down at the transvestigation station, annual interest payments cost the pussy in bio site at least $1.5 billion and Musk continues to look more and more unstable while cozying up with the kinds of people who memorize the age of consent in all 50 states. Will the bankers who put this deal together learn their lesson? Probably not. But we can always take a little comfort thinking about the tears that were shed when their bonuses got cut. Show all 61 comments