BTFDers—-R. I. P.

If they don’t hear the bell ringing on Wall Street now, we are surely dealing with a mass loss of auditory function. We are referring to the fact that yesterday Elon Musk became the richest person on the planet with a net worth of more than $200 billion, but his principal asset—Tesla—has never made a dime producing and selling electric cars.

That’s right. Tesla is basically a financial milk maid, which squeezes the green teats of eleven mostly blue states that require automakers to sell a certain percentage of zero-emissions vehicles by 2025. If they can’t meet the standard, the automakers have to buy “regulatory credits” from another automaker that meets those requirements — such as Tesla, which exclusively sells electric cars.