back to indexE2: Rebooting economy, understanding corporate debt, avoiding a depression & more with David Sacks
Chapters
0:0
0:1 Jason & Chamath catch us up on their quarantines
1:20 Chamath intros David Sacks
4:40 David explains what their poker group chat has been like since COVID-19 started, and how Jason, Chamath & himself fall on the optimistic/pessimistic spectrum
6:58 How have the past few months defined David's view on the world, and what is his reaction to the US government's response?
12:22 Did the US health apparatus do its job? How could it improve? Why aren't masks already mandated?
19:33 Culture clash between scientific experts & entrepreneurs, thoughts on Chloroquine as a treatment method
27:0 Are US bureaucrats taking the intelligence of US citizens for granted? How liable is Trump?
30:8 David gives his plan to reboot the economy: what now? How does the US avoid a recession/depression?
36:22 Chamath & Jason assess David's plan
43:21 Have the stimulus packages & SMB loans been enough? Will the trickle-down approach work?
49:21 Should the US be allowing companies to declare bankruptcy? How should they decide who gets aid and who does not?
52:2 Chamath explains how corporate debt works through the lens of Ford
56:42 Why is the US not giving a larger % of the stimulus to average Americans? Chances of unrest if quarantine continues?
62:17 Trump vs. Biden: who has the edge in 2020 right now?
71:24 Was Jack Dorsey's $1B donation the strongest move of 2020 so far?
00:00:00.000 |
All right, everybody, welcome to episode two of the All In podcast with Jason and Chamath, 00:00:05.240 |
some basic ground rules here. If you're not into speculation, you don't like to debate, 00:00:08.400 |
you don't like to question authority, and you don't like to get a shit ton of inside 00:00:12.360 |
information, I'm going to actually turn the podcast off right now and go download the 00:00:15.840 |
daily from the New York Times or All Things Considered or some other bullshit. But we're 00:00:19.980 |
here to do speculating and talking about inside information and the real deal. With me, as always, 00:00:25.680 |
He's my co-host, Chamath Palihapitiya, if you don't know how to pronounce it. 00:00:36.120 |
We are in week four of our lockdown sheltering in place here. 00:00:41.200 |
I'm not because I'm fortunate to be in the suburbs. 00:00:46.080 |
I think if I was cooped up in an apartment in the city, I would feel a lot worse than 00:00:59.540 |
Can you imagine 15, 20 years ago, holed up in an apartment with three kids who are home 00:01:05.060 |
These people who are in a city, they must be going insane. 00:01:07.700 |
I mean, there's so much value to visiting New York. 00:01:10.520 |
But if you're stuck there in a quarantine lockdown, I don't know what I'd do. 00:01:25.320 |
I've known him now for, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 years. 00:01:28.180 |
What I would call him is one of my best show ponies. 00:01:32.560 |
I have ridden this motherfucker up and down in everything he's done. 00:01:40.300 |
It's like owning the publishing rights to the YouTube back catalog. 00:01:46.760 |
It's like owning the Beatles back catalog, right? 00:01:55.020 |
One of the most incredible people that we know. 00:02:01.820 |
He almost became a lawyer, but dropped out of law school after going to Stanford and 00:02:10.700 |
worked with Peter Thiel at PayPal and was a chief operating officer there. 00:02:17.260 |
Left PayPal, moved to Los Angeles, unsuccessfully kept his virginity. 00:02:24.720 |
way to not get laid as a movie producer in Hollywood, which it seems to be impossible, 00:02:28.440 |
but David found a way of doing it. Produced a movie, one of the best known 00:02:35.500 |
movies of that generation called Thank You for Smoking. Then moved back up here, started Genie, 00:02:43.900 |
pivoted, started Yammer, sold that for more than a billion dollars to Microsoft, 00:02:51.100 |
and became, during that time, frankly, one of the most unsung heroes of company founders and 00:02:59.760 |
was a prolific investor in some of the most well-known iconic businesses of this last 00:03:06.600 |
generation. Airbnb, Uber, Slack, the list goes on and on. Now is the co-founder of Craft Ventures, 00:03:16.660 |
which is essentially David's early stage venture business where he 00:03:20.640 |
helps a lot of really great companies get to the next level and, frankly, the level that he's been 00:03:28.440 |
playing at for a while. Despite all of that, again, I just see him as a show pony. 00:03:34.520 |
Yeah, some money printing machine. If you can get in on that fund, if you can get in on those 00:03:39.120 |
companies, you're going to do well. Saks is an operating machine. Welcome to the program. 00:03:50.180 |
personally, family, everything, companies, just generally, psychologically? How is this impacting 00:03:55.940 |
I think we're all fortunate to be safe. We started paying attention to the virus, I guess, 00:04:09.160 |
in February because of Twitter tech. There are a bunch of people in the tech ecosystem who started 00:04:16.460 |
tweeting very alarming things. In February, we were able to get a lot of people to come to the 00:04:20.160 |
pod. We were even going as far back as January 30th. I didn't know for sure if they were right, 00:04:25.200 |
but some of them were friends of mine. We were taking it seriously. We started doing work from 00:04:29.060 |
home, I think, on March 1st. We've all been self-isolated since then. Fortunately, everyone 00:04:40.280 |
Saksiput, tell everybody on the pod our group chat. 00:04:49.420 |
what it is, what we do on that group chat, and what you think about it. 00:04:56.740 |
Yeah. Basically, our poker group and extended poker group, which is about, 00:05:01.900 |
I don't know, it's probably about 20 players who rotate in and out of our poker game. We 00:05:07.440 |
have a chat group. We used to just talk about cards and stuff like that, but very rapidly, 00:05:13.900 |
it became a place to share information about the virus and the response and what was going to happen. 00:05:18.680 |
The remarkable thing is that whatever we talk about ends up becoming, it's like everyone else 00:05:26.060 |
just figures it out about a week or two later. I think it has helped us stay about a week or two 00:05:29.820 |
ahead of the curve on this thing. Has it generally been mentally 00:05:34.660 |
reassuring or has it amplified your anxiety talking about it all the time in that chat? 00:05:38.760 |
Well, the interesting thing is that we have people in that chat who are very optimistic. 00:05:46.120 |
We have people who are very pessimistic. We have people in between, and then, 00:05:48.660 |
we have people who swing around quite a bit. I think you get all the perspectives. 00:05:54.420 |
I guess my view of the future is that very hard to try and figure out what's going to happen. You 00:06:01.220 |
have to think about it in terms of scenarios. The chat group helps understand what those 00:06:09.220 |
scenarios might look like. Where would you describe each of us, 00:06:13.460 |
then, on the positive, negative, and then swingy? You're in which camp? Are you swinging? 00:06:18.640 |
I think the three basic scenarios are V, U, and L. Jason, I would describe you as a V. 00:06:30.000 |
I think Chamath is closer to the U, which is the most pessimistic. Sorry, the L is the most 00:06:38.000 |
pessimistic, and then the U is sort of somewhere in between. I sort of swing between the U and the L, 00:06:48.620 |
but I also understand the case for the V. Those initials really refer to the shape of the recovery 00:06:55.180 |
to come and how quickly we'll come out of this. David, before we drill down into your beliefs 00:07:02.220 |
on the future, let's talk about the past. What do you think this entire episode 00:07:11.020 |
has shown us, whether it's from a public health perspective or an economic perspective? How would 00:07:17.740 |
you summarize your view of the world as it's been revealed to you in the past two months? 00:07:22.700 |
Yeah. I think that what it really shows—we live most of our lives during these relatively calm 00:07:37.020 |
periods, and then our lives get redefined by these apocalyptic events. We're not really wired for 00:07:45.580 |
this rate of change. We're not wired for this rate of change. We're not wired for this rate of change. 00:07:47.720 |
I think it was Lennon who said something like, "There are some decades when nothing happens, 00:07:53.260 |
and there are some weeks where decades happen." I think that's basically what's happening here. 00:07:59.540 |
The last thing that was like this was 9/11, where you woke up that morning, 00:08:06.420 |
saw the Twin Towers coming down on TV, and you realized that we were now in a different era. 00:08:11.860 |
Something like that's happening here as well, just in slower motion. 00:08:16.620 |
Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. 00:08:17.700 |
What do you think the government did right, and what do you think that the government did wrong? 00:08:24.120 |
Limiting the flights in for Wuhan or China was a good initial step, but after that, it seemed like 00:08:35.960 |
the response was very slow and disbelieving and incredulous. We've seen this basically everywhere. 00:08:44.920 |
The initial response of, "Oh, we're going to be in a different era," is, "We're going to be in a different era." 00:08:47.680 |
We've seen this basically everywhere. We've seen this basically everywhere. 00:08:47.980 |
Just about every country, with a few notable exceptions in Asia that had previous experience 00:08:54.300 |
with SARS. What we've seen in just about every country is that nobody believes it's going to 00:08:59.060 |
happen to them until it happens to them. Then even in the United States, it's like no one believes 00:09:09.260 |
it's going to happen in their city until someone on their social network gets the virus, and then 00:09:13.100 |
all of a sudden they take it seriously. There's always been this like, it's like this slow, 00:09:17.540 |
moving train wreck where you see it coming and people are just a little bit too slow to react. 00:09:22.420 |
And the problem is, it's all about the doubling time. So if the virus doubles every two or three 00:09:29.780 |
days in the absence of any action at all, maybe even doubles every day in a very dense city like 00:09:36.340 |
New York City, just waiting two or three weeks can make a thousand X difference in somewhere between, 00:09:45.040 |
I guess, 10 X and a thousand X difference, depending on the doubling time. 00:09:47.400 |
Whether if you wait two weeks or three weeks. I saw an article on, there's a bunch of articles now 00:09:54.200 |
talking about why has New York been hit so hard and California has been relatively mild. And the 00:10:03.080 |
articles were saying, you know, California only declared shelter in place one week ahead of New 00:10:07.160 |
York. How can it be doing so much better? And they're looking for all these different 00:10:10.120 |
causes and explanations. And, you know, even one week makes a huge difference. If in New York, 00:10:17.260 |
New York's been hit about 12 times harder than California. But if the doubling time is just two 00:10:23.560 |
days, one week is a 12 X difference. That's how the exponentiality works. And so, like being at 00:10:32.280 |
a week, you know, or two weeks or three weeks behind the curve is incredibly costly. 00:10:36.520 |
How do you break down local government versus federal government and the action there? 00:10:47.020 |
rights and powers, a benefit in this case? Or is it a negative? Because we did see the blue states 00:10:54.360 |
take it very seriously. The red states take it less seriously. The red states have a lot more 00:10:58.400 |
distance between individuals. The blue states tend to be coastal cities. They're more dense. 00:11:03.400 |
Maybe you could handicap for us the spread of the virus with the layer on top of it of local 00:11:09.960 |
governments and the political climate we're in. 00:11:11.620 |
Yeah, I think, you know, the decentralized nature of the American system is both, 00:11:16.880 |
both a blessing and a curse in this, in this type of situation. The curse is that it's been very hard 00:11:23.880 |
to create a unified national strategy where we're doing lockdowns piecemeal. And so the lockdowns 00:11:31.500 |
get forwarded as people move around between areas that are not locked down and start new outbreaks. 00:11:37.860 |
very hard to control the virus. That way, you know, we're also, you know, we're also not able 00:11:43.680 |
to act in the authoritarian way that we saw trying to act and move on to control the virus 00:11:48.860 |
very early on. But the blessing of decentralization is that it's allowed, you know, the governors of 00:11:56.400 |
states to react, and it's allowed private companies to react, and it's allowed entrepreneurs 00:12:00.740 |
to react, and you see a lot of people helping in different ways. And that can be, that can make up 00:12:10.620 |
for having kind of a more ineffectual centralized response, which isn't likely to work completely 00:12:18.960 |
in a country this size anyway. Do you think that the health apparatus of the United States 00:12:30.260 |
areas of opportunity are to improve? Well, if you're talking about the health system, 00:12:36.520 |
it seems like the health system has done a great job in reacting to the virus in terms of 00:12:43.500 |
hospitalizations, you know, hospital, adding hospital beds, adding ICU capacity. 00:12:49.260 |
Even in New York, it looks like, I think Cuomo just said today that they've got, 00:12:54.740 |
you know, ICU capacity, they've got hospital beds. I think the hospital system has done a 00:13:00.240 |
And I think the health system has done a great job rapidly creating more capacity. We haven't seen 00:13:02.960 |
a situation like in Italy, or even the UK, where they're literally rationing ventilators and making 00:13:10.960 |
horrible triage decisions about who's going to get a ventilator and who's not, you know, 00:13:15.360 |
we haven't seen those types of horrors in the US. But if by health system, we mean the FDA, the CDC, 00:13:23.520 |
the WHO, which is part of the US system, but we do rely on them to some extent. 00:13:28.800 |
You've just seen, I think, you know, amazing, really malpractice or negligence. If they were 00:13:38.240 |
a pharma company, I think they'd be sued. You have that, you know, you have on the CDC website, 00:13:42.880 |
things that I haven't checked it today, but as of a few days ago, were just blatantly not true. 00:13:48.480 |
I mean, saying that you only needed a mask, if you were actually taking care of a person with COVID-19, 00:13:57.440 |
that standing, say, a three foot distance was sufficient. That was sort of an acceptable 00:14:04.640 |
amount of social distancing, even if the other person is coughing or sneezing. And that's 00:14:08.400 |
not true. They're just saying things that weren't true. And then, you know, on the, 00:14:13.760 |
you know, the CDC and the Surgeon General until basically the last few days, 00:14:20.400 |
were telling us that masks didn't work, weren't effective, didn't, and then now they've flipped to 00:14:26.800 |
recommending them, but they're still not required. And I just wrote a blog today that I published 00:14:33.200 |
about half an hour ago that- I thought the best part of that blog 00:14:36.320 |
post, by the way, it's up on Medium and Saks has tweeted and I retweeted it, David, is what you said 00:14:42.720 |
at the end, which is we're taking the most draconian measure, quarantining people, which 00:14:47.360 |
we use this softer term, shelter in place, but it's a quarantine, call it what it is. 00:14:51.760 |
You're not allowed to leave your house except under rare circumstances. 00:14:55.440 |
But we won't do the basic thing of wearing the mask. It makes no sense. And Chamath, 00:14:59.920 |
I think you had a really interesting question early on here, which I think we should all 00:15:03.440 |
circle back on one more time, which is what is this reveal, right? Like in this kind of a crisis, 00:15:08.960 |
and I love the statement of Saks where, you know, some decades nothing happens, 00:15:14.560 |
and then a week you have a decade happen. The thing that I am, I think is the big takeaway 00:15:19.840 |
for me is handicapping who you can trust and what people's agendas are and how they can be trusted. 00:15:24.800 |
And I think that's the key to this. I think that's the key to this. I think that's the key to this. 00:15:25.760 |
And I think that's the key to this. I think that's the key to this. I think that's the key to this. 00:15:26.400 |
Because there are a group of people building models. And what is the motivation of somebody 00:15:31.200 |
who builds a model? We think about, we all get pitched as investors or when we worked inside 00:15:36.160 |
of companies, we build models and we know the models mean nothing. They're made by humans. 00:15:39.840 |
And what's the motivation of somebody building a model in today's climate that then people adopt 00:15:46.320 |
that model and there's life or death? What would you handicap? Would you go conservative? Would you 00:15:51.280 |
go aggressive? Would you lean into people dying in the case of- 00:15:55.240 |
... supporting the economy? And so there's the model makers, there's the government, 00:16:00.120 |
local and federal. You have the media who are trying to get clicks in some cases. You have 00:16:05.920 |
capitalists who are trying to protect their book and their bets. How do we all look at and think 00:16:12.360 |
about people's agendas and the CDC having an agenda, the local government and the model makers 00:16:17.680 |
having agenda? Chamath, maybe you could take that one. 00:16:19.400 |
Yeah. I think that the masks issue is actually, 00:16:24.520 |
the most instructive thing in this whole debacle. And the reason is that there was pretty obvious 00:16:36.220 |
data very early on that it was something that had unknown but pretty useful upside and absolutely 00:16:48.700 |
zero deleterious downside. So if you were thinking about risk management, and I gave 00:16:54.460 |
you some options. Option one is do nothing. Option two is here's some drugs that you can take 00:17:01.560 |
prophylactically and I don't really know either the efficacy or the long-term damage to a broad 00:17:08.240 |
base population of people taking them. And option three was a piece of cloth over your nose and 00:17:17.720 |
And apparently at a minimum, it prevents other people from smelling your bad breath, 00:17:24.460 |
It prevents projectiles of disease-laden spit getting into your- 00:17:37.340 |
Why? Why? Why? Was the agenda here because they didn't want people buying up the masks 00:17:43.100 |
and not going to healthcare workers? Why couldn't we agree on something this simple? 00:17:47.660 |
Because it was never about the N95 masks. You could have worn a cloth mask, 00:17:54.460 |
it up and giving you 70% efficacy. This has everything to do with incentives and everything 00:18:01.020 |
to do with your other question as well, which is why do modelers behave the way that they do? 00:18:06.900 |
All of this is about being taken seriously. And so to be taken seriously, you have to understand 00:18:13.800 |
the incentives in the game that you're playing. So for a modeler and a forecaster, the incentive 00:18:21.100 |
is all around being conservative because that's how you're taken seriously. 00:18:25.640 |
There's nobody that has any upside in showing a model that shows 10,000 people dying. 00:18:32.180 |
All of the attention and the gravity with which you're taken and the attention that you get 00:18:39.600 |
is when you first put out a model that shows that 2 million people could die, which is what 00:18:43.920 |
Imperial College did. And then eventually you walk it back and you walk it back. And after the actuals 00:18:50.740 |
exceed the forecast, then the data converges on what actually happens. And you see that these 00:18:58.300 |
models were woefully inaccurate. It's the same with why the CDC or the WHO are just so completely 00:19:05.480 |
incompetent because the incentives in those organizations are essentially to play their game. 00:19:11.640 |
And that game is not one of public health, but it's one of politics. And so you have these people 00:19:17.900 |
fighting each other over political territory and the right to basically make decisions versus the 00:19:24.980 |
actual substance and the validity of the decision. David, does that correlate with your thinking and 00:19:29.680 |
then superimpose the media on top of that? Yeah. I mean, so I think there's a couple 00:19:34.720 |
of things going on. One is that there is a huge culture clash going on between the people 00:19:41.500 |
who need conclusive scientific proof before they're willing to recommend, 00:19:47.820 |
and any course of action. And then between other people who are willing to take a more 00:19:54.220 |
experimental approach to try things to iterate the way that we do in startup land when confronted 00:20:00.140 |
with kind of company existential issues. And the latter approach is smart when there's a lot of 00:20:11.040 |
upside in trying something and not much downside. And the other approach is that there's a lot of 00:20:15.720 |
upside in trying something and not much downside. And the other approach is that there's a lot of 00:20:17.820 |
upside in trying something and not much downside. And the other approach is that there's a lot of 00:20:18.320 |
this scientific, the pseudo-scientific sounding approach where you're constantly demanding 00:20:23.120 |
conclusive evidence. It's actually people pretending to be smart. It's people who want to 00:20:28.240 |
sound smart, but it's actually a pretty dumb approach. And so we've seen this culture clash 00:20:34.360 |
playing out over and over again. So, Shereeta, I'll repeat it back to you, 00:20:41.600 |
David. Experts are afraid to do something experimental with low downside because they 00:20:46.680 |
have reputations, they have a reputation, they have a reputation, and they're afraid to do something 00:20:47.800 |
experimental with low downside because they have reputations, they have a reputation, and they're 00:20:47.800 |
afraid to do something experimental with low downside because they have reputations, they have a reputation, and they want to sound smart. Whereas entrepreneurs or maybe capitalists or other problem solvers or perhaps even gamblers are going to say, there's no downside here. What's the downside to putting a mask on? Nothing. Let's try it. The same thing with chloroquine and the Z-Pak. Very early on, people were saying, like Elon and other folks in our circle, why not just do it? 00:21:06.380 |
Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Chloroquine, let's not put that in the same category. This is the point. Because it's a drug, Jason. It's a drug for malaria. You have zero evidence of taking it if you're 00:21:17.780 |
sick already. No, we still don't know. Let's be clear. So masks is a wholly different thing. This is why I said it that way. The minute you start to add drugs, you come off as an armchair epidemiologist and anybody reasonably smart can poke holes in your theory and you sound like a fucking moron. You cannot sound like a moron by telling people to wear cloth over their nose and their mouth. Okay, but the next step, if you were in the hospital and you've been diagnosed and they 00:21:47.760 |
said, hey, the doctor says, you might want to try this. There were people who were saying, don't even try it. And there was a direct correlation when Trump said he was behind it. It seemed like the media and everybody were like, this is the worst idea ever. But this is your point, which is that the incentives of that game are to politicize things versus think about what's in the best interest in the public health interests of either the United States or the world. But aren't we in agreement to try it if you were if you were in the ICU and they said, hey, you want to try this? You wouldn't try it? No, but 00:22:17.740 |
this is the problem. The posture of the American political infrastructure is broken. And moments 00:22:23.740 |
like this shine a light on how broken it is. Because as David said, all of the testing and 00:22:30.420 |
iteration, all of those things are must-haves in peacetime. They are nice-to-haves in wartime. 00:22:38.920 |
You don't have a time to walk around and test fire a gun and make sure this works and that works. 00:22:47.720 |
Shoot and you fire and you aim later. And in that posture, we have to have a set of rules 00:22:54.880 |
that contemplate giving people at the ground floor, on the border of where their life is at risk, 00:23:03.280 |
the right to make a decision as well-informed as it can be about what they can try to do to save 00:23:10.040 |
their life. And doctors need to be equally empowered. And we've effectively done that, 00:23:17.700 |
And in that, there is all of this noise that delays the right decision, 00:23:21.920 |
which is not that hydrochloroquine is good or bad, but it's that here's all the published data 00:23:26.860 |
into the hands of the doctor who can actually read and understand it so that he or she and 00:23:31.900 |
the patient can make a decision together. Yeah, agreed. 00:23:34.620 |
Sax, what are your thoughts on chloroquine and the Z-Pak and that whole sort of unraveling of 00:23:41.800 |
this is the miracle, it's not the miracle, it's worth looking at, and how that debate occurred, 00:23:47.680 |
let's say, on the Twitter, and then also in our stream when we were talking? 00:23:50.880 |
Well, Trump was not the first to embrace the potential of hydroxychloroquine. In fact, 00:23:58.740 |
we were talking about it in our chat group before it became national news. Of course, 00:24:02.900 |
once he did embrace it, it became political football, and a lot of people wanted to prove 00:24:08.860 |
him wrong. And so now it's hard to have a conversation about it without it becoming 00:24:11.960 |
political. But the argument for hydroxychloroquine really started with some research papers that 00:24:17.660 |
showed that it worked in vitro, basically in test tubes against the virus. And it worked against 00:24:25.400 |
SARS, which is a related sort of category of virus. I'm not an expert or anything. This is 00:24:33.180 |
just sort of me telling you what I know as a consumer of information. And so it was not crazy 00:24:41.320 |
to think this is something that should be tried in the context of COVID-19. Now, we don't know if it's 00:24:47.640 |
going to work or not. I saw an interesting presentation by UCSF, and their working theory 00:24:53.880 |
on it is that hydroxychloroquine plus Z-Pak might have some impact in the first week of the virus 00:25:02.020 |
before peak viral replication takes place. And this might help interfere with the virus 00:25:09.480 |
replicating. Once you're in respiratory distress, though, and it's in your lungs, you're into a 00:25:17.620 |
lot of things. And so it's a little bit of a mystery. But I think it's a good thing that we're 00:25:22.000 |
seeing that the virus is going to be in the first week of the virus. And I think it's a good thing 00:25:25.600 |
that we're seeing that the virus is going to be in the first week of the virus. And I think it's a 00:25:28.960 |
good thing that we're seeing that the virus is going to be in the first week of the virus. And 00:25:31.960 |
I think it's a good thing that we're seeing that the virus is going to be in the first week of the 00:25:34.600 |
virus. And I think it's a good thing that we're seeing that the virus is going to be in the first 00:25:35.800 |
week of the virus. And I think it's a good thing that we're seeing that the virus is going to be 00:25:36.800 |
in the first week of the virus. And I think it's a good thing that we're seeing that the virus is 00:32:27.720 |
response, the making sure that hospitals around 00:32:34.980 |
Why is it, Dave, that we're not going to be able to get out of this? 00:32:35.700 |
I think the answer is, David, that people can't keep these two parallel processes in their mind at 00:32:41.400 |
once. You've been attacked viciously on Twitter. The media attacks anybody who brings this up as 00:32:45.840 |
like only caring about capitalism when in fact, you need to do both plans. You need to figure out 00:32:51.420 |
how people get back to their livelihoods and we avoid a depression, which would kill more people 00:32:56.040 |
ultimately, right? I mean, I think there's consensus about that, whether it's depression 00:33:00.120 |
or suicide, et cetera, or people not being able to feed themselves or, you know, have 00:33:05.640 |
nutritious food and health care. So why can't people put these two things in their mind at once? 00:33:11.460 |
And then let's talk about the actual plan. If you were planning and you were the mayor of San 00:33:16.200 |
Francisco or you were in Trump's cabinet and they said, "Okay, David, you make the plan for the Bay 00:33:20.640 |
Area to go back to work. Take us through your one, two, three, and then we'll throw it to Chuma." 00:33:24.180 |
What I would do is, like, I would do what I would do in a company for a product release is I'd have, 00:33:30.120 |
you know, in a company, I'd have a product manager for the 1.0 release and I have a different product 00:33:35.100 |
manager for the two-time product release. And I would have a product manager for the two-time 00:33:35.580 |
2.0 release because it's very hard for, you know, somebody to be all in on two different releases, 00:33:41.400 |
which have two different schedules. So, you know, I think the team that we have right now that's 00:33:47.160 |
basically concerned with the immediate response, the triage, they should keep doing what they're 00:33:51.960 |
doing, make sure that, you know, the country's reacting the right way, that it has all the 00:33:56.400 |
supplies they need, that, you know, they're berating 3M into giving us more PPE or whatever 00:34:00.900 |
it is. But I think that there should be a separate team, kind of a, 00:34:05.520 |
you know, a czar for the 2.0 response, which should be focused on how do we create a new 00:34:12.180 |
system that gets us out of lockdown, but doesn't re-trigger the exponentiality of the virus. 00:34:19.440 |
And I think that person, that team should be ready to slide the new system into place in May. 00:34:26.580 |
I don't know if it's beginning of May, end of May or whatever, but sometime in May, they should be 00:34:30.600 |
ready to slide that new system into place so that this precious time we're buying isn't wasted. 00:34:35.460 |
Give us your one, two, three. One is masks, obviously, I would think. 00:34:42.060 |
So that's number one. Give us your two, three, four, if you want to riff here a little bit. 00:34:46.200 |
Yeah, I mean, the other elements of the plan that people keep talking about, 00:34:49.740 |
it's, you know, rapid, ubiquitous testing. I mean, and you have to have same-day results. 00:34:56.640 |
This business of it taking two, three, four days in the lab. The problem is, 00:35:01.680 |
if someone is infected, they could be passing it on during that time. You don't, you don't 00:35:05.400 |
isolate them in time. So we have to have massive, ubiquitous same-day testing, along with contact 00:35:12.480 |
tracing so that when you do find out that somebody's got it, you can not isolate not just 00:35:16.800 |
them, but all their contacts. That's the system that seems to have worked in South Korea. And, 00:35:27.360 |
And is quarantining the high risk during this first phase of the rollout with testing 00:35:35.340 |
and social distancing and masks, that seems to be the no-brainer, I would add, fourth bullet point, 00:35:42.300 |
which is if you're obese, diabetic, asthma, or some combination of those and over 60 and or over 00:35:48.900 |
60, you got to stay home now. And you cannot be in touch with anybody who's out and about and part 00:35:53.940 |
of that first wave to go back to society. Right. We know that certain segments of 00:35:59.760 |
the population are at much higher risk than others. And so part of having a more fine-tuned response 00:36:05.280 |
to the virus, other than just shutting everything down, would say, well, let the people who are at 00:36:09.660 |
very, very low risk go back out still wearing masks and having the right protocols and hygiene, 00:36:14.820 |
all that stuff. But you keep the high-risk population isolated rather than shutting down 00:36:23.700 |
if you're on the board of directors and David was the SAR of the May plan to go back, 00:36:28.560 |
how would you, what questions would you have for him and how critical can you be of his plan? Let's 00:36:35.220 |
take this as if we were actually in charge. Chamath, savage David's plan. 00:36:38.760 |
Well, I probably would push David to consider a more aggressive approach here. And this is 00:36:49.920 |
something that I've talked about before. Jason, you and I have talked about this on 00:36:53.160 |
the podcast before, but we need a biological Patriot Act. I know that it's unpalatable for 00:37:01.800 |
people on the left for certain reasons and people on the right for other reasons. 00:37:05.160 |
But it just doesn't matter what they think. It was reported today, by the way, that the CDC and 00:37:12.420 |
the task force at the White House is considering immunity cards, but a much more beefed up version 00:37:18.720 |
of them. These need to be cards that have some kind of chip inside them that are non-hackable 00:37:27.600 |
and issued by the government. But what I would push David to think about if he was the 00:37:35.100 |
PR of getting back to work is the following, which is I agree with the broad-based testing. 00:37:40.620 |
I think that you need to have some kind of wristband that allows you to be inside of 00:37:48.780 |
certain green zones in every single city or town in the country that allow you to 00:37:54.300 |
some way be back to normal. But there also needs to be red zones where you cannot. We need to have 00:38:05.040 |
restarting a quarantine if there are hotspots that develop. But all of it needs to be supported 00:38:12.300 |
by broad-based testing and a biological Patriot Act. We do need to have immunity cards. The simple 00:38:19.740 |
basic reason is that it is the only way that one can prioritize the economic salvation of the US 00:38:25.260 |
economy. Because I think once we have paid the cost from the public health perspective, 00:38:31.740 |
which we are doing at the end of this quarantine in, 00:38:34.440 |
flattening the curve or crushing the curve, our immediate focus has to be in resuscitating the 00:38:41.220 |
GDP of this country. Because otherwise, the number of deaths and the amount of pain that 00:38:49.140 |
is caused by economic destruction will far outnumber the number of people that die from this, 00:38:54.780 |
which is tragic already. The only way that I can see for us to do that in a scalable way is with 00:39:04.380 |
Yeah, yeah. I would also push you on thinking about quarantining not just at home, but maybe by 00:39:18.360 |
region and hot zone. So if we know the New York corridor or the Northeast corridor is severely 00:39:23.880 |
infected, nobody in or out of that corridor without a visa, without, and I know this is a 00:39:29.820 |
very touchy issue, well, in terms of civil liberties, but until we're through this, I don't 00:39:33.780 |
see why people are going to get vaccinated. David Stemmel: 00:39:34.380 |
Yeah, yeah. David Stemmel: People from New York need to go to Florida 00:39:36.180 |
without maybe a rare exception or something to that effect. So if we know we got California out 00:39:43.140 |
of it, or if SoCal is still in the thick of it but NorCal isn't, maybe we have some level of testing 00:39:49.980 |
required to get on a flight to come to San Francisco or to go to leave New York. So those 00:39:55.620 |
are two punch-ups. How would you look at those, David, as the new czar of getting back to work? 00:40:00.840 |
David Stemmel: I think it's all on the table. 00:40:04.260 |
I mean, I like the green zone, red zone idea. I like using immunity information. We've been 00:40:09.900 |
talking in our chat group for, I think, a month about these blood serology tests. I 00:40:13.800 |
tweeted, I took one of those tests weeks ago, I think like three weeks ago before 00:40:19.080 |
the FDA had even approved it, and I tweeted about it. So yeah, I think all that, I think 00:40:24.600 |
the immunity cards, I think we should use all that information. I mean, it would all be on 00:40:28.440 |
the table for sure. But I think most of all, these ideas need to be tied together, 00:40:34.200 |
into a coherent system. And I'm worried that our approach to date has been so ad hoc 00:40:40.140 |
that we're not going to have a coherent system ready to go as a replacement to shutdowns in May 00:40:48.420 |
Is part of this, you talked before about how you didn't like to be managed. I think we all agree 00:40:54.300 |
we're being managed and massaged because they really do not want to even talk to us about going 00:41:02.340 |
back to work in May or what happens. David Stemmel: 00:41:04.200 |
Because they're afraid that we're going to jump the gun and we're all going to just go to 00:41:07.260 |
Crissy Field or whatever park or Central Park and just throw a giant party. But people are not 00:41:13.860 |
stupid. There is a certain self-preservation here that should be inherent in all these discussions, 00:41:18.720 |
which is any reasonable person watching the death toll in New York does not want to leave their 00:41:25.260 |
house. And so why can't, how much of the lack of discussion about this issue do you think, David, 00:41:34.080 |
is because people are afraid to treat people like adults because they think they're going to just go 00:41:39.180 |
out to Crissy Field or Dolores Park? David Stemmel: 00:41:42.660 |
No, I think you're right that there was this long period of time where the authorities were 00:41:47.940 |
just trying to get everyone to buy into the idea that the virus was dangerous, 00:41:50.940 |
they needed to shelter in place. And they didn't want to hear any views that 00:41:57.540 |
appear to be contradicting. I don't think they were contradicting it. 00:42:04.020 |
David Stemmel: Yeah. And I think that's true. And I think that's true in a situation in which 00:42:30.240 |
we're relying on everyone's voluntary compliance to engage 00:42:33.960 |
in a quarantine or to wear masks. And I guess part of the response here is to figure out what 00:42:39.300 |
action items should not be voluntary that we just need to do in order to get past this. 00:42:46.320 |
Chamath Nani: I think that getting back to work is going to be much, much more difficult than 00:42:53.100 |
people think. I think that in the absence of a vaccine, which looks like at best 18 to 24 months 00:43:02.940 |
from now, we will be able to get back to work. And I think that's a very important thing. And I 00:43:03.900 |
think that we will never get to 100% of where we were before, or at least the potential to be at 100%. 00:43:09.420 |
And so I just think that over the next two years, we're in for a tremendous amount of difficulty. 00:43:16.560 |
And this is sort of where I'd like to shift the conversation. I think that we've now poured 00:43:22.680 |
between the United States government and the Fed almost $10 trillion. We smeared it into the economy. 00:43:33.840 |
David Stemmel: And only $0.03 of every dollar has gone into people's pockets. And I think we're 00:43:39.480 |
hoping that the other $0.97 somehow trickles down into their pockets in some way, shape, or form. 00:43:44.940 |
Now, when you look at that $0.97, half of it was things like propping up the commercial paper 00:43:52.020 |
market, propping up the repo market. But it's also been things like propping up investment grade debt, 00:43:58.800 |
propping up high yield debt. And I have a real issue with this because I think that, I think, that the market is going to be a little bit more volatile. 00:44:01.800 |
David Stemmel: Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. 00:44:01.920 |
David Stemmel: And I think that's a real issue with this because I think that if we're going to take two years to get back to normal, 00:44:07.260 |
and I really do think it's two years because, Jason, a lot of the fears that you expressed, 00:44:12.480 |
people will have as lingering doubts and will prevent them from being at 100%, 00:44:17.040 |
which means businesses will not be at 100% until you can get an injection and know that you're protected. 00:44:22.260 |
We're doing an enormous amount of damage because we're taking trillions of dollars 00:44:27.780 |
and flooding it into the economy in a way that's just not going to be effective. 00:44:31.860 |
And I don't think that we're taking enough time to really think through these things. 00:44:40.560 |
David Stemmel: Or not the velocity, the intention. I think Jerome Powell's commentary, 00:44:46.740 |
I applaud, which is he's saying all the right things, which is we will do everything possible. 00:44:52.440 |
But the lending program to companies has been haphazard and difficult. 00:44:57.360 |
Jason Lowery: But it did get started in three weeks, and some people have gotten money in week 00:45:00.840 |
four of this. I mean, it's pretty incredible. 00:45:01.800 |
David Stemmel: No. The numbers that I've read is that on average, the loans are turning out to be 00:45:07.740 |
sort of like in the tens of thousands. And on top of that, David and I talked about this in the group 00:45:13.440 |
chat, but the math makes it so that you're better off furloughing or letting people go than you are 00:45:19.620 |
taking PPP, which means that a lot of this money may never get taken. But again, all of that is 00:45:28.620 |
still a small rounding error. We're talking about less than $0.10 a month. We're talking about less 00:45:31.740 |
than $0.10 on the dollar. $0.90 of the dollar have gone into areas that will not really touch 00:45:37.380 |
an average American citizen. And I think that's just fundamentally wrong because 00:45:44.040 |
the trickle-down theory of all of this was started 40 years ago, and we can see now that it doesn't 00:45:51.280 |
Jason Lowery: David, any thoughts on the stimulus? 00:45:53.460 |
David Stemmel: Well, I think what's happened is that we have a 30% hole in our economy right now. 00:46:02.160 |
David Stemmel: Going to 25 or 30, maybe as high as that. We don't know yet. 00:46:07.860 |
We think that GDP is going to contract in the next quarter by a quarter to a third. And so 00:46:16.200 |
you've got this giant hole in the economy. And what the Fed and Treasury are trying to do is 00:46:22.380 |
plug that hole for a period of time until we can get through this health crisis. And if the crisis 00:46:31.620 |
only lasts a few months, maybe they can hold it all together. But I do worry that if it lasts longer, 00:46:36.420 |
it's going to slip out of their hands. And the result is going to be a cascade of defaults and 00:46:44.760 |
bankruptcies and effectively a great unraveling of our economy. 00:46:50.040 |
Jason Lowery: Yeah. I think that though, in fairness, this is where I think bankruptcy, 00:46:55.320 |
it's almost viewed as a four-letter word, but it's not. And in many ways, the 00:47:01.560 |
bankruptcy process could actually be the saving grace of American business in this moment. And 00:47:06.720 |
the reason I say that is that it allows in a bankruptcy, these companies to discharge 00:47:11.700 |
a lot of the debt. And we could set up a mechanism where these bankruptcies could be done in a way 00:47:17.520 |
where, again, similar to taking PPP, you don't let people go. A percentage of the cap table must go 00:47:24.780 |
to the pensions if they have them. A certain percentage of the cap table must go to employees. 00:47:31.500 |
remaining percentage goes to the secured bondholders. And so the existing equity holders 00:47:36.000 |
and the unsecured bondholders would effectively not be made whole, but in that all the employees 00:47:44.160 |
would be. And if you combine that with a UBI program where you put, look, in the United States 00:47:49.920 |
economy, only $8 trillion is wages. So we could do so much. If we had given every United States 00:48:01.440 |
citizen their absolute salary of 2019 right now, we'd still have $2 trillion left to bail out companies. 00:48:08.880 |
David Stemmel: And everybody could take a year and get paid, 00:48:11.400 |
like literally have a year sabbatical and be paid. 00:48:13.980 |
Jason Lowery: Well, I think what it really does is it guarantees the chances or it maximizes, 00:48:18.840 |
sorry, the chances of a consumer-led recovery. The United States has never been an economic system 00:48:25.380 |
that's been vibrant because of government spending or other things. We've always been vibrant because 00:48:31.380 |
David Stemmel: It's consumer consumption and it's customers of companies buying products 00:48:36.360 |
that they need or want that drive the economy forward. And if you think about our largest 00:48:41.760 |
customer base, they are the US population. And by guaranteeing their revenue, so to speak, 00:48:48.240 |
you actually allow them to then spend once they get out of quarantine and you'll see them spend 00:48:54.960 |
even in fits and starts. In this way, you could spend $500 billion buying a bunch of junk 00:49:01.320 |
debt. I really don't see, as a reasonably savvy participant in the markets, how it actually helps 00:49:08.340 |
anything. I think all it does is it saddles you and me and all of our listeners with a bunch of 00:49:15.300 |
toxic junk debt that eventually has to get sold by the Fed, as David said, in the grand unraveling. 00:49:20.760 |
Jason Lowery: And it would be more healthy. Wouldn't it be more healthy, David, 00:49:24.360 |
to allow a certain percentage of these companies, the weaker ones, to fail so that the stronger ones 00:49:30.600 |
could then pick up those employees and there'd be some stability? And I'm curious if you'd think 00:49:34.920 |
that we're going to be living in a world where, and people have speculated about this, 00:49:40.260 |
maybe the individual consumer changes their perspective and maybe people come out of this 00:49:46.380 |
crises with a different worldview. I don't necessarily subscribe to this, but Chamath, 00:49:51.120 |
you do. We've had this conversation. So I'm curious, David, if you think the American 00:49:55.740 |
consumer will forever change and maybe they upgrade their phone half as much, 00:50:00.540 |
they spend less and they basically live a more modest rural lifestyle and people maybe stay out 00:50:08.040 |
in Tahoe or Colorado or wherever they went during this crises. What are your thoughts? 00:50:11.760 |
David Schawel: Well, you're really talking about depression era values. 00:50:14.880 |
And the problem is if we acquire those values via depression, that would be a pretty bad outcome 00:50:22.320 |
here. But yes, that could happen. I think where I agree with Chamath is that I think that, you know, 00:50:30.480 |
even though the federal government, the Fed, the Treasury have a tremendous amount of firepower 00:50:36.540 |
in a situation like this, it may not be an exhaustible and we have to kind of pick and 00:50:42.000 |
choose and prioritize who's going to get aid and who's going to get bailouts. And right now it 00:50:49.440 |
feels a little bit willy nilly, you know, and it feels like under those circumstances, the bailouts 00:50:57.300 |
default to the people who are, you know, the people who are the most vulnerable. 00:51:00.880 |
David Schawel: And I think that's a real challenge because I think that's the real challenge. I think 00:51:04.200 |
that's the real challenge for a lot of the people who are politically connected and powerful as 00:51:10.860 |
opposed to the workers, the pension funds, you know, the Main Street small business owner who's 00:51:16.180 |
worked their whole life on a business now all of a sudden is underwater. And I think, you know, it's, 00:51:23.200 |
it's going to be very hard to get the aid to the right people. 00:51:27.520 |
David Schawel: Look, in the last four weeks, in the last four weeks. 00:51:30.360 |
David Schawel: The amount of distressed debt in the US has quadrupled in one week to a trillion dollars. 00:51:38.200 |
David Schawel: So as an example, to David's point, that's much more visible to Jay Powell 00:51:44.640 |
or to Steve Mnuchin in the Fed and at the Treasury than it is that, you know, 00:51:52.240 |
thousands and thousands of nameless anonymous small business owners. 00:51:56.240 |
David Schawel: Who owns that debt? Can you give an example of what that debt would be for the listeners? 00:52:00.300 |
David Schawel: Sure. I mean, I mean, so, you know, I mean, a fallen angel today is Ford. 00:52:06.840 |
David Schawel: So we were not, we're not going to pick on Ford, but we're just going to point to it as a well-known company. 00:52:11.080 |
David Schawel: So this is a car manufacturer. 00:52:14.080 |
David Schawel: They employ hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in very important political states, you know, Michigan, Ohio, I think, Tennessee, probably. 00:52:30.240 |
David Schawel: But Ohio and Michigan, obviously critical states. 00:52:32.240 |
David Schawel: And they, you know, issue debt into the market to fund, you know, building factories or buying equipment. 00:52:42.240 |
David Schawel: Pension funds by the debt, family offices by the debt, hedge funds by the debt. 00:52:48.240 |
David Schawel: Now, those guys were giving out a coupon and they were paying, let's just say, four or five or 6% a year on this interest. 00:52:58.240 |
David Schawel: But now, because of all this economic uncertainty, they're paying, you know, $1.5 million. 00:53:00.180 |
David Schawel: And so, you know, the economic uncertainty, people think that their ability to pay that back has gone way down. 00:53:04.180 |
David Schawel: And so now they have to issue debt at much higher interest rates. 00:53:09.180 |
David Schawel: And the existing debt has a much lower credit quality. 00:53:13.180 |
David Schawel: It's effectively like you having a credit card and, you know, American Express calling you and saying, Jason, I think the odds of you paying your credit card balance have gone way down. 00:53:23.180 |
David Schawel: So I'm increasing your interest rate to 24% from 17%. 00:53:27.180 |
Jason Lowery: And then I get another credit card to pay it off. 00:53:30.120 |
David Schawel: So essentially what's happened is the Federal Reserve has decided to become that next credit card issuer. 00:53:39.120 |
David Schawel: Instead of doing it for you, they're doing it for companies, but not for you. 00:53:43.120 |
David Schawel: And the question is, is that okay? 00:53:45.120 |
David Schawel: Well, at some level, companies like Ford should be saved because I think these are iconic businesses that employ hundreds of thousands of people. 00:53:52.120 |
David Schawel: And they're critical linchpins in the economy, right? 00:53:55.120 |
David Schawel: Because they have a massive supply chain network and, you know, they're really important for me. 00:54:00.060 |
David Schawel: And they're important for many other things beyond just the economics that they themselves represent. 00:54:05.060 |
David Schawel: But there are better ways to help Ford. 00:54:10.060 |
David Schawel: You could lend Ford as much money as they needed to meet their short-term obligations, similarly to the way that the Federal Reserve would allow a bank to borrow from their window. 00:54:21.060 |
David Schawel: And I think that that's a very reasonable approach. 00:54:24.060 |
David Schawel: The question is really when the Fed then basically acts as a buyer of last resort and obfuscates the Federal Reserve, 00:54:30.000 |
David Schawel: obfuscates the price of these bonds and essentially is saying the American taxpayer will own these bonds for the foreseeable future. 00:54:37.000 |
David Schawel: If you think that at some point those bonds that you bought for, you know, 90 cents on the dollar are worth 90 cents on the dollar, then everything is okay. 00:54:48.000 |
David Schawel: But if there's a chance that 90 cents goes to 70 cents, the people that really eat that cost are us in the short term and our children in the medium and long term. 00:54:59.940 |
David Schawel: So, you know, I think that's a really good question. 00:55:01.940 |
David Schawel: It's obviously not my wheelhouse corporate debt like this. 00:55:03.940 |
David Schawel: Why wouldn't there be a clause that if they didn't pay back that 90 cents on the dollar that the American government bought it for, it converts into equity in the company? 00:55:13.940 |
David Morgan: It's a great question because the Federal Reserve has chosen to go and essentially the equivalent of open an E-Trade account and step into the markets by themselves and just buy. 00:55:25.940 |
David Morgan: So they're buying bonds and they're buying. 00:55:29.880 |
David Schawel: Individual bonds and they're buying indices that control or that have exposure to certain bonds. 00:55:34.880 |
David Morgan: What they are not doing is going directly to these companies and negotiating, essentially saying, I will give you four or five billion dollars. 00:55:42.880 |
David Morgan: And what I want you to do is retire that old debt and replace it with this new instrument. 00:55:47.880 |
David Morgan: And here are the terms of this new instrument. 00:55:49.880 |
David Morgan: The United States taxpayer gets, you know, 3% or 4% warrant coverage of the company. 00:55:55.880 |
David Morgan: You know, you must make sure that the pension holders are made whole. 00:55:59.820 |
David Morgan: Wouldn't we have those clauses? 00:56:00.820 |
David Morgan: It's a basic blocking and tackling that, you know, seed funds have. 00:56:04.820 |
David Morgan: David Sachs, what do you, why is this not like a no brainer? 00:56:08.820 |
David Sachs: Well, I mean, I think we've got to get a good deal for taxpayers. 00:56:12.820 |
David Sachs: I've heard Mark Cuban say it pretty eloquently. 00:56:16.820 |
David Sachs: I even heard Trump say that we have to get a good deal for taxpayers. 00:56:19.820 |
David Sachs: I just think that they're in such an emergency. 00:56:22.820 |
David Sachs: They're not really taking the time to do that. 00:56:24.820 |
David Sachs: They're, you know, they're trying to do things they can do immediately. 00:56:29.760 |
David Morgan: And the forgivableness of these, of this money to me is the thing I don't understand. 00:56:34.760 |
David Morgan: Why isn't any, all of it just, you know, a 10 year long or 20 year long loan 00:56:39.760 |
that converts into equity over some tranches? 00:56:42.760 |
David Sachs: But Jason, this is why if you're, if you're going to haphazardly fire trillions 00:56:47.760 |
of dollars out of a bazooka, why not give more than three cents on the dollar to average 00:56:53.760 |
David Sachs: Why not put it into the pockets of every single bank account? 00:56:56.700 |
David Sachs: You know, you know, who knows how much money they're going to make. 00:56:59.700 |
David Sachs: You know, how much everybody made? 00:57:01.700 |
David Sachs: And you know, the IRS has a mailing address for everybody and the IRS either gets 00:57:05.360 |
a check or mails a check to every single taxpayer in the United States, which also touches- 00:57:09.700 |
David Morgan: And they also have direct deposit for half of the people. 00:57:11.700 |
David Sachs: And so, you know, there's nothing stopping us from saying, well, you know what, 00:57:16.700 |
why don't we do 10%, 10 cents of every dollar? 00:57:19.700 |
David Sachs: Why don't we do 15 cents of every dollar to Americans? 00:57:22.700 |
David Sachs: I really think this is the way that you limit the amount of waste that's 00:57:32.460 |
And we shouldn't castigate people for wanting to put money in the system, as David said, 00:57:37.640 |
But we can't be so haphazard as to not think about the moral hazards we're creating and 00:57:46.700 |
And so this 10 trillion has already gone out the door. 00:57:49.760 |
But if the next trillion or two don't touch Americans, I think it's going to create an 00:57:57.340 |
David Sachs: We've only given people a few weeks of… 00:58:02.760 |
And you can't tell companies that they can have effectively a limitless lifeline, but 00:58:11.740 |
Because I do think at some point, companies will find a way to get out of these loans 00:58:17.400 |
and/or break the covenants with not much repercussion. 00:58:19.580 |
David Sachs: Okay, I want to wrap with two sort of not doomsday scenarios, but I want 00:58:25.200 |
to touch on politics, and I also want to know, in the chance that this quarantine goes on, 00:58:29.520 |
for May and June, in other words, San Francisco says, "You know what? 00:58:33.560 |
We're going to keep going," and New York says, "We're keeping going." 00:58:37.480 |
And we're talking about not just April being in quarantine, but May and/or June, and we're 00:58:46.680 |
What are the chances, David, that people say, "You know what? 00:58:59.460 |
David Sachs: And how do politicians handicap that in this new world? 00:59:08.840 |
I mean, particularly among young populations who are not at risk as much, you know, for 00:59:17.200 |
the relatively younger, healthier people who don't have comorbidity factors could say, 00:59:21.460 |
"Look, I've got a one in a thousand chance or less of dying, even if I do get this." 00:59:31.440 |
But it's all the more reason why I think we need a strategy to get out of lockdown that 00:59:36.680 |
already includes the idea of letting out these people who are at much lower risk and 00:59:48.380 |
You have anything to add to that, Chamath, that kind of doomsday scenario or that eventuality? 00:59:53.080 |
Chamath Nani: Well, I think that you're very right, Jason, that I don't think we're going