The world knows one thing very clearly -- that Tesla founder Elon Musk's social media game has always been a notch up and better than others. The billionaire businessman doesn't hold himself back while tweeting or responding to users. His one tweet can get stocks to rally or crash.

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On Thursday, Musk tweeted, "Tesla & Ford are the only American carmakers not to have gone bankrupt out of 1000’s of car startups. Prototypes are easy, production is hard & being cash flow positive is excruciating," to his 48.5 million followers on the microblogging site.

Retweeting Musk, Ford CEO Jim Farley, wrote just one word: "Respect".

Musk's tweet has already generated a lot of traction on Twitter, with over 49,000 users liking the tweet and over three thousand retweeting it. Hidden in Musk's tweet was the fact that General Motors and Chrysler had gone bankrupt during the great 2008 recession. According to a report on Forbes.com, General Motors filed for bankruptcy in New York, with $82 billion in assets and $173 billion in liabilities, in June 2009. This was the largest industrial bankruptcy in history.

Ford had, however, scraped through, making it a "point of pride" for itself.

While forty-nine-year-old Musk, a self-made billionaire, grew up in South Africa and owns SpaceX and Tesla, the leading electric car company, fifty-eight-year-old Farley's grandfather worked in Ford Factory.

On Friday, Musk was relegated to the third spot on the list of the richest people in the world following a loss of about $6.2 billion. Just last February, the Tesla mogul had a fortune of $191 billion, which has now come down to $150.9 billion. Tesla's shares, which fell by 5 percent on Friday, too had a bearing on Musk's position on the Forbes billionaires list. Only since Monday, Musk's wealth has dwindled by $27 billion. This keeps him on the second spot but his net worth is now $20 billion short of Jeff Bezos, once again at the top of the list.

The leading EV company's stocks closed down at 3.8 percent at $597.95, the lowest since December 3. Just last week, Tesla stocks had lost 11 percent of their value, in continuation of its losing streak, which has now continued for four weeks, the longest since May 2019.

First Published:Mar 6, 2021 11:27 AM IST