back to indexE55: Valuing crypto projects, Rivian worth $100B+, inflation: causes and corrections and more
Chapters
0:0 Bestie intro and Solana Breakpoint talk
4:43 Covering the censored segment from last week, how to value crypto projects and general investing, what to take away from the podcast
30:45 Rivian's $100B+ valuation, greatest CNBC hit of all time
42:6 Inflation: reacting to the CPI number, problems with MMT, strategies to curb inflation
61:34 Xi Jinping becomes China's "Supreme Leader"
68:35 GE, Toshiba, and J&J break up into separate businesses: is this the end of the conglomerate? Insights from PayPal breaking off from eBay, what buybacks signal
84:44 Besties wrap the show
00:00:14.840 |
♪ J Cal's not fat anymore ♪ - J Cal's not fat. 00:00:35.340 |
I mean, how many, no, he doesn't know his kids' 00:00:59.200 |
With us again this week, the dictator himself, 00:01:02.360 |
Chamath Palihapitiya, the queen of kinwa, David Friedberg, 00:01:07.240 |
and coming back from Portugal and the Solana Conference, 00:01:37.120 |
How many people were at the Solana Conference in Portugal? 00:01:46.320 |
- I think there were thousands of people there, 00:01:52.600 |
and people were trying to get in last minute, 00:01:55.400 |
'cause the conference was like totally sold out. 00:02:06.960 |
because they are easier on the COVID restrictions 00:02:11.000 |
So you can actually get in there and host a conference. 00:02:20.800 |
- I can't remember if like masks were required or not. 00:02:43.200 |
- I just got, I mean, I had the first two were Pfizer, 00:02:46.480 |
She was, the nurse actually gave me a choice. 00:02:58.400 |
Moderna is the only one that's dose regulated 00:03:01.440 |
So there's a, they actually give you less specifically, 00:03:17.520 |
which is if you took two slices of Swiss cheese 00:03:27.200 |
- So I should have gotten Moderna, is what you're saying. 00:03:28.760 |
- That would be, if you believe in the Swiss cheese theory, 00:03:40.000 |
And I think the NFL's not doing anything about it. 00:03:45.520 |
I mean, he would have still been allowed to play, 00:03:51.960 |
The rumor is that Kyrie is gonna be playing basketball soon. 00:03:56.440 |
- 'Cause Eric Adams is gonna lift the vaccine restrictions. 00:04:00.680 |
You will not need to show a vaccine card or wear a mask. 00:04:06.520 |
- Or maybe he'll just get a PCR test every day. 00:04:09.560 |
because the Warriors are shooting the lights out 00:04:22.120 |
- The second, I mean, he's like living above the rim-- 00:04:24.560 |
- Oh my gosh, animal. - And just destroying it, 00:04:27.440 |
And then Wiggins is playing great basketball. 00:04:30.200 |
I mean, the Warriors are gonna win this year. 00:04:35.120 |
- Yeah, I think Steph's got something to prove, 00:04:38.760 |
but he's playing like he's got something to prove. 00:04:40.240 |
Okay, so do we wanna just cover the elephant in the room? 00:04:45.240 |
The last episode, I think we should just get out of the way 00:04:49.960 |
There was, we took something out of the last podcast 00:04:56.360 |
If there's something that somebody doesn't want on the pod 00:05:06.000 |
is we don't want anybody to say something they regret 00:05:09.920 |
that could cause damage to other people or to themselves. 00:05:12.320 |
So if they wanna take something out that they said, 00:05:17.000 |
And basically each of us has veto right on something. 00:05:19.800 |
So last week, two people took their veto right on something 00:05:30.280 |
there was an oblique reference between me and Chamath 00:05:38.840 |
that we were trying to engineer a pump and dump in Solana, 00:05:41.640 |
which if you actually listen to what we said, 00:05:48.800 |
So Kraft is the beneficiary because we invest, 00:05:52.680 |
we're the first investors in multi-competition, 00:05:57.920 |
They were one of the first investors in Solana. 00:05:59.920 |
So we are the beneficiary of about a billion dollars of Solana. 00:06:04.520 |
At some point, well, so they have started doing distributions, 00:06:10.520 |
they hadn't really started doing distributions. 00:06:12.520 |
I didn't know how deep and liquid the market for Solana was. 00:06:19.720 |
but I didn't know how deep and liquid the market for Solana was. 00:06:23.840 |
Chamath may have said something that he was long Solana 00:06:27.560 |
So I sent him a text saying, "Hey, are you interested? 00:06:31.400 |
I thought maybe we could do an OTC transaction 00:06:35.440 |
He basically, we had a brief exchange about that. 00:06:42.080 |
but learned subsequently is that the market for Solana 00:06:44.360 |
is very deep, about three and a half billion. 00:06:49.200 |
So there's no need, even if we wanted to fully get out 00:06:53.680 |
we don't even have, multi-coin still has most of it. 00:07:04.040 |
It just means that instead of going to like an exchange, 00:07:08.480 |
or it could just be direct, like for me to Chamath. 00:07:15.280 |
Chamath and I talked about it for maybe two minutes 00:07:17.200 |
and then it came up on the pod for 20 seconds. 00:07:19.680 |
So then some internet theorist basically clipped it and try to, 00:07:26.080 |
Well, obviously if you're talking about selling something, 00:07:31.360 |
So anyway, the reason why we said cut it out last week 00:07:35.400 |
is because we didn't want to give oxygen to this stupid, 00:07:38.200 |
like conspiracy theory that somebody had invented 00:07:41.840 |
on the internet with like no basis whatsoever, 00:07:45.440 |
because you could spend all day trying to like shoot 00:07:50.480 |
enough told me, enough people told me that this was 00:07:53.360 |
becoming a meme that I thought was worth addressing. 00:07:56.800 |
you have to understand with crypto is that for every cryptocurrency 00:08:00.080 |
like Solana, there are haters because they're invested in. 00:08:07.080 |
There are pump and dumps and there are armies of anonymous 00:08:10.560 |
Twitter accounts that will coordinate attacks and or memes, etc. 00:08:16.200 |
So they're trying to spread the rumor that like VCs are big holders 00:08:25.440 |
They are slowly distributing their positions to LPs. 00:08:31.160 |
They're not selling them and giving you cash. 00:08:34.960 |
And by the way, that's what we'd like to do as well. 00:08:36.680 |
We're currently working through those mechanics because it's actually 00:08:39.720 |
complicated for a VC firm to distribute in kind through tokens. 00:08:44.440 |
But if you had to give them to your LPs subsequently. 00:08:50.240 |
So Coinbase is providing that as a service now, from my understanding. 00:08:53.040 |
So we have to work through with our LPs, but that's what we're going to try to do 00:08:56.320 |
is distribute it in kind so everyone can make their own decision. 00:09:03.520 |
I've never, I haven't sold a single Solana token. 00:09:09.280 |
And so we are net buyers and we're buying a bunch of stuff. 00:09:17.760 |
And this is why my tone was more noncommittal. 00:09:22.880 |
When we did the pod is that I really don't like this culture that's emerged via Twitter mostly, 00:09:30.560 |
where you all of a sudden have to be this maximalist that basically falls on their sword 00:09:37.760 |
and never sells in order to be legitimate. And I think that that's a really dangerous place to be. 00:09:45.600 |
Well, if I take a much, much bigger step back, let me put Solana in the context of crypto and let me 00:09:51.600 |
put crypto in the context of crypto. And I think that's a really dangerous place to be. So, you know, look, if I take a much, much- 00:09:52.720 |
I think that's a really dangerous place to be. So, you know, look, if I take a much, much bigger step back, let me put Solana in the context of crypto and let me put Solana in the context of crypto. 00:09:53.680 |
And where we are today at the end of the week, after Q3 earnings in November of 2021, we have 00:10:10.960 |
We have the art markets. I don't know if you guys saw Phillips and Christie's and Sotheby's this 00:10:22.560 |
10-year break-evens at a 25-year high. We have, you know, one point some odd trillion dollars that 00:10:29.600 |
we just approved last week and we're still horse trading on another three, you know, 00:10:33.760 |
$1.8 trillion of stimulus that we're going to put in. And so when you, and then you have, and I think 00:10:40.640 |
the most important thing, which is the two most important founders of our generation, the two 00:10:46.800 |
smartest people who have really consistently won, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, have collectively sold more than 11 billion dollars. 00:10:54.800 |
And if you can't take all of that and decide for yourself, what's right for you and your family, 00:11:01.120 |
you're doing yourself a disservice. I think it's important for me to never sort of like, 00:11:05.760 |
you know, be forced to tell folks whether I'm buying or selling, although I'm willing to do 00:11:09.920 |
it in moments where I think it's important. But I think it's really important to understand the 00:11:15.600 |
context. And so I think like these folks that like think derisively about individuals who are 00:11:20.320 |
managing risk, I think it's really nice to be able to say, you know, I'm going to buy this stock. 00:11:22.240 |
I'm going to buy this stock. I'm going to buy this stock. I'm going to buy this stock. I'm going to buy this stock. 00:11:23.040 |
And I think it's, it creates a lot of missed opportunity for them as well. If the smartest 00:11:28.800 |
people in the world are now selling their core holdings that they told you they would never sell, 00:11:35.280 |
and you are not reconsidering your position on things, you're either much smarter than them, 00:11:52.080 |
All right. We usually people also know inside baseball, we have a docket of stories that we 00:11:56.880 |
talk about on our group chat that make up the docket for the show. But I'll bring stuff up. 00:12:00.880 |
And I didn't bring that up in some way to cause trouble or anything. I thought you guys would 00:12:05.440 |
want to clear the air about it. And I understand your position of, hey, you don't want to give 00:12:09.520 |
these things oxygen or whatever. But I think I didn't even know that we needed to clear the 00:12:13.680 |
air until you know, I went to the conference and enough people mentioned it. So but what's 00:12:17.680 |
so funny is half the people on Twitter spend all their time in crypto land saying things like, 00:12:21.920 |
never going to make it have fun staying poor. They're extremely Jason, as you said, tribal. 00:12:27.840 |
I'm not sure that they're doing first principles analysis of these things. 00:12:34.960 |
Some of them are exceptionally good. But many people broadly speaking, 00:12:38.000 |
have gotten exceptionally lucky. And I think a little bit of it is getting to their head where 00:12:42.080 |
they become, you know, very virulent against people that they think, you know, whose perspectives may 00:12:47.600 |
actually be negatively affecting their position without actually understanding what David said, 00:12:51.760 |
that they're not going to be able to do anything about it. 00:12:53.520 |
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point. I mean, I'd like to give my opinion on Solana. But 00:13:01.840 |
the thing or just crypto in general, the thing that's like hard about it is that it's hard to 00:13:05.920 |
talk about the benefits of say, the Solana blockchain without being seen as a pumper 00:13:10.720 |
of soul or a dumper of ether, whatever, because all these things are so intrinsically connected. 00:13:15.360 |
I mean, I learned a lot of really bullish things about Solana, you know, at this conference. I mean, 00:13:21.600 |
I think the biggest thing is, I mean, there's basically a battle for the hearts and minds of 00:13:25.920 |
developers going on right now between Solana and Ethereum. That's why Solana has raced up to, 00:13:31.600 |
you know, over 200. I don't know what, like 7000% increase or something incredible like that. 00:13:37.200 |
The reason is because Solana as a blockchain gives confirmations back in something like 400 00:13:42.000 |
milliseconds, whereas Ethereum takes, you know, minutes, and you know, transaction that might cost 00:13:47.920 |
10s of dollars, 10, 20, 30, $50 of gas on Ethereum. 00:13:51.440 |
It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of 00:13:52.160 |
money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. 00:13:52.800 |
It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. 00:13:53.600 |
It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. 00:13:54.720 |
Yeah, exactly. It's also, you know, a lot of developers feel like the tools, 00:13:58.720 |
the developer tools that they've created are easier than building on solidity. 00:14:02.880 |
The thing that Solana gives up, the trade off that it makes is decentralization. There's basically 00:14:08.160 |
that transactions are processed by 20 validators, and they're a top 20 based on holdings of soul. 00:14:15.920 |
So it's kind of like this proof of stake model. So anyway, there's some trade offs there. I can tell 00:14:20.400 |
you that, you know, it's a view of, you know, our friends at multi coin. And you know, I heard a lot 00:14:26.400 |
of this views at the conference, although obviously, you have taken with a grain of salt, 00:14:29.760 |
because these are the biggest believers, but their view is that Solana over the next year will flip 00:14:35.440 |
Ethereum based on developer activity that there's real, to your point, we spend a lot of time, 00:14:41.920 |
actually, before we do anything is that's the only thing we've been looking at, you know, and 00:14:45.760 |
we're kind of like, I'm going to do this. And then we're like, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. 00:14:46.880 |
And then we're like, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. And then we're like, I'm going to do that. 00:14:47.040 |
syndica fractal, a lot of the stuff that we've done DSO is purely driven by developer interest. 00:14:54.720 |
When we see developers in the open source ecosystem building things on top of this stuff, 00:14:59.120 |
making stuff that's composable and usable by other people and building infrastructure. 00:15:03.040 |
You know, we don't really second guess that because they are spending their 00:15:07.920 |
the most important currency, which is not monetary capital, but human capital. 00:15:12.640 |
Yeah, their time, their skill time and their skill and reputation. 00:15:16.800 |
And so when enough developers so I've always thought you just follow the developers. And as 00:15:21.600 |
more and more projects get started, you just have to unemotionally support that I think the writing 00:15:26.880 |
is on the wall, which is Bitcoin is gold, Ethereum looks like it's trending to be silver. And Solana 00:15:33.120 |
could be the first but there will be others that come after it, of real developer ecosystems that 00:15:38.240 |
can be built on top of it. The other the other thing that I would offer up to people for them 00:15:42.240 |
to think about is before you blindly go and write a book, you're going to have to think about what 00:15:45.440 |
you're going to do. You're going to have to think about what you're going to do. You're going to have 00:15:46.400 |
to think about what you're going to do. I think that's a really important thing. And I think that's 00:15:46.880 |
really important. I think it's really important to think about what you're going to do. And so, 00:15:47.520 |
one way in which I try to think about these things is in the following way, you see these projects 00:15:52.640 |
get started all the time. And I would view each of these projects as a mini economy, and really try 00:15:59.680 |
to think what is the economic value of what's happening under the hood. So simple example, you 00:16:04.480 |
know, helium is an interesting project that's trying to build a completely decentralized, you 00:16:08.720 |
know, 5g infrastructure, right? render is a really interesting project that's trying to build a 00:16:15.280 |
completely decentralized, you know, graphical processing infrastructure, right GPUs, essentially. 00:16:19.040 |
In both of those things, you can quantifiably economically measure what the value is that 00:16:25.840 |
people get right in the case of render, you're basically displacing an AWS instance. And so that 00:16:33.760 |
has a price and a value. And so you know, for render to be valuable, there's an economic value 00:16:38.480 |
that it replaces. If you're joining a hotspot that has an economic value where you had necessarily 00:16:45.120 |
you know, to get internet connectivity, if you all of a sudden are on the helium network, 00:16:49.040 |
that displaces a measurable economic quantum. Understanding that is probably and taking the 00:16:54.800 |
absolute value of that is the best way of really understanding which projects have potential. So if 00:16:59.200 |
you take those two ideas and marry them together, where is their developer interest? And where is 00:17:04.160 |
their measurable economic activity at the intersection of those I think are the really 00:17:07.840 |
compelling projects that can win. Well, the thing that complicates 00:17:10.480 |
all of this is that the developers are not just picking based on which language or technology, 00:17:14.960 |
or stack they think has the most potential. They also have acquired economic stakes in it. So a 00:17:20.800 |
developer who might be objective and say, hey, this new platform is better than Ethereum, might 00:17:26.240 |
be sitting on millions of dollars in Ethereum. And they're like, I want to keep my bet going here. 00:17:34.560 |
possibly, but I but I do think that developers in general will choose the platform that's easiest 00:17:40.080 |
and cheapest and fastest for them to develop on, 00:17:44.800 |
coin market cap of market cap ones that has been static for a decade of crypto almost, 00:17:49.840 |
you know, we're largely the top 10 doesn't change that much. It's XRP, it's stellar, 00:17:53.520 |
Ethereum, Bitcoin, tether, that could be up for grabs, that whole thing could change now that 00:17:58.400 |
people are actually building projects, and the projects are getting competitive with each other. 00:18:03.280 |
And that's that flippening we're talking about, correct sex? 00:18:08.000 |
again, is I never want to give anyone investment advice. I mean, that's just not my job. And 00:18:14.640 |
if there's anyone out there listening to the show, because they're trying to get like tips or tricks, 00:18:18.640 |
whatever for investment, like I'm not really comfortable telling people what to do. 00:18:23.680 |
So you know, everyone just has to understand that I did, I do feel like what I saw at this 00:18:29.200 |
conference over the past week in terms of developer enthusiasm activity was very bullish, 00:18:33.440 |
actually, it was a lot like I went to the Ethereum conference, I think it was back in 2017, several 00:18:38.960 |
years ago, and it felt a little bit like that. Although I would say that this time, it felt less 00:18:44.480 |
Like several years ago, it felt more like white papers. Now it actually feels like 00:18:48.320 |
real projects and businesses that people are trying to create. 00:18:50.640 |
Still infrastructure and less applications or more applications? 00:18:53.680 |
Well, Chamath mentioned a couple of them. So there's Helium, which is creating a decentralized 00:18:59.200 |
network for Wi Fi. There's Render, which is creating a decentralized network for GPU. There's 00:19:04.400 |
one called Hivemapper, I met the founder. It's a decentralized network for people to map the world, 00:19:09.360 |
you can think of, you know, the concept of a miner that Bitcoin invented, think of them more as like 00:19:14.320 |
So, you know, we call them miners, but they're the validators of transactions. And we're trying to 00:19:21.200 |
incentivize them through block rewards, basically through small bits of Bitcoin that get released, 00:19:26.640 |
to provide these valuable computing resources to the network. And so people are figuring out now, 00:19:33.120 |
how to create massively decentralized networks where you have, you know, 00:19:36.160 |
1000s or millions of resource providers provide a little bit of something to the 00:19:40.240 |
network for everyone's benefit in exchange, they get some coin. That's like a really interesting 00:19:44.160 |
model that couldn't exist before crypto. And so yeah, I mean, I think it's very interesting. But 00:19:50.640 |
you know, in order for that to work, you have to have, like very unique, fast, efficient, scalable 00:19:56.160 |
blockchains. And the feeling as I mean, I'll give credit here to to Tushar, who's one of the 00:20:02.960 |
GPs at Multicoin. His view is that this was the iPhone moment for blockchain that that what Solana 00:20:09.200 |
has built because it's massively scalable, and also very cheap. I mean, again, you can run a lot of 00:20:14.000 |
transactions for pennies. Now, all of that is obviously very bullish for Solana. The thing I 00:20:19.280 |
wrestle with is, and Chamath kind of alluded to this is I think everything's kind of in a bubble 00:20:23.360 |
right now because of monetary and fiscal policy. And so you know, I guess I, you could say that 00:20:29.760 |
I'm long Solana versus ETH. But I do kind of worry that the whole world right now is very bubbly. 00:20:35.520 |
And so as a GP, like, what do you do about that? I can tell you right now, 00:20:39.360 |
like this second, we are sitting on Solana that we have not sold. So 00:20:43.840 |
you know, I am long in that sense. However, sometime over the next whatever number of years, 00:20:48.720 |
we will distribute out our position of Solana to LPs. 00:20:54.720 |
Some LPs might specialize in crypto and want to keep it. Other ones might not want to hold assets 00:20:58.880 |
and need that money to fund their endowment to give scholarships to students, or whatever your 00:21:02.880 |
LPs particularly do. Well, yeah, I mean, and so I guess, to the issue of, hey, 00:21:08.400 |
we're not giving investment advice here. We are all capital allocators and startup creators. 00:21:13.680 |
So we're talking about our day to day lives here. Nobody should interpret this as investment advice. 00:21:19.040 |
And especially not in a world now. I don't know if you guys saw what happened with Rivian this week. 00:21:23.840 |
I don't know how we don't talk about a company with essentially no public sales. They've sold 00:21:30.480 |
148 cars to their employees is worth $120 billion. Any free bird? Did you see this IPO? Any thoughts 00:21:38.560 |
on it? Seems like a high level, do you have investment advice for the audience that you'd 00:21:45.280 |
Wait, can you play that video that you found that you shared with everyone? 00:21:52.080 |
Okay, well, I we do have it. I can we queue it up. Did you see this yet? 00:21:56.160 |
No, I haven't. Oh, that Yeah, well, but just so I don't want to beat this point to death. But I 00:22:00.480 |
just think it's so important for the audience that what they should be getting out of the show, 00:22:03.680 |
if they're fans is maybe like advice on how to think critical thinking and how we think about 00:22:13.360 |
if you want to invest in crypto, first of all, like go understand like what all these different 00:22:18.400 |
projects or blockchains do and figure out what is the purpose of the token in that system? What are 00:22:23.520 |
the token economics? Yeah, does it even make sense? Or is it just a scam? Then if it's a if 00:22:28.960 |
it's something like a blockchain, go research how many projects are have developers on them 00:22:34.240 |
and how much code is being checked in, and maybe open a wallet and buy some NFTs and buy some ETH 00:22:39.360 |
and transfer it and learn just how to set up your internet connection. 00:22:45.840 |
Right, exactly. And then on top of all that, you got to consider macro forces because I mean, 00:22:50.000 |
and I think, you know, my friends at multi coin would fully concede this, that, you know, 00:22:54.720 |
it could be the case that if there's a crypto bust over the next year, and this thing, you know, 00:22:59.760 |
crypto has gone through boom and bust cycles for many, many years. 00:23:03.520 |
It's the standard. So you could have a situation in which, for example, Solana flips ETH and yet 00:23:08.400 |
still goes down in value, because there's an overall bust cycle. So you know, you have to 00:23:13.040 |
macroeconomic factors as well. So there's a lot of things to consider here. And then you also have 00:23:17.280 |
to consider your own risk tolerance. And you know, what is appropriate for your portfolio? And it may 00:23:22.800 |
When do you need your money? Are you a 25 year old? 00:23:24.880 |
Everything is at all time highs, and the two smartest men in the world are selling. 00:23:29.280 |
Not just not just them, by the way. There are other guys that are heavily on the other side 00:23:34.720 |
waiting for this whole thing to go. Like Druckenmiller has been very vocal about this. 00:23:38.560 |
And he's, he's been the best macro trader in the last 30 years. 00:23:46.000 |
That we're printing too much money, and we're in a lot of trouble. So you know, 00:23:50.560 |
look, I mean, generally, there is, I think a good point of view being shared here, 00:23:55.280 |
which is, you know, understanding how to think about what you're investing in and what your, 00:24:01.600 |
your expectations are, versus relying on someone's advice or opinion on what to do. If you have to 00:24:07.360 |
rely on someone else's advice or opinion on what to do, you're gonna eventually lose money. 00:24:13.920 |
You should not be in the market, because guess what, anyone that's giving you advice or opinions 00:24:17.680 |
is going to make money if you do what they tell you to do, if you do what they tell you to do. 00:24:21.280 |
End of story. So at some point, they're gonna all make money and you're gonna end up losing money. 00:24:26.480 |
And it's a it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a better game to play, 00:24:30.800 |
to learn how to kind of be thoughtful about where's your money going? What are you investing 00:24:34.720 |
in? And it takes a lot of time and a lot of money. I've been sitting here silently, 00:24:37.600 |
as you guys have been talking deeply about Solana and Ethereum and Bitcoin and, 00:24:42.560 |
and the crypto markets because I realized so much of, you know, what's needed to be successful 00:24:48.960 |
in entering this market is a depth of understanding a depth of knowledge, my time is highly limited, 00:24:53.680 |
I have spent no time understanding crypto markets, because it's so deep, and it's so fluid, 00:24:58.960 |
it's changing every day, it's changing every week. So if I can't get smart enough to feel 00:25:03.120 |
confident about the opinions and decisions that I would be making as an investor, 00:25:06.720 |
I decide not to invest and I stay out. And so I'm not an active crypto investor, 00:25:12.400 |
on the razor's edge on synthetic biology and so many other 00:25:16.160 |
whatever it is, there are other areas where it's better for me to spend my time and my energy. And 00:25:20.160 |
I've chosen to do that versus being drawn into what feels like a very exciting, kind of, you 00:25:25.360 |
know, turbulent time. There are other areas that I kind of spend my time on. And I just kind of try 00:25:29.680 |
to recognize that maybe I don't know what I'm doing if I were to try and get involved here. 00:25:33.680 |
And so I'd rather stay out. And I think that's counsel for for anyone, you know, if you're going 00:25:37.600 |
to make an investment, it's important to feel confident about the knowledge and the depth needed 00:25:43.200 |
I'll build on your point, like when I when I started doing my specs, I started to write 00:25:50.880 |
these one pagers. And those one pages were artifacts for me to hold myself accountable for 00:25:55.200 |
how I saw something in a moment in time, and then to be able to see whether it was 00:25:59.360 |
tracking to that, and then also to share it to other people a starting point, 00:26:05.760 |
as David said, a journey where they should then if they're curious, go and do their own work. 00:26:09.360 |
It turned out not enough people were doing the work. So then I had to 00:26:12.080 |
start adding disclaimers to these things saying, Hey, guys, I'm not telling you to buy this, 00:26:16.640 |
please be abundantly clear. These next facts that I will eventually launch, you're going to see 00:26:23.840 |
an entire like in red block letters, like please don't buy this. Right? Because to your point, 00:26:30.480 |
it doesn't matter what you say people want a lazy, easy way out. And so I just want to reiterate 00:26:35.600 |
what all of you guys said none of us are dispensing advice, we are not telling you to do anything. 00:26:41.920 |
Please do your own work. And please come to your conclusion. It is your responsibility. And if 00:26:47.280 |
you're not sure go and look at your children in the face or your significant other in the face, 00:26:51.840 |
you're responsible to them. And so do your own work. 00:26:56.720 |
I'll say one more point on where I sit as an investor. I choose to only participate 00:27:06.240 |
in investing in what I call productive assets. That is you put some money into something and 00:27:11.760 |
whatever that thing is, is generating money in some way or is trying to generate value through 00:27:16.560 |
a set of activities, like a business, or owning an apartment building where you're making rent, 00:27:23.280 |
you know, anything that or you know, a group of people that are trying to have some breakthrough 00:27:27.120 |
or some discovery. Those are productive assets. There's a lot of what's going on now. That is 00:27:32.960 |
what I would call speculative assets, which is the only way you make money is if someone else pays 00:27:37.520 |
more in the future versus what you're paying. And there isn't 00:27:41.600 |
an underlying productive asset to what you're putting money into. 00:27:47.680 |
Every ICO, every NFT and the art market, right? These are examples of unproductive assets. 00:27:53.680 |
They're speculative assets in the sense that you're speculating that at some point, 00:27:56.720 |
the price of them are going to go up and someone 00:28:01.040 |
Someone down the road will pay more for that asset than what you paid. But that underlying asset, 00:28:05.280 |
that capital that you just put in, didn't go in to build something. 00:28:08.560 |
There's no revenue generation, there's no IP. 00:28:11.440 |
It went into someone else's pocket that sold that asset to you. And you're eventually going 00:28:15.440 |
to try and sell it to someone else. And so, there's a real attraction here. Because what 00:28:21.200 |
we just talked about is really hard to do. Having fundamental analysis and understanding of 00:28:24.960 |
businesses and a fundamental understanding of what's working and what's not and when to shift 00:28:28.960 |
and oh my gosh, are things different or are they not? To do that is really hard. 00:28:33.600 |
So people end up relying on opinions of others, or they end up running into 00:28:37.680 |
speculative markets. And the speculative markets are easy to understand. Someone 00:28:41.280 |
just paid more for X than the other person did. Therefore, there's a trend line, it's going up. 00:28:45.200 |
It's like playing roulette. And black keeps coming up and you're like, okay, it's going to be black 00:28:49.840 |
It has to be black. There were seven, correct? 00:28:51.280 |
There were seven blacks. And so, I think that that's a really important takeaway 00:28:57.920 |
We're all susceptible. We're all susceptible to this. I was just looking 00:29:01.120 |
at my own performance coming into the end of this year. And I did a lot of SPACs this year, but I 00:29:11.120 |
did these pipes, which are these third-party deals. 00:29:16.160 |
Exactly. Other people's deals that they were bringing to the market where they said, 00:29:19.920 |
Chamath, do you want to be a part of it? And I did. And part of it was I was 00:29:25.360 |
looking at these things and, you know, Freeberg doing my work. But in the end, 00:29:32.400 |
it turned out I didn't do nearly as much as I probably should have because I ended up 00:29:36.800 |
sitting on top of other people's work versus the original or underwriting that I would do if it was 00:29:40.960 |
my own deal itself. Right? Anyways, the net of it all is like, you know, that was very inefficient 00:29:46.640 |
capital deployment. And as I look at it now, it's like, you know, I'm down. Well, I'm technically up 00:29:52.640 |
19%, but that's really because of one deal. If I take that one deal out, which was a total outlier, 00:29:56.640 |
I'm down 17% on about $200 million of investment. 00:29:59.280 |
When you were a fast follower, not the originator, it wasn't your idea. This is 00:30:03.040 |
critically important. There are many different ways to make money, but you have to specialize 00:30:06.800 |
and you have to have first principles and your knowledge. 00:30:10.800 |
people. I did the same thing that I that I'm saying to other people not to do do not just 00:30:15.200 |
copy other people, you have to do your own principle work. And even when you do your own 00:30:19.360 |
principle work, it may not be enough. And you have to be willing to basically see the forest from the 00:30:23.920 |
trees and walk away. And so all these pipes, I'm in the midst of sort of cleaning up and selling 00:30:28.080 |
down. And they've been a just a kind of a disaster for me. You know, I hold on, I want to build on 00:30:33.200 |
this for a second, because I think it's critically important what you said as well, Friedberg, 00:30:36.880 |
you have to be comfortable with the investment you're making. I look at these companies and I look at the 00:30:40.640 |
underlying customer, the product, you know, and what kind of revenue it's going to generate. And 00:30:45.120 |
people thought I was dunking on Rivian yesterday. And I said, Listen, you know, when Tesla went 00:30:49.040 |
public, people forget their valuation was 1.5 billion 1.7. So 1.7 billion, when they went 00:30:55.600 |
public. Now, they already had 1000s of roadsters, and they had already had the 93 93 million of 00:31:02.880 |
revenue in year one. So this was dramatically different than what Rivian had Rivian is being 00:31:10.480 |
120 billion, I think yesterday, Rivian has 17 billion cash, somebody asked me at the poker 00:31:14.880 |
game last night, what I value Rivian at, I said, 17 plus 317 million in cash plus 3 billion, 00:31:22.960 |
double roughly what Tesla's was the market's hotter right now, whatever. But I put them at 00:31:27.360 |
20 billion. And people were giving a hard time about I said, I think that's actually 00:31:29.760 |
the realistic valuation for this company. And we are in a very dangerous moment in time right 00:31:34.800 |
now where I think people are whether it's meme stocks, or crypto, or NF T's, suspending 00:31:40.320 |
disbelief, in some cases, SPACs, because they're not all created equal. And certainly in private 00:31:44.480 |
companies, we're seeing this, where people are giving people an amount of credit, which makes 00:31:49.760 |
no logical sense, and is getting further and further disconnected in from reality. So as an 00:31:55.040 |
investor, you have a choice, either you take you have your fundamentals, which I'm not going to 00:31:58.400 |
change my fundamentals, I'm going to focus on the fundamentals that got me where I am. 00:32:02.080 |
And I'm not going to be involved in $100 billion market cap company 00:32:06.960 |
that hasn't launched a product yet, let alone $120 billion, 00:32:10.160 |
or $100 billion, I'll stay focused on startups. But what you're saying is also important, 00:32:14.480 |
because you're highlighting how you value that company, you individually said, I think that 00:32:20.880 |
company's worth some multiple of how many cars have been sold in the past, Elon sold, you know, 00:32:26.160 |
1000s of cars, he was worth 1.7 billion, these guys have sold, and other people are coming in 00:32:30.640 |
and looking at this company and saying they've built facilities, they've built assembly lines, 00:32:34.720 |
and they've got pre orders and bookings for lots and lots of cars down in the future. 00:32:38.480 |
And clearly, they've gone in and you know, some 00:32:40.000 |
people have gone in and seen these plants and seen these cars actually working. 00:32:43.200 |
So you know, it's really important to take note that your point of view is one point of view in 00:32:47.840 |
a very diverse market with many points of view. And everyone's going to come into this market. 00:32:51.680 |
And that's why unless you individually as an investor, have a strong point of view and can 00:32:56.320 |
show that you can apply your unique insights to consistently beat the market making decisions, 00:33:01.920 |
investment decisions like that you're eventually going to lose because those other points of view 00:33:05.520 |
will be a bigger view of the truth and you'll lose money. And that's why I said that and that's by 00:33:09.840 |
the way, that's why picking stocks is ultimately a loser's game unless you have some unique ability 00:33:15.440 |
and insight for most people historically and in an upmarket everyone, everyone looks like a genius. 00:33:20.080 |
Right, you need to have an edge and the public markets are hard to say that there's some 00:33:23.120 |
there's some competency. Yeah, there's some unique competency that you need. 00:33:26.240 |
I mean, if we double click on what you just said as the things that would be reasons to 00:33:30.080 |
embed on Rivian, number one, they have 48,000 orders of pickup trucks 00:33:34.800 |
against the F 150, which is now electric from Ford and a million. 00:33:39.680 |
I don't know why you're arguing this, right? Like you're just making a point that we don't 00:33:43.200 |
have someone on the on the on the panel right now, but someone else could come in and argue. 00:33:46.240 |
And I would just say, this is the part of the conversation to be honest, Jason, 00:33:52.320 |
to give you feedback I don't like because Rivian, just in defense of Rivian for a second. 00:33:57.520 |
What I have heard is that it's a it's a well engineered car or truck rather, 00:34:03.600 |
they've done a very smart path to market, which is essentially to, you know, 00:34:09.520 |
build these delivery trucks for Amazon that allowed them to even frankly, 00:34:13.040 |
you know, be default alive. Sure, versus, you know, to use the Paul Graham term instead of 00:34:17.360 |
default dead. I think the point that's more important here is that it doesn't affect you. 00:34:23.200 |
So let Rivian do well, you know, and this is part of the cycle. 00:34:28.240 |
You shouldn't have an opinion publicly. No, no, no, I'm just saying this is the 00:34:31.120 |
part of the cycle that I don't understand where people legitimately have these 00:34:39.360 |
zero sum points of view about companies. And this is where I think, Freiburg is more right than 00:34:45.840 |
anybody else, which is there are the market is the sum of all these collective points of view. 00:34:51.040 |
Sure. And I think it's fine. I think it's fine to have one. 00:34:54.320 |
I think it's a little superficial your point of view, because it's not really 00:34:58.240 |
sitting on top of a model or anything else. And I think it's the same kind of superficiality that 00:35:03.280 |
the Tesla cute guys had about Tesla for many years as well. It takes a long time as somebody that 00:35:09.200 |
does this every day. And I just want to point this out, it takes an enormous amount of time, 00:35:13.600 |
an enormous amount of work to be 55% right. Listen, I've invested in 350 companies, 00:35:18.720 |
I meet with 2000 companies a year. No, in the public markets, Jason, 00:35:20.880 |
it's different in the public markets. Listen, my companies are going public now, 00:35:22.880 |
so I take exception to what you're saying. I know a fraud when I see it. I've seen them before. 00:35:26.560 |
Oh, that's a really big statement. I'm not saying Rivian's that fraud level yet. 00:35:28.320 |
That's not a fraud. No, but the distance between the 00:35:31.760 |
valuation and reality is in the 50 to 100 billion dollar range. 00:35:35.600 |
Okay, but that's it. I know, but that's not in control of Rivian. That's not in their control. 00:35:39.040 |
Okay, that's in a bunch of external market participants control. So you can't pin that 00:35:44.160 |
on them. My point is, pin it on is at the market right now seems dysfunctional, 00:35:48.400 |
but Jason properly measuring throwing shade that you then you should throw shade at T row fidelity, 00:35:55.440 |
all these people that are bidding up your companies, by the way, because they are the ones 00:35:58.480 |
that are taking Rivian to 120 billion. It's not Rivian's fault. And Jason, what's really going on 00:36:03.040 |
in the market was public speculators. What's really going on is not you can't sell $16 billion 00:36:08.880 |
in an IPO to speculators. This is much lower price. These are institutionally placed 00:36:15.600 |
trade orders. But regardless, the market is clearly right now in productive assets, 00:36:20.560 |
businesses, the market is looking at a time horizon that has never looked at before, 00:36:25.680 |
which is making bets that are 10 1520 years in the future. And that's because of the condition 00:36:30.640 |
that we're in right now from a monetary policy point of view, interest rates are so low, 00:36:34.400 |
there's nowhere to get yield in other assets. So you have to look further and further out to find 00:36:38.720 |
value. The market is betting is making 10 year bets, which is like a VC type more than a 10 year 00:36:44.160 |
bet. Jason, sorry, I can I just can I just finish my last point because before you interrupt me. 00:36:48.720 |
My issue, Jason is I think you are an exceptional angel investor. But just the same way you derided 00:36:55.040 |
a bunch of late stage guys remember last night at poker, when we were talking about late stage folks 00:36:59.760 |
entering into the angel market, and the series A you were extremely dismissive because you know 00:37:08.560 |
job well, and they have a different skill set. Similarly, what I would just offer for you to 00:37:12.640 |
think about is the people that really underwrite public market stocks well, do things and have a 00:37:18.480 |
skill set that is extremely specific, and it is well trained as well. And I think that 00:37:25.920 |
I'll defend me. Let me jump into the jake house. 00:37:28.320 |
If you want to defend me, and that's the people are in shock right now. So 00:37:33.440 |
This guy is purple. This guy is purple. The moon is set. 00:37:41.360 |
Okay. So here's where I think Jake, I don't know anything about the Rivian company. But where I 00:37:45.040 |
think Jake is right is we've seen over and over again, that when a company gets when a startup 00:37:51.360 |
gets a billion dollar plus valuation without a product, invariably, it ends up somewhere between 00:37:57.840 |
a disappointment and outright fraud, whether you know, it was Theranos or magic leap or Quibi, 00:38:06.240 |
or whatever. I'm not saying they're all fraud. 00:38:08.240 |
I mean, I think just Theranos fraud, whatever. So I think it's reasonable for any, let's say seed or 00:38:16.320 |
early venture investor to develop the heuristic, that I'm not going to invest in anything with a 00:38:21.680 |
billion dollar with basically unicorn valuation without seeing the product first, because we've 00:38:26.320 |
learned we've got our hands burnt so many times from these overhyped companies. And here's where 00:38:32.080 |
I agree if I can't see and use the product, I'm not investing. I'll invest in a seed stage, but 00:38:38.080 |
I agree with that. But what I'm saying is when a company is going public like that, there is 00:38:43.440 |
demonstrable proof of concept there. Okay, the only market in which that's not true is in 00:38:49.600 |
Well, I would say for Fisker and Nikola, two related companies, those ones seem very, very 00:38:54.320 |
shaky, you can debate about the scalability of these things. And you can debate that people 00:38:58.080 |
didn't do the diligence, but they had to at least put a proof of concept out there for you to judge. 00:39:02.640 |
If people don't do the work, I agree with you, like if you're rolling down a hill, sure. 00:39:07.920 |
I agree with you. But if you're rolling down a hill, sure. 00:39:08.400 |
No, but my point is, if you were there, and you did your work, you would have seen what you needed 00:39:11.680 |
to see. What I have heard from people who were investors in both Lucid and Rivian, is that they 00:39:16.960 |
have sat in the cars, they've driven the cars, they've spent time with them, they've seen the 00:39:21.360 |
factories. And it's very much real. Now what they're debating is ramp and velocity and scale. 00:39:27.840 |
I don't know. I don't have a position in either. 00:39:30.480 |
I have the bigger macro point of view, which is important to me, which is 00:39:34.000 |
just because these things are in the public markets, I think 00:39:37.760 |
people think it's easy to judge. And I think actually modeling them and making good decisions 00:39:42.080 |
is just as hard as it is for private companies. 00:39:43.840 |
We need to roll this clip because there is somebody who is giving 00:39:46.480 |
exceptional advice on CNBC. Let's roll the clip. 00:39:51.520 |
Yeah, so well up starts up about 25% just in four days since we since we bought it, 00:39:56.320 |
we bought it on about four days ago. So that's actually made a nice little move in the short 00:40:01.840 |
term, probably a little extended right now, but longer term, that that's a that's a good looking 00:40:07.600 |
A very powerful, very strong earnings. These stocks are 00:40:25.040 |
Oh, I guess we've got an audio problem. I'm sorry. 00:40:34.240 |
Jake, how is that? Is that like your uncle or something? Who is that guy? 00:40:37.440 |
Yeah, I mean, just to the point to get on CNBC. 00:40:41.120 |
Well, you know, the guy's been on many times. 00:40:45.040 |
But doesn't this prove what we were saying, which is that you've got to do your own 00:40:48.160 |
principal work here. That is why we wanted to play. 00:40:50.800 |
Here's a talking head who's probably getting paid for selling some books and giving advice. 00:40:54.560 |
Who knows nothing about what he's telling you. 00:40:56.480 |
You can join his membership club for 1000 a month. 00:40:59.280 |
I'm sure he's publishing lots of papers that show that he's a highly successful, 00:41:03.120 |
profitable investor and look how smart he is. He doesn't even know the company just promoted. 00:41:08.640 |
On a mechanical basis here, Chamath, you and I have been on CNBC many times. 00:41:14.080 |
In that moment, what is going on? What do you think is going on in the host's mind? 00:41:27.680 |
I just the breakdown when he says, I'm sorry. 00:41:32.320 |
I think the point's been made. I think the point's been made. 00:41:39.840 |
Zach, you look like you want to say something. 00:41:44.320 |
Yeah, look, I mean, there is a massive agenda in corporate journalism. 00:41:48.800 |
There's an agenda by the people on these shows to promote positions. 00:41:52.560 |
There's an agenda by the reporters themselves and on and on and on it goes. 00:41:57.200 |
So to Chamath's point, if you just take them at face value, 00:42:00.400 |
and you don't do your own work, then you're buying into someone else's agenda. 00:42:06.960 |
One thing that we are trying to all understand is inflation. 00:42:10.560 |
The CPI has gone up 6.2% in October, the highest jump in 31 years since 1990. 00:42:19.440 |
According to the Wall Street Journal, fifth largest straight month, 00:42:29.040 |
Denver Bitcoin put out a year over year commodity chart, we can throw up on the screen. 00:42:36.800 |
I think, Friedberg, you shared in the chat, the average weekly retail prices 00:42:44.800 |
What are our thoughts on the nature of inflation and how that affects our investment? 00:42:55.440 |
And the reason I think it's persistent is that all of these things are intertwined. 00:43:01.360 |
And so, you know, if you want to just bear with me for a second, like when this let's just go to the, 00:43:09.040 |
So you're a barista at Starbucks, or you work at McDonald's, and you're making 17 to $20 an hour. 00:43:17.040 |
And eventually, there are other people that are entering the workforce or, you know, may shift 00:43:22.480 |
And essentially, it just causes this leaky bucket effect where everybody else has to then accommodate 00:43:28.080 |
So you know, you have a guy like, you know, you have a company like Amazon, which is now going 00:43:35.760 |
Because otherwise, they may say, Oh, you know, if I make 15 or $16 an hour, I'd rather work at 00:43:40.000 |
McDonald's, it's simply college, it's not backbreaking work, blah, blah, blah. 00:43:43.360 |
So then they start to increase the amount that they pay, they increase their benefits and the 00:43:48.400 |
I saw this thing this week, there's a crazy thing that's happening, though, which is it's now 00:43:54.560 |
pulling people from non traditional job classes into those jobs, there are teachers that are 00:44:01.040 |
leaving teaching to go work at an Amazon warehouse, there are firefighters, that are going to go work 00:44:05.600 |
at an Amazon warehouse, there are people that are quitting being a firefighter to go work at an 00:44:08.160 |
Amazon warehouse, because you make the same or more. 00:44:11.840 |
Plus, you have all of these other benefits, and the job is structurally a lot easier. 00:44:16.960 |
And so people are making different optimizations. 00:44:19.600 |
And to that point, I think we talked about this, and Nick, you can put it in the group chat. 00:44:24.000 |
In Reddit, as an example, there is more engagement in the subreddit around having a simple work life 00:44:36.720 |
So there's been a structural cultural change where people need to get paid more to do the 00:44:42.000 |
And then at the same time, you have all of the all of the supply side getting more expensive. 00:44:47.920 |
fertilizer makes corn more expensive lumber makes house prices more expensive chip prices makes the 00:44:53.360 |
iPhone and cars more expensive or completely backlogged. 00:44:56.880 |
You know, yesterday at poker, Sonny was showing us he bought a Tesla. 00:45:07.680 |
So I think that it's a it's this is the beginning of a persistence. 00:45:12.000 |
I think those are all like really valid points. 00:45:13.920 |
The thing I'm seeing now is I think we've moved into what I'll call a contagion phase of inflation, 00:45:23.280 |
They're seeing it and some places my guests went up a little bit, my milk went up a little bit, 00:45:27.520 |
And they're saying, Well, I guess if everybody's raising prices, 00:45:30.720 |
I need to raise the prices as well of whatever I provide in the world. 00:45:37.520 |
And they're not looking at their inputs necessarily and saying I need to charge more, 00:45:41.840 |
They're just saying, everything's going up around me. 00:45:45.360 |
I've literally had this happen three or four times. 00:45:48.800 |
And they wanted 15k over sticker and I didn't buy it based on principle. 00:45:52.400 |
But I'm sitting here going like, maybe I'm an idiot. 00:45:54.000 |
Maybe I should just pay the 15k over sticker. 00:45:55.680 |
What are your thoughts, Saxon inflation and the contagion? 00:45:58.160 |
My thoughts are I told you guys like six months ago about this. 00:46:02.320 |
Can we just replay what I said on episode 30? 00:46:04.960 |
To it's got his researchers in the background. 00:46:13.760 |
Well, some of us when we make predictions, take them seriously. 00:46:16.320 |
So you know, is that a dig at Professor ice cold takes? 00:46:18.960 |
I'll give you guys a link to a prediction that was made. 00:46:22.320 |
Here's I mean, I just want to replay the 20 seconds. 00:46:26.800 |
The two Davids dueling again, just like in the group chat. 00:46:32.960 |
If you don't think inflation is already here, 00:46:34.800 |
you missed what happened to the stock market companies aren't performing better. 00:46:38.240 |
We're just inflating everything financial assets first everything also follow. 00:46:44.960 |
I'm beginning to wonder if Biden's going to be a Jimmy Carter here because, 00:46:49.680 |
frankly, all he had to do was leave things well enough alone. 00:46:56.640 |
All they had to do was distribute it to as many people as possible. 00:47:04.640 |
$10 trillion agenda is going to backfire massively. 00:47:08.080 |
Look, if the economy turns, we were set for a post COVID boom. 00:47:12.160 |
And right now that is all at risk because, Jamal, like you're saying, 00:47:15.600 |
they're keeping the economy closed or part parts of it way too long. 00:47:19.120 |
They then overcompensate for that by printing a ton of money. 00:47:22.720 |
And then they overcompensate for that by raising taxes too much. 00:47:26.880 |
So that second step of their overcompensating their inability to open with money is so true. 00:47:34.480 |
Because then what happens is your labor force stays 00:47:36.480 |
impaired because people make enough money by not working. 00:47:47.760 |
Yeah, I made one in January that said the same thing. 00:47:50.000 |
Now look, you can do three things to you can do three things to curb inflation. 00:47:55.760 |
When you raise interest rates, you slow spending. 00:48:00.800 |
And then you're going to have to do three things. 00:48:05.680 |
But the issue when you raise rates is obviously you see things like job loss and economic 00:48:11.600 |
And it can very quickly spiral the other way. 00:48:15.120 |
The other option is we've seen a significant attempt at lately is to raise revenue, right? 00:48:21.440 |
So increased tax rates, tax a broader swath of people at a higher rate or broader swath 00:48:27.680 |
So it's very likely that tax revenue could kind of present itself again as a driver if 00:48:36.320 |
And the third, which is the least likely, is cut spending, right? 00:48:39.120 |
The federal government spending the way it does right now makes a very inefficient way 00:48:44.080 |
of kind of putting capital into the system and inflating. 00:48:46.480 |
We've seen historically that anything the federal government spends money on, like 00:48:49.600 |
health care and education, the costs very quickly spiral out of control. 00:48:54.560 |
Why not just give that money to the free market to make decisions on how to spend it? 00:48:59.120 |
And the market would effectively find balance where buyers and sellers are equivalent as 00:49:04.240 |
So that's why I think that the federal government is so important. 00:49:06.960 |
But it's also a really important thing to keep in mind. 00:49:08.800 |
You know, the money is going to be the first thing that comes into the market, right? 00:49:11.360 |
So that's why it's important to keep in mind. 00:49:12.800 |
And then the second option, which I think is kind of a very important one, is that the 00:49:16.320 |
federal government is going to be the first one to start a war against the economy. 00:49:19.280 |
And the second option is the one that people don't talk about, which I think may end up 00:49:23.840 |
becoming an important option, not kind of oblique option, but more kind of backdrop, 00:49:32.880 |
And I think that's the most important thing, because the policy makers would say, "Hey, 00:49:41.600 |
But the premise that conflict can improve the economy is an important backdrop that 00:49:49.200 |
starts to play into policy decisions that might get made over the next couple of months 00:49:55.840 |
Whether or not the posturing is one of partnership and a policy decision, but also of the fact 00:50:02.240 |
that the government is taking a stand against the economy and the government is taking a stand 00:50:06.880 |
against the economy, and the government is taking a stand against the economy and the 00:50:09.280 |
government is taking a stand against the economy.