The biggest losers of 2022
Where do we start as there were some huge names that were big losers in 2022. Let’s start with the most obvious … Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since his February invasion of Ukraine, things have not gone well for him. The Russian people, especially the mothers have turned against Putin. It’s estimated that over 100,000 Russian troops have died in the Ukraine invasion and for what? To put things in perspective, the United States lost over 58,000 troops in the Vietnam War, however, that was over 10 years.
Donald Trump … the hits just keep coming. He’s trying so desperately to remain relevant that he just comes off as desperate. The Jan. 6 Committee was brutal. It’s amazing how Republicans say one thing on Fox News and then when under oath, say the exact opposite. Could be why many prominent Republicans ignored their Jan. 6 Committee subpoenas. When many former MAGA Trumpers stated under oath they went to the Capital on Jan. 6 because their former President told them to do so, it’s not a good look. Trump announced he’s running for President in 2024, which was met with a large yawn. Since then, he’s been holed up at MarA-Lago, rarely seen outside except for a round of golf. He got caught with boxes of top-secret documents at Mar-A-Lago because the rules don’t apply to him. Can you imagine what Fox News would have said 24/7 for weeks if Hillary had boxes of top-secret documents at her home? Trump had dinner with an American Nazi and oh yeah, his tax returns got released proving that he pays very little in taxes, gives even less to charities, and lies, cheats and steals wherever he can from the IRS.
Elon Musk … for one of the purported smarted guys in the world, 2022 made Elon look rather foolish. As CEO of Tesla, his car company is losing billions of dollars as they can’t get enough batteries and other car parts to manufacture enough cars. Tesla stock was down 65% in 2022. As CEO of Boring, his underground tunnels to nowhere company is fast becoming irrelevant. When was the last time you took a Boring tunnel to somewhere? Finally, Elon decided he wanted to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, so he had to sell $15.5 billion of Tesla stock to finance this purchase. Once the Twitter deal closed, Elon promptly fired 50% of the Twitter staff and sent numerous wild tweets that caused half of the corporate Twitter advertisers to leave. Elon has agreed to step down as CEO of Twitter, but only after finding a suitable replacement.
Mark Zuckerburg … the CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook) wants us to live in the Metaverse, a virtual world heightened by a virtual reality headset. Only problem is most people want to live in the hereand-now real world, not some fantasy world. Under Zuckerburg’s leadership, Meta has spent $36 billion on the metaverse and Meta’s stock was down 64% in 2022.
Finally, we get to the biggest loser of 2022 … Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”), now called “Scam Blankman-Fraud,” the disgraced former CEO of FTX, his unlicensed, unregulated, offshore, cryptocurrency exchange. $8 billion of investor’s money is missing and all SBF can tweet is “I’m sorry.” Sorry doesn’t cut it when you’ve defrauded $8 billion from your investors. SBF is facing criminal charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate campaign laws, ‘cuz if you watch Fox News you heard at least a few thousand times that SBF gave anywhere from $40 million to over a billion in campaign donations to … drum roll please … “Democrats!” His awshucks cavalier attitude won’t cut it under oath. SBF is now in a U.S. jail awaiting trial. Considering his top executives at FTX came forward and plead guilty to these charges and named SBF as the mastermind behind the fraud and collapse of FTX, it doesn’t bode well for SBF, who if convicted is looking at 110 years in jail.
As an honorable mention, I’m gonna throw at Derek Carr, quarterback of the Las Vegas Raiders. Carr made $24 million this year and guided the Raiders to another losing season with the highest ticket prices of any NFL team. Cheap seats to the Raider vs. 49ers game start at $500 each. In Carr’s nine years as Raiders quarterback, they’ve only had two winning seasons and zero playoff wins. NFL rumors are TB12 (Tom Brady) is coming to the Raiders.