Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
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Episode: Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI
Author: All-In Podcast, LLC
Duration: 01:23:23
Episode Shownotes
(0:00) Bestie intros! (7:57) Election impact on Bitcoin, crypto, and fintech stocks (21:56) M&A and IPOs: What to expect in 2025 (39:52) Pharma advertising on cable tv: Should it be allowed? Is big pharma buying influence? (58:17) FBI raids Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's home (1:05:51) Trump's transition picks: Strategy, highest
upside/downside, and more Get tickets for The All-In Holiday Spectacular!: https://allin.ticketsauce.com/e/all-in-holiday-spectacular Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BTC-USD https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/gensler-remarks-pli-s-56th-annual-institute-securities-regulation-111424 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10 https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-reserve-cuts-interest-rates-quarter-point-powell-inflation-election-2024-11 https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/13/cpi-inflation-october-2024.html https://x.com/elerianm/status/1857297087010107728 https://x.com/chamath/status/1359248379377762310 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4763/text https://stockanalysis.com/ipos/statistics https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q2-2024-pitchbook-nvca-venture-monitor https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1848055198494728496 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/business/media/msnbc-fox-news-ratings-election.html https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1856208378541769076 https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Mark-Zuckerberg-Letter-on-Govt-Censorship.pdf https://www.cjr.org/the_trump_reader/trump-threatens-new-york-times-penguin-random-house-critical-coverage.php https://nypost.com/2024/11/13/business/fbi-seizes-polymarket-ceos-phone-electronics-after-betting-platform-predicts-trump-win-source https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-13/polymarket-investigated-by-doj-for-letting-us-users-bet-on-platform https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-federal-court-upholds-ruling-letting-kalshiex-list-election-betting-contracts-2024-10-02 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/fbi-raids-polymarket-ceo-shayne-coplans-apartment-seizes-phone-source-rcna180180 https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1856838409861386722 https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8478-22 https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1856808022481539192 https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/10/30/polymarket-trump-election-crypto-wash-trading-researchers https://x.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1852863585375977877 https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1857237886736715971 https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1856725762130260383
Summary
In this episode of 'All-In,' hosts discuss the anticipated market impacts of the upcoming election, particularly regarding Bitcoin's volatility and expected shifts in M&A and IPO activities as financial dynamics change under potential Trump policies. The conversation also addresses the implications of an FBI raid on Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, reflecting concerns over regulatory scrutiny in the crypto industry. Additionally, discussions include the potential political motives behind media coverage of candidates and the ethical dimensions of pharmaceutical advertising, emphasizing their influence on public perception and the media landscape.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker_08
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the all in podcast with us again today, yawning from Milan, your favorite, the chairman dictator Chamath Pallihapitiya, you look a little tired, my friend, how you doing over there, buddy?
00:00:16 Speaker_06
I left Monday, I flew to Singapore. I was on the ground for two days, and I flew here. I'm here for two days, and then I go to London for five days. I'm exhausted. You are on a whirlwind tour. I mean, I'm flying around the world.
00:00:36 Speaker_06
literally flying around the world, moving west, man, right. I'm tired.
00:00:42 Speaker_08
And this is all in service. I mean, at our age, you feel people, it hits differently when you when you pass 40.
00:00:51 Speaker_08
And I'm assuming this is 8090 business, you're out there selling you selling, you're selling grok, you sell an 8090, you're out there doing BD, little selling little closing.
00:01:01 Speaker_06
And then I'm speaking at the Oxford Union on Wednesday.
00:01:04 Speaker_08
Okay, okay. Well, that sounds fancy. Checking the bucket list. Okay, there you have it. And in his camo hat, and in his election, afterglow. Look at the glow. He is in that afterglow. He is post coitus here post election.
00:01:23 Speaker_02
I got a cigarette. I need to light up a cigarette. That was a close one.
00:01:31 Speaker_08
I didn't think I was gonna make it, but you did.
00:01:33 Speaker_02
Do you like my camo hat, J-Cal? What does it say? This is the hat. Well, it says Trump fans on it.
00:01:38 Speaker_08
You look like Elmer Fudd. What does it say?
00:01:39 Speaker_02
You're hunting libs. No, remember when Tim Waltz rolled out the camo hat? Oh, yes. And you said it was gonna win the election for Harris-Waltz.
00:01:48 Speaker_08
It might. I thought that he might have a shot. Yes. I was wrong about that one. Be bowie bowie quiet.
00:01:53 Speaker_02
We got all the camo guys. They voted for us.
00:01:55 Speaker_08
We're hunting wibbles. Nobody's gonna get this impersonation, but it's very good. It looks like is that Elmer Fudd? That's Elmer Fudd. Be bellybelly quiet. We're hunting liberals.
00:02:07 Speaker_05
That sounds like Mike Tyson.
00:02:09 Speaker_08
Well, I'm gonna mess up that.
00:02:13 Speaker_02
Jake Paul, how about I wear a different front pad every week for the next four years?
00:02:17 Speaker_08
Absolutely fantastic. I mean, the ratings are so many good ones. mean, all I care about at this point, I'm getting savage in any way possible. All I care about is ratings. Now. Let's go. You're fine. Maga. Get in the comments. Let's get these ratings up.
00:02:33 Speaker_08
And with us, of course, the CEO of Oh, hello. Oh, hello. David Freeberg. How you doing?
00:02:42 Speaker_05
Thanks for having me again, Jacob.
00:02:44 Speaker_08
Thank you. It's good to be here. Yeah. How are you doing?
00:02:48 Speaker_05
I'm chilling, man. You know,
00:02:50 Speaker_02
Nice of the executive producer to have you on the show. Yes, I appreciate the invitation. I've been executive producing you here.
00:02:55 Speaker_08
Well, it's always, I'm always thinking about your best interests. I was hearing a little, I heard you on a phone call before. You said you had a perfect body. What was that in reference to? Did you get a scan?
00:03:05 Speaker_05
My wife makes me go, yeah, she makes me go to the dermatologist where they, she examines your whole nude body to look for moles. So this morning I went in early to the dermatologist. She examined it. She said, perfect. I said,
00:03:18 Speaker_06
Does she have to wear sunglasses because you're just so white? Like it just like it's blindingly white.
00:03:23 Speaker_08
Poor woman. Does she get hazard pay?
00:03:25 Speaker_05
That poor dermatologist, my God. She's like, she's like, thank you for the experience.
00:03:31 Speaker_08
But this is why we need to, in all seriousness, this is why, Sachs, we have to legalize psychedelics. This poor woman has PTSD after that. We need to get her some.
00:03:40 Speaker_05
Get out of here. Get out of here. It was a wonderful examination. She was thrilled. I mean, okay.
00:03:46 Speaker_08
And of course, I'm Jason canis. And, you know, there's been a lot of scuttlebutt sacks. I don't know if you know this, but comedy might still be legal here on the all in pockets.
00:03:57 Speaker_08
But there's been a lot of scuttlebutt, a lot of debate, a lot of energy, dare I say around, we're gonna break the rules today, finally.
00:04:04 Speaker_06
I don't know. We'll see.
00:04:05 Speaker_08
Anything's possible. People get a little sensitive sometimes with the car.
00:04:08 Speaker_06
I do I have to put my pronouns back in my zoom?
00:04:12 Speaker_08
pronouns back in Shabbat falling up into your douche bag. Here we go. You might not know this, but a lot of appointments are being made. sacks. Did you know this? Are you aware that the appointments are being made?
00:04:24 Speaker_02
I'm aware. Yeah.
00:04:26 Speaker_08
You'll have seen you've seen the flow of them. Well, I got a dump. I'm not gonna say who sent these to me. but I actually got the next five or six announcement that Trump's gonna make. I'm not gonna say who gave to me.
00:04:39 Speaker_06
This is this bit has the potential to be so good. I'm so tired, but you've got me awake. Okay, I'm awake. Well, I'm ready.
00:04:48 Speaker_08
Here's our first one. Here's our first one.
00:04:49 Speaker_06
This is a very interesting one. Good.
00:04:51 Speaker_08
Yeah, here it is. This is a statement from Donald J. Trump. It is my great honor to announce that Hunter Biden of Delaware will head a new department, the Bureau of Founder Mode Procurement. Founder Mode Procurement. You notice sacks dropped off.
00:05:04 Speaker_08
He doesn't want to have a reaction shot here. Next one up. This is interesting. Tony Hinchcliffe. I don't know if you know him. He has been appointed to a new role. He's the ambassador to Puerto Rico. That's a good one.
00:05:19 Speaker_08
Chamath, actually, your wish has come true. You are now, your sole duty is to ensure all executive branch knitwear is on point. The sweater inspector general. Everybody's going to have perfect knitwear. Knitwear, absolutely knitwear.
00:05:34 Speaker_06
By the way, just so you know, that's a Laura Piana cashmere sweater in that picture.
00:05:38 Speaker_08
Apparently, apparently. I've actually decided I would flip. I've gone full Maggie. Here I am. I've been appointed as Chief Virtue Signaler. That I like. That I like. Every time we do the all-in contest.
00:05:51 Speaker_02
You're going to have stiff competition from Mark Cuban for that post.
00:05:54 Speaker_08
I know. I beat him out. I beat him out.
00:05:56 Speaker_02
You beat out Cuban, okay.
00:05:57 Speaker_08
Yeah, yeah, I went down to Marlon.
00:05:59 Speaker_02
He deleted all of his pro-Kamala tweets. Have you done the same?
00:06:04 Speaker_08
No, no, I haven't yet. You're going to have to work on that if you want to get the show. Look at the lusty eyes in this picture.
00:06:10 Speaker_06
Yeah, I know. It's pretty great. That's me after losing. You have not found the virtue. You didn't want to just burrow yourself deep into it.
00:06:17 Speaker_08
No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Hey, Friedberg. You've been appointed, here we go, as Bobby Kennedy's whipping boy. You will be officially his little bitch. Anything, any innovation you come up with is officially blocked. And here he is.
00:06:34 Speaker_08
My great honor to announce David Sachs is now the chief retribution officer. Congratulations. Well done.
00:06:42 Speaker_02
Retribution must be had, J. Cal. Payback is a bitch. There are a lot of people who are out of line. Just a little bit. A little bit. They deserve to get smacked on a little bit.
00:06:52 Speaker_08
Graham's going to get his shoeshine box.
00:06:54 Speaker_02
Just on X. A little bit. Just a little bit. Let your winners ride.
00:07:01 Speaker_03
Rainman divots out.
00:07:02 Speaker_01
And instead, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, S.I. Queen of Kinwam.
00:07:14 Speaker_08
There's been a lot of talk about a holiday party.
00:07:17 Speaker_05
Freeberry, you want to give us an update on the holiday party? Quick plug on the party. So the party is coming up in three weeks.
00:07:22 Speaker_05
The all-in holiday spectacular, Steve Aoki, Andrea Botez, Gary Richards, aka Destructo, are going to be DJing several of the sections.
00:07:31 Speaker_08
And me, I'm doing a secret DJ set.
00:07:36 Speaker_05
I may, it's actually a good idea. I may track the beat. We will have chess challenges with Alex Botes, several sections are sold out, VIP is sold out.
00:07:46 Speaker_05
Draymond's joining us, Draymond Green from the Warriors, he's gonna come and do a little bit with us on stage, should be great. He's great. So should be great. Get your tickets at allin.com slash events.
00:07:57 Speaker_08
All right, let's get into it, everybody. I just want to start with a little bit of finance here. Bitcoin and finance stocks way up since the Trump win, which was now 10 days ago. Bitcoin peaked at 92,000. Unbelievable.
00:08:14 Speaker_08
It's dropped down to 89, but obviously that's an all time high. As we all know, we talked about it on the show, Trump heavily, heavily courted the crypto industry during his campaign.
00:08:26 Speaker_08
In addition to the Bitcoin news, since early August, Affirm, Robinhood, PayPal, Coinbase all up double or 50%. It's an extraordinary run. In July, Trump headlined a Bitcoin conference. He laid out his plans.
00:08:42 Speaker_08
Number one, he was going to fire SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. Here's the clip. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC Chairman.
00:09:02 Speaker_00
I didn't know he was that unpopular. I didn't know he was that unpopular. Let me say it again. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler.
00:09:26 Speaker_08
There it is. Okay, enough of that. Technically, President can't fire the SEC chair, but he can appoint a new one when Gary's term ends in 2026. Or Gary could resign and Trump takes office that happens sometimes.
00:09:40 Speaker_08
And folks are speculating Gensler has already made that decision to step down. He put out a press release with a quote in it that a number of people took note of.
00:09:50 Speaker_08
where he said it's been a great honor to serve with them, the people who work at the SEC, doing the people's work and ensuring our capital markets remain the best in the world.
00:09:59 Speaker_08
Trump also said the federal government will never sell, never ever sell its Bitcoin holdings, which they own through criminal assets, as you know. And number three, he said he would create a Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council
00:10:15 Speaker_08
where Trump said, quote, the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not heat your industry. And he also advocated that all future bitcoins would be minted in America. I don't know that he gets to make that choice.
00:10:28 Speaker_08
But there you have it. Freeberg, any thoughts here on The crypto market and this incredible bull run here we've seen in the last, you know, 10 days and then before that, a couple of years.
00:10:41 Speaker_05
I mean, I think like you said, it's not limited to crypto. Crypto is one market of several that have been significantly affected by the outlook based on Trump's election.
00:10:51 Speaker_05
I think that Trump's election has a couple of key features that are changing market dynamics. One is folks kind of view some of his policies to be obviously stimulatory with lower tax rates and more deregulation.
00:11:05 Speaker_05
This is, you know, theoretically going to drive up investment and economic growth. the deregulatory nature on its own benefits markets that have been encumbered by regulatory oversight and regulatory challenges like crypto finance and fintech.
00:11:20 Speaker_05
So those types of businesses are clearly going to benefit or expected to benefit significantly by being able to launch products more quickly and have features and ways that they can generate revenue that they might be challenged to do under the current regulatory schemas.
00:11:35 Speaker_05
Then, there's also this element of things being inflationary, the feature of tariffs. If we don't get spending cut fast enough, there's an effect on markets.
00:11:43 Speaker_05
We're still seeing 10-year Treasury sit at about 4.5%, up from 3.5%, which is where we were right around the rate cut beginning in September. Remember, since those rate cuts began in September, we've cut 75 basis points.
00:11:57 Speaker_05
and we're still seeing the kind of 10-year Treasury hold high, which kind of implies that there's expected to be persistent inflation. In fact, the October inflation number accelerated again, so it's back up, not going down.
00:12:10 Speaker_05
I think it went up to 2.6%, up from 2.3% the month prior. These general kind of effects that are predicted from the Trump policy plans is having an effect in different markets.
00:12:20 Speaker_05
Obviously, in equities, we're seeing more kind of risk-seeking, risk-taking, and then in the bond markets, because of the four and a half percent treasury yield, there's a really interesting dynamic. And I kind of sent this link out yesterday.
00:12:34 Speaker_05
But if you look at the spread on yields between US treasuries, which have historically been kind of considered and talked about and are deemed the risk-free rate,
00:12:44 Speaker_05
and the yield that corporates have to pay to borrow money, we haven't seen a spread this low in 26 years. So it's a 17-year low for the spread between the yield that companies that issue junk bonds have to pay from treasuries, and it's a 26-year
00:13:05 Speaker_05
low for credit grade bonds.
00:13:07 Speaker_05
So this means the market is either more risk-seeking, meaning they're looking for more yield and they're going into corporates because they feel like there is a higher probability that these companies are going to be successful in the future, they're not going to have higher default rates, etc.
00:13:20 Speaker_05
So the market is becoming much more risk-seeking. Or The alternative is that parts of the market are reassessing the risk free nature of treasuries themselves. If spending doesn't get under control, the treasury market appetite is decreasing.
00:13:34 Speaker_05
So there's this kind of spread that's shrunk in the last couple of months. So we're seeing capital flooding into the markets for risk seeking assets. And this is obviously affecting crypto equities, and, and bond markets all across the board.
00:13:46 Speaker_05
And we'll talk a little bit about IPO and M&A later. Great.
00:13:49 Speaker_08
Chamath, your thoughts? Aside from yum yum? I mean, yum, yum, you could say it.
00:13:57 Speaker_07
It's going to be, just say it.
00:14:00 Speaker_06
No, I mean, look, what did I say at the beginning of the year was going to be the biggest risk asset winning trade? Yeah, it's great. Bitcoin's great. Lord, I haven't seen you this happy in a while.
00:14:18 Speaker_08
What made you more happy, getting to Moman and spending time with your white truffle dealer, or watching Bitcoin break 90k? Which one was more exciting for you personally?
00:14:28 Speaker_06
You know, honestly, you know what I think about? I actually think about all the Bitcoin I sold. Yeah, you know, I had a bunch of Bitcoin in my funds when I managed outside capital.
00:14:42 Speaker_06
You know, that's a, I don't know, a three or $4 billion mistake and growing now because my partners at the time capitulated and I wanted to be a good team member and we distributed and it was profitable, but obviously I shouldn't have sold it.
00:14:58 Speaker_06
Would have made them a lot more money. And then I think about like I bought some land. I remember Tahoe. It was in the Wall Street Journal. I'm sure you can find it, but yeah. How much is that worth now?
00:15:12 Speaker_06
probably a couple hundred million dollars, maybe more.
00:15:14 Speaker_08
Rough trade, rough trade. But you do have Bitcoin holdings.
00:15:17 Speaker_05
Can I ask you a question? Why do you say sold Bitcoin as opposed to converted Bitcoin into dollars? Like when you think about Bitcoin just as a participant,
00:15:28 Speaker_05
Do you think about Bitcoin as a dollar-denominated asset that you go and buy Bitcoin and then you're eventually gonna sell it, turn it back into dollars and use the dollars?
00:15:36 Speaker_05
Or are you like, what do you think about the purist kind of idea that Bitcoin should be the de facto currency and store of value in the future and the dollar doesn't matter and we shouldn't necessarily be talking about the value of Bitcoin in dollar-denominated terms as something I'm gonna eventually turn it back into?
00:15:51 Speaker_06
It hasn't happened yet. And so until it happens, I think you have to view it as like a very good gold proxy. but it's a largely dollar denominated asset.
00:16:08 Speaker_05
Now, why do you see it going the other way? Like, so a lot of folks thought that as a safe haven, it should do well when there's a negative economic outlook, but it has traded the last couple of years kind of the opposite.
00:16:19 Speaker_06
No, it's totally correlated. It's a totally correlated asset. I mean, there will be a point And it's probably in our lifetime where it is an independent asset and a non-speculative store of value. There will be that day, but that day is not now.
00:16:40 Speaker_06
And I think it's very important to see the conditions on the field as they are versus what you wish it to be. And the reason is that it allows you to risk manage more appropriately.
00:16:52 Speaker_06
Because if you don't see it, then when something happens to the dollar complex, good or bad, or when something happens to rates, good or bad, or when something stimulative happens, good or bad, you're not going to react properly if you're in the business of managing it as a risk asset.
00:17:09 Speaker_06
So if you're in the set it and forget it bucket, and there are some people, I think it's great. None of these conversations matter. But like most people, you're probably going to be motivated to do something.
00:17:24 Speaker_06
And I think if you're motivated to do something, or you have FOMO that stimulates you to do something, whatever the psychology is, that leads you to action, it's probably important to just view things as they really are versus how you wish them to be.
00:17:39 Speaker_06
And so I think the purists may eventually be right, I think they will be right at some point in my lifetime, but they're not right now. And that's why these things are correlated.
00:17:49 Speaker_06
If the market goes up early, the other the other thing I'll say just broadly about the market is, I think that there's a tremendous amount of optimism about the economy. I think that's why you see risk spreads get crushed. Definitely.
00:18:00 Speaker_09
Yeah.
00:18:02 Speaker_06
And I think that as long as we see the kind of prognostications that the Trump administration is putting out, I think people are going to be mostly bullish.
00:18:13 Speaker_06
I think the way that this trade turns around is when something actually breaks in terms of the inflation picture or in terms of the deficit picture.
00:18:25 Speaker_06
And if those things look like going into 2025, that President Trump's actions are not going to be able to course correct it, then I think you're going to see people go massively risk off, which I think will not be great for markets, obviously.
00:18:40 Speaker_06
But right now, we're not in that point.
00:18:42 Speaker_05
And you don't think that tenure reflects that already at four and a half percent? I mean, that's showing some degree of inflation and concern about the deficit. right?
00:18:52 Speaker_06
It's like, I think, I think the tenure could be at 7%. Yeah. What is four and a half percent mean? I mean, if you're if you're going to run 8% of GDP level deficits for the next four or five or six years.
00:19:09 Speaker_04
Yeah.
00:19:11 Speaker_06
You're going to have the tenure at seven to 8%. That's just mathematical.
00:19:15 Speaker_08
Right. facts, your thoughts on crypto before we get into IPOs and M&A. If an
00:19:22 Speaker_02
Yeah, just on crypto, the House Republicans already passed a framework for crypto regulation earlier this year. It actually got 71 Democrats to join it. It was called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21.
00:19:37 Speaker_02
And it would classify digital assets like crypto as commodities regulated by the CFTC if the blockchain they run on is, quote, functional and decentralized. That's the key requirement.
00:19:50 Speaker_02
If their blockchain is functional but not decentralized, then they would be considered securities and fall under the purview of the SEC.
00:19:57 Speaker_02
I think the crypto industry basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they're a commodity and they want commodities to be governed like all other commodities by the CFTC. That's what the Republican bill would do.
00:20:11 Speaker_02
I think with the Republicans now winning the Senate, The prospects for that bill to get enacted are now greatly improved, especially because Sherrod Brown, who used to run the banking committee, just lost to Bernie Moreno. This was a seat in Ohio.
00:20:28 Speaker_02
Elizabeth Warren is still going to object to this legislation, but she's just going to have way less influence. And like you said, it's not clear that Gary Gensler is going to be sticking around very long at the SEC.
00:20:38 Speaker_02
So look, the bottom line here is that I think that we are close to having clear rules of the road codified by Congress, which is what the crypto industry has been asking for.
00:20:48 Speaker_02
and the days of Gensler terrorizing crypto companies by issuing Wells notices without clarifying what the rules are that he's prosecuting, those days are about to be over. So I think this is why the crypto markets are rallying.
00:21:03 Speaker_08
And so to your point, if it's centralized, or partially centralized, you're going to be a security. If you're decentralized, anybody can join the network, no one person controls the network.
00:21:15 Speaker_08
And I guess most people would consider that Bitcoin versus a ripple, which is partially decentralized, but largely centralized. And that's going to be, I guess, the new rules of the road.
00:21:25 Speaker_08
In addition to that, there are new rules that are being enforced that
00:21:30 Speaker_02
hopefully, Trump's 21 passes, right? This bill is called 21. But I think much, much higher likelihood that it or something like it now can get through the Congress sense. Yeah.
00:21:40 Speaker_08
And then there's also legislation that's already been enacted. That's there's multiple ways and multiple paths, but accredited investors, there's going to be a path to becoming an accredited investor with a test.
00:21:52 Speaker_08
So that is something that is also on the docket. We'll see if it happens. Let's talk about IPOs and M&A. Yum, yum, boys. just a level set here with the audience. Here's the number of IPOs per year.
00:22:06 Speaker_08
And as you can see, the last three years have been some of the lowest since 2008 and 2009. The Great Recession for those of you who are old enough to remember it. And if you look at VC, the number of distributions
00:22:23 Speaker_08
have been absolutely on the floor for the past three years. In fact, if you look at the distributions from 2022, through 2024, those three years combined, it's been around 200 billion. which is less than 2019 in total.
00:22:38 Speaker_08
And with this year projected to be about 100 billion in distributions, that's about 14% of the peak ZURP era. When in 2021, we had $710 billion in distribution here. So the backroom buzz is that Donnie from Queens is going to make M&A great again.
00:23:00 Speaker_08
Couple of reasons there sacks the wrath of Lena Kahn's coming to an end. MAC seven sitting on massive amounts of cash and that cash is growing as people have laid people off and they're focused on getting fit.
00:23:14 Speaker_08
Obviously, we all know the Fed did another quarter point cut last week, although some people maybe don't know that because it seems to have gotten lost in the election news. And psychologically, I think everybody's feeling very optimistic.
00:23:27 Speaker_08
So maybe these IPOs are back on the menu. Chamath, I don't know if you saw it, but Klarna just filed for their IPO. That's a Swedish fintech company. They were kind of the pioneers in buy now pay later. What are the other IPOs we could see?
00:23:41 Speaker_08
File in 2025, Databricks, Stripe, Wiz, Canva, Plaid, Rippling, and Airtable. There's a long shot that people have been buzzing about. I don't have any inside information, but people have been speculating SpaceX could IPO Starlink, their Starlink unit.
00:23:57 Speaker_08
And if you want to get really crazy, Chamath, maybe there's a long shot that Sam Altman jumps the fence and decides he's going to take open AI public during this window that people expect to be opening.
00:24:08 Speaker_08
What do you think show off what's going to happen here in terms of M&A and IPOs in 2025?
00:24:12 Speaker_06
I think it's going to still be pretty subdued. So I don't Okay, I don't I don't think that you're going to see these crazy M&A deals that I think everybody is expecting.
00:24:28 Speaker_06
I also don't anticipate a lot of these big companies going public, at least in the first half of the year. The only reason I say that is I just think that this year and the first half of next year, what's the difference?
00:24:46 Speaker_06
The IPO market is what the IPO market is. If the 10-year is back to 4.5%, 5%, that's not a compelling strategy for some SaaS company. some internet business that didn't take an opportunity to go public when rates were at zero.
00:25:04 Speaker_06
So if you just look mathematically at what the actual fair value of these companies should be, I don't know, it's not like such a great IPO market. Then on the M&A side, if all you're doing is waiting for Lena Khan to not be there, to me,
00:25:21 Speaker_06
I think that that betrays what M&A is supposed to be, which is, you're supposed to underwrite some industrial logic from first principles where things are very accretive, and very accretive things should not hang by a thread on the emotional regulation or dysregulation of the FTC commissioner.
00:25:43 Speaker_06
I think that you would have seen some of this stuff already as well if the industrial logic was so high.
00:25:49 Speaker_06
Again, when rates are non-trivially high, I just think that it's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off a really big M&A event, nor is it a really easy thing to pull off a huge IPO.
00:26:00 Speaker_06
Again, there's a reason why Warren Buffett has $325 billion sitting in T-bills making 4.5% a year. He owns more T-bills than the United States government. He's making about $15 billion a year in interest. When you can do that with absolutely no risk.
00:26:19 Speaker_06
again, relative to stocks, at least. Yeah, what is this IPO going to give you two months, right?
00:26:24 Speaker_05
Like the 10 years at four and a half percent, you're basically paying 20 times cash flow to own a risk free bond, the US Treasury bond, or you can pay 23 times to 30 times. Yeah, it's 30 times to own the S&P 500. Right now. It's so
00:26:40 Speaker_05
Yeah, but there is a lot of risk seeking shifting happening, Chamath, right? So I mean, we talked about some of the crypto stuff, some of the fintech stuff, deregulation, that the PE might seem high today.
00:26:51 Speaker_05
But if you forecast out 10 years for some of these businesses in a deregulated, de-taxed environment, or reduced tax, reduced regulation environment, that the earnings should accelerate in a way that outpaces the multiple you're getting today, right?
00:27:08 Speaker_05
So, I mean, this is part of why some of the fintech companies are ripping right now, why some of the finance companies are ripping right now.
00:27:14 Speaker_05
If under Trump and the Republican control of the House and Senate, laws don't pass and regulations get reduced, theoretically, earnings are gonna rip and you should pay a higher multiple today because you're actually buying these things at eight to 10 times earnings five years from now.
00:27:29 Speaker_05
So there seems to be some risk appetite there. But I do agree with Chamath on the M&A point. If you think about what's gone on over the last couple of years, big- Hold on a second.
00:27:37 Speaker_06
Can I ask you a question? Do you think that regulation is the reason why these SaaS companies have never made a dollar a profit?
00:27:43 Speaker_05
No, no, I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm not talking about SaaS. I guess we should- Then you're talking about industrial companies? No, the fintech market, right? So we were talking about fintech and some of these assets earlier.
00:27:56 Speaker_06
some of these equities that have been really, it's a very narrow part of the economy, right? Like, if you look at brought like on a broad based basis, the 10s and 10s of trillions of dollars of market cap that exists.
00:28:08 Speaker_06
I do agree with you that deregulation benefits a bunch of those companies. but it benefits sort of the non-tech businesses more than the tech businesses. The tech businesses right now are relatively lightly regulated.
00:28:21 Speaker_06
I would think that it benefits pharma businesses, it benefits ag businesses, it benefits real estate companies, it benefits a whole swath of the economy, but we've started to see that re-rating And maybe we'll see a lot more.
00:28:34 Speaker_06
So maybe Jason, the more nuanced answer to your question is the kind of M&A that I think you want to see that I mean, let's face it that we all want to see here because we all have the vested interest, which is really specifically tech M&A.
00:28:46 Speaker_06
I don't think that any of this deregulation particularly accelerates that but
00:28:50 Speaker_06
Maybe a more nuanced take on this would be that these other more regulated parts of the economy could do well and catch up to some of the earnings potential or the forward pricing of the tech businesses.
00:29:03 Speaker_06
But again, now you get into this weird trade where you can buy steady cash flowing businesses that can grow in valuation as fast as a as a fast growing but money losing tech business.
00:29:17 Speaker_06
But then you trade both of those two things off and it has effectively the same yield as a tenure. What do you do?
00:29:25 Speaker_08
Yeah, yeah, I you know, I, I think there's a lot of backed up
00:29:29 Speaker_08
inventory, where venture capitalist boards and founders, people who control and make these decisions on M&A, if they would sell the company to a larger company, I think there's a lot of exhaustion in the market.
00:29:42 Speaker_08
And that will drive the capitulation on valuation.
00:29:45 Speaker_06
What do you think the valuations will be? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, there'll be haircuts, but I'm watching it right now. I mean, do you think Warren Buffett's going to take $325 billion of cash? No, no, but I do. He might even buy his own stock.
00:29:57 Speaker_08
So I think in a pay in terms of a multiple, I think it'll be more like Salesforce or Microsoft or Google, or Amazon getting off the sidelines, because they've looked at and said, you know what, the juice ain't worth the squeeze, we might as well put our efforts and our capital into buying big hardware.
00:30:12 Speaker_08
and building new products and services.
00:30:14 Speaker_08
But if they think, hey, I got a chance of pulling this through, I'm sitting on all this cash, what if I hit another YouTube and Instagram, you know, really great acquisitions that were transformative for those two companies, meta would not be where it is right now.
00:30:27 Speaker_08
Facebook, you know that well, Jamal, if they hadn't gotten Instagram, and certainly, you know, Friedberg as an alumni of Google, if they didn't get YouTube, it would be a completely different picture for that company right now.
00:30:37 Speaker_08
I think there's a lot of those acquisitions. I think there's a lot of those acquisitions that have been sitting there waiting, and I'm watching the secondary markets. To your question, what's the discount going to be?
00:30:48 Speaker_08
The discount was last year, I kid you not, 70, 80, 90% off the last round for SaaS companies, and this year it's 20 or 30. I'm seeing this when I'm getting offers to buy our shares in some private SaaS companies, some private fintech companies.
00:31:03 Speaker_08
And then I also think, If you're a CEO and you watch Robin Hood, Uber, Reddit. DoorDash and Instacart, those five have actually after getting a little bit of a ass kicking, when they first went out, they have all rebounded massively.
00:31:22 Speaker_08
And for the people who held on to their Reddit shares, Robinhood shares, Uber shares, they have been rewarded massively, massively for having faith in you know, through this storm.
00:31:31 Speaker_08
So I think those two things, the capitulation of all these boards and founders are going to say, you know what, let's take the haircut, let's go public. and let's tell our story and see if we can make it work as a public company.
00:31:43 Speaker_08
And then the people who feel one step weaker than that, I think they want to cash their chips. And they've been in some of these investments, Chamath, it's year 11, 12, 13, 14.
00:31:51 Speaker_08
For some of these private companies, there is capitulation on those boards, people are exhausted. So that I just I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the other side of the argument on this one, all kind of
00:32:01 Speaker_05
play along. So I think, and I'll disagree a little bit for a couple different reasons. These big tech companies, the ones that have had, you know, media businesses or because remember, there's tech that's tech, right?
00:32:14 Speaker_05
Nvidia does not have a media business. But there's been a conversation over the last couple of years
00:32:19 Speaker_05
where we need to break up big tech has been part of the conversation with the Dems, and now the Republicans are coming in and they're saying the same thing. We've got to break up big tech.
00:32:27 Speaker_05
I think there are a few of these companies, Google being one of them, that are very much handicapped right now with respect to what kind of M&A they can do without dealing with the regulatory sledgehammer coming down on them.
00:32:39 Speaker_05
So I don't think that those guys are buyers, Jekyll. I don't think that Google's in a place right now where they can go out and make a bunch of acquisitions.
00:32:44 Speaker_05
They're gonna do everything they can to avoid the regulatory sledgehammer that's coming their way. First it was coming from the Dems, now it's coming from the new administration.
00:32:52 Speaker_05
There's a bunch of other companies that don't really fit that bill, like Microsoft probably doesn't fit that bill, Nvidia, Adobe.
00:32:59 Speaker_05
Maybe they'll make some acquisitions, but I don't think it's as simple as, well, we'll sell at a low price, we'll buy at a low price, I'm just not sure they really agree with you.
00:33:08 Speaker_06
I completely I think that these big tech companies will need to pay a pound of flesh for the deep platforming and the censorship that they did.
00:33:21 Speaker_08
And there's a perfect time if we're going to go to the political angle to bring you in sacks. What are the vibes? My perception is Trump likes to win. And Trump wants to see the economy soar. That is his platform. He's a business guy.
00:33:35 Speaker_08
I think he wants to see fluidity. I know JD has been not a fan of like the Googles, etc. So maybe you could help us navigate this. Who's right here? What's the possibility of M&A becoming more vibrant in a Trump administration?
00:33:51 Speaker_02
Well, there's no question that in general, President Trump wants to have the most vibrant economy we can have. And I think to that end, you're going to see the end of this era of deceleration, of regulatory capture and lawfare.
00:34:06 Speaker_02
I think all those things are over. I think that equities that have been
00:34:13 Speaker_02
Straining or tamp down under the weight of these abuses you see them ripping now for example tesla it's gone from roughly two fifty to three twenty a share just since the election and you could call that the lawfare discount i mean that basically is the discount tesla stock because the market was pricing in.
00:34:31 Speaker_02
the risk of retaliation. If the republicans lost, there's a widespread belief that the democrats would go after Elon and his company. So you can actually measure the lawfare discount based on regulation, right?
00:34:44 Speaker_08
Because there's a lot of regulations around self driving rocket ship launches, all those things he's involved in. There's a lot of regulation.
00:34:50 Speaker_02
There was this crazy thing where they they made some regulator made a put a headset on a seal. Did you see this to test the effect on the sound of loud noises, the sonic sonic booms, this poor seal. Do you see this poor seal?
00:35:04 Speaker_08
I don't need don't do that to free bird. Don't know.
00:35:08 Speaker_02
Don't put it on. Put it in post. Don't put it on the screen.
00:35:12 Speaker_05
It's free bird. It's gonna anyway.
00:35:14 Speaker_02
So they subjected this poor seal to exactly the thing that they were worried would harm seals. In any event, the seal seemed totally fine. It didn't.
00:35:22 Speaker_08
They tortured seals to make a point. I got it. Yeah.
00:35:25 Speaker_02
Anyway, it's really crazy. So yeah, let's get this crazy.
00:35:28 Speaker_08
What about this JD help us navigate? I know JD is the VP and then you have Trump is the CEO. Chamath pointed out maybe there's a little on the GOP. Anger, resentment, residual
00:35:42 Speaker_08
because of the, you know, banning of Trump from YouTube and some of these other platforms. Do you think that makes its way into M&A or not?
00:35:49 Speaker_05
I guess, Sax, like, let me be specific to Jekyll's question. Not all tech companies are the same in that point of view, right?
00:35:55 Speaker_05
And so, like, tech M&A generally is a thing, but specifically the companies that have had social media platforms may be kind of in a different lens from a regulatory perspective. Is that fair?
00:36:11 Speaker_02
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that not everything Lena Kahn did was bad. In fact, she definitely has some fans among the populist Republicans, and some of them who've spoken out on her behalf in various areas have been J.D. Vance, Matt Gaetz as well.
00:36:27 Speaker_02
She did do some good things. Specifically, she was willing to take on the big tech companies. I mean, companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, frankly, they just had a free ride for the last couple of decades, or they were allowed to do anything.
00:36:40 Speaker_02
And she came in and said there's a new sheriff in town and she was actually willing to apply pressure on them to not engage in anti-competitive tactics. So I think she deserves credit for that. I think she did change the conversation.
00:36:54 Speaker_02
I think that we've talked about on previous pods that perhaps there was not as targeted and surgical an approach was used. And as a result of that, it did have a chilling effect on M&A. And so it hurt the, you know, the small tech environment.
00:37:10 Speaker_02
And so I think that we need to fix that part of it.
00:37:12 Speaker_02
But I hope that whoever replaces Lena Khan will continue to apply pressure to big tech because they are monopolies, and they will abuse their power if they're allowed to, and they need to be controlled.
00:37:23 Speaker_06
Saks, if you had to handicap the probability of a lawsuit or some kind of attempt to dismantle Google and Facebook, would those be the two companies at the top of your list? And how would you handicap that?
00:37:45 Speaker_02
So my view is that Google should be broken up. There's abundant reasons for that. There's at least three monopolies in that company. There's the search business, the advertising business, and YouTube. I think they should be busted up.
00:37:57 Speaker_02
What are the odds that that happens? It's hard to say, but what are the odds that that is pursued in the next administration in some capacity or at least investigated? I'd say high.
00:38:09 Speaker_02
I'd say Facebook or Meta less so, I don't see the compelling need to bust them up. But quite frankly, I think the issue that Meta is going to face is just there were a lot of abuses in terms of censoring free speech rights of Americans.
00:38:26 Speaker_02
Now, I don't think that was all the company's idea. I think a lot of pressure was put on the company by the Biden administration. I think they wanted to do the right thing. And just didn't show enough backbone.
00:38:38 Speaker_08
I think Zuckerberg's been clear that he regrets it.
00:38:41 Speaker_02
Yeah.
00:38:41 Speaker_08
And he's bent the knee now. He's like, listen, I'm not going to do it again.
00:38:45 Speaker_02
Yeah, he published a letter And maybe it was done to some degree to inoculate himself against the result of this election. But I'd say to his credit, it wasn't clear at all who was going to win the election when he put out that letter.
00:38:56 Speaker_02
And he basically said that he regretted the fact that Meta had gone along with the censorship requests by the Biden administration. And he specifically referred to that whole Hunter Biden story that got censored in 2020. That was election interference.
00:39:11 Speaker_02
It was a completely true story by the New York Post. It got censored. by Big Tech at the request of these 51 former intelligence officials who were lying through their teeth, claiming it was Russian disinformation.
00:39:25 Speaker_02
So he clearly regrets going along with that. In any event, I think there are better ways of handling the speech issue on social networks than busting up Facebook. But I do think, though, that
00:39:36 Speaker_02
Congress should investigate or continue investigating what went wrong there. And what exactly is the involvement of the intelligence community and the deep state in the censorship requests that we saw exposed by the Twitter files? Remember,
00:39:52 Speaker_06
I bring up something maybe tangential and you can react to this. Just speaking of kind of like censorship, and then just the media complex that we have. I saw today that Trump filed like a 10 or $15 billion lawsuit against the broadcast networks.
00:40:09 Speaker_06
And maybe this is old news, but I may and maybe I just saw the news headline go by on X. I didn't. Yeah, I saw it as well. Yeah. And then separately with
00:40:19 Speaker_06
Bobby Kennedy's nomination to HHS, one of the things that he has said that he wants to put an end to is the advertising that pharma does on these broadcast stations.
00:40:31 Speaker_06
If you put these two things together, where you deprive these folks of their largest revenue source, and at the same time, they have to sort of like answer for censorship or manipulating content. It does.
00:40:45 Speaker_06
Do you think that that changes the landscape of how all these companies behave in the future? Or how do you think that that plays out?
00:40:52 Speaker_02
Yeah, absolutely. Let's take each one of those. On the broadcasters, and we've talked about this before, the big broadcast networks and their affiliates receive free spectrum licenses from the FCC.
00:41:06 Speaker_02
They get some of the most valuable spectrum there is through those licenses in exchange for certain requirements that their broadcasts are in the public interest. Namely, they have to follow
00:41:17 Speaker_02
fairness doctrine, which is supposed to mean that you give equal time to both candidates. Well, in the final weeks of this campaign, we saw some really egregious abuses.
00:41:25 Speaker_02
NBC brought on Kamala Harris, but not Donald Trump, for a very favorable segment on Saturday Night Live the week before the election. Separately, you saw 60 Minutes deceptively edit
00:41:38 Speaker_02
an interview with Kamala Harris where they actually took one of her answers from one question and put it as the answer to another question. I mean, really deceptive. So you have a couple of examples with both
00:41:50 Speaker_02
CBS and NBC, which were violating the equal time requirement, were clearly working on behalf of the Kamala Harris campaign.
00:41:59 Speaker_02
And when you look at the coverage itself, this election was the most unequal in terms of favorable coverage, it was something like a 60 point difference.
00:42:09 Speaker_02
So something like Kamala, Kamala Harris received 87% favorable coverage, and Trump received something like 85% negative coverage. So there's no way- Who's that according to, do you know?
00:42:21 Speaker_02
Yeah, there's a it's a report by Brent Bazell's media watchdog group. It's been around forever. It's been recording this stuff in every election for the last 30 years.
00:42:31 Speaker_02
In any event, I think that there's a very strong argument that the broadcasters have not been fair. That's a violation of their licensed requirements.
00:42:38 Speaker_02
And we should be reevaluating their spectrum, especially because it's not the highest best use of the great irony of this, though, sex is that
00:42:46 Speaker_08
They have already been demolished. I don't know if you saw, but a bunch of the anchors at CNN are not renewing because their advertising is so far off that like Chris Wallace, I think was making 8 million a year, 9 million a year.
00:42:58 Speaker_08
And he just said, I'm going to go do podcasts because I think they lowballed his offer. And if they lose all that advertising from pharma, which I think in some of these networks is a third or half, And that's all networks.
00:43:09 Speaker_08
That's from Fox to CNN, and every MSNBC, everybody combined. If they lose advertising from pharma, it's over. Like these, those news networks are going to lose half their revenue overnight. That would be a delby a death blow to your question.
00:43:26 Speaker_02
Yeah, well, let me let me get back to that. So so just on CNN and MSNBC, you're absolutely right that they're announcing a bunch of layoffs, their ratings are destroyed. I think they're down. MSNBC ratings are down like 50% since the election.
00:43:37 Speaker_02
What that tells me is that their own audience since the election, since the election percent? Yeah.
00:43:44 Speaker_02
And what that tells me is that their captive viewer base, who's been tuning in for years to all of this TDS, has now realized that they were deceived by MSNBC, and they've lost credibility even with their most fervent supporters.
00:43:57 Speaker_02
So there's no question that CNN, MSNBC, they're hurting. Now, Jake, just to make one small modification, they do not receive, they do not have spectrum licenses from the FCC, right, because of their cable network.
00:44:09 Speaker_02
they're in kind of a different bucket. They don't have to abide by the fairness doctrine that CBS and NBC do, right? But they have different problems.
00:44:18 Speaker_02
And to your point about pharma, there's absolutely no reason to be allowing pharma advertisements on these TV networks. The fact of the matter is that people who are viewing those networks can't buy, you can't buy
00:44:33 Speaker_02
pharmaceuticals without a prescription, right? It's up to doctors to write you the prescription. And this is why most countries, most Western countries prohibit pharma advertising on the networks.
00:44:44 Speaker_02
And I think Bobby Kennedy has a very strong argument that it would serve the public interest not to allow this. We don't allow advertisements for tobacco, right?
00:44:55 Speaker_08
So I guess the thing that doesn't make sense to me, Saks, is you're so such a first amendment, absolutist and free speech app absolutist, isn't it? And I'm not saying this is my opinion.
00:45:08 Speaker_08
But you know, my my challenge to you would be is, tell me about freedom of speech, and expression in relation to being able to do advertising for these products. Well, I mean, aren't they aren't consumers smart enough to figure it out?
00:45:22 Speaker_02
The point of the advertising is, I think, is not at the end of the day to influence consumers, because consumers can't buy pharmaceuticals, they have to go.
00:45:29 Speaker_08
That's what they say in it.
00:45:31 Speaker_02
ask your doctor about the purpose of the advertising is to buy favorable coverage. That's the point. And there are many examples explain that.
00:45:39 Speaker_02
Well, there are many examples of people who've worked in these networks saying that they had a story that was negative about pharma companies. And that story got spiked because the pharma companies are the biggest advertisers.
00:45:51 Speaker_02
In fact, I think it was there was a story about Fox News and who was the guy Roger Ailes?
00:45:59 Speaker_08
Well, there's been a number of stories. I know what you're talking about. There's been stories about Anderson Cooper. who's the the guy who does international coverage on the weekends GPS is the name of a show.
00:46:11 Speaker_08
I'm drawing I can't remember right now reads a car. Yeah. Thank you for reads a car. Yes. I think a bunch of those shows were like literally brought to you by Pfizer brought to you by these things. And so those shows potentially would just go away.
00:46:24 Speaker_08
And then there were there was reporting on the number of times they would report on those companies. And it showed they didn't. So what do you think Freeberg of should pharma companies be allowed to advertise?
00:46:36 Speaker_07
to consumers, to ask their doctors, to ask them about Viagra? What's your take? He's thinking for those of you at home listening.
00:46:49 Speaker_08
He's giving a deep thought.
00:46:51 Speaker_02
While he's thinking, J.K., let me just say that I think there is a free speech issue that has to be weighed, OK? So I don't want to be totally dismissive of that.
00:46:59 Speaker_02
However, I think that the Viagra example is on the far end of the spectrum of a drug that by by advertising it, you could actually get consumers to request it from their doctor. I don't think most drugs are like that.
00:47:14 Speaker_02
I think my contention would be that the real reason they're paying all this massive advertising is not to influence consumers, but to influence the coverage that they get. There is something very corrupt about that.
00:47:26 Speaker_02
I think that Bobby Kennedy has a really strong point that if you were to remove
00:47:31 Speaker_02
that incentive that many people inside the industry have admitted exists, then you would get much fairer coverage of these pharma companies and we would actually get to be a healthier country because you wouldn't allow them to basically manipulate the public debate.
00:47:46 Speaker_02
So that's the argument.
00:47:50 Speaker_08
Freeberg, you want to chime in on it or no?
00:47:52 Speaker_05
I mean, I feel like there's some market correction that takes place here, which we're already seeing, which is the consumers are moving away. We just talked about moving away from cable news, moving away from legacy media. They don't trust it.
00:48:07 Speaker_05
The trust is at an all time low. I don't know if it's necessarily the government's job to determine who advertises what, where, how, and why.
00:48:16 Speaker_05
I don't like the government having that sort of degree of authority, generally speaking, because it can then lead into the government having overreach and oversight to control entities that maybe are competitive with the government in different ways.
00:48:29 Speaker_05
I do believe that the beef with big tech is a result of big tech's influence over the population where big government wants to have that degree of influence over the population. So it's actually a battle between government
00:48:43 Speaker_05
and private entities over who can influence the population and who has the ability to control the narrative. And I think that the general concept that the government should be determining who advertises where, what, how, and why is not a great one.
00:48:57 Speaker_05
And I don't think that consumers are dumb. I think that consumers are showing
00:49:01 Speaker_05
their proclivity for independent media and independent news sources because they don't trust the influence that's been kind of imparted upon these other channels and these other sources and they're moving away from it.
00:49:13 Speaker_05
So I don't know if it's as much kind of a regulatory question and big pharma needs to be affected. I think that the market to some degree does its job. I don't think the consumers are dumb. I will also just kind of counter one of Sax's points.
00:49:26 Speaker_05
I think that there are drugs Like multiple sclerosis is a good example. There was a drug introduced a couple years ago called Ocrevus and it was a new therapy for multiple sclerosis that is extremely effective.
00:49:38 Speaker_05
It's a really big step change in biological therapies. And a lot of people that were on MS and have had MS for decades take kind of old school drugs that maybe aren't that effective.
00:49:51 Speaker_05
So to create awareness, and they're not regularly seeing their doctors. They may not go in and see their doctor every year like they're supposed to.
00:49:57 Speaker_05
So the pharma companies are creating awareness that there's this new modality and this new product that could help them to get them to go into the doctor's office. So I don't wanna say that these are all evil, trying to control and influence.
00:50:09 Speaker_05
There are good drugs that come to market, they are beneficial to people, and people don't know about them. How else are they supposed to get that word out if they're not able to advertise?
00:50:16 Speaker_05
So I don't think that it's all negative and all malicious behavior and manipulation of media. We all have the resources, we all have the capacity, and we are all likely very frequently going to doctors. Most people don't.
00:50:31 Speaker_05
And so most people that have chronic disease or have health issues, there has to be a mechanism for making them aware of new options, new alternatives, new products that are coming to market.
00:50:40 Speaker_05
So I'm not super putting my foot down saying pharma companies shouldn't be able to advertise, shouldn't be able to buy media out there and put ads up and tell people about stuff that they've discovered or that they've invented, that's been regulated, that's been tested, that's been approved, and that works and can help save lives.
00:50:55 Speaker_05
I think they should have the freedom and ability to do that. So I think there's a bit of a nuance here to how this gets handled is my point.
00:51:03 Speaker_02
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not saying that there's no benefit at all to letting pharma companies advertise some products. I think the question you have to ask is, why is so much money?
00:51:16 Speaker_02
going from pharma to these news outlets because most of the products, you know, that you generally can't buy them.
00:51:23 Speaker_05
I'll tell you the reason. The reason is that the pharma companies make so much money off of government funded insurance programs. Let me just state that again.
00:51:31 Speaker_05
If we only had private insurance, or if consumers had to pay for their drugs and their therapies themselves, the cost of drugs would go way down.
00:51:40 Speaker_05
The reason the cost of drugs has gone way up is because so much of the government insurance programs don't negotiate drug prices, and there are all these middlemen and all these people that sit in between that have been regulated through regulatory capture into the system that has allowed an incredible inflation in the cost of drug prices.
00:51:57 Speaker_05
Therefore, there is a lot of money to kind of continue the capture of the system. I don't think that it is right.
00:52:03 Speaker_05
And I think that the free market generally or having a less regulatory captured market will allow an appropriate kind of pricing of therapies and appropriate kind of adjustment in the market, which doesn't exist today. So, so much money
00:52:16 Speaker_05
to kind of keep the market the way it is, needs to kind of keep flowing. That's my sense of this. I don't think it's about bad drugs need to kind of stay in play.
00:52:24 Speaker_05
As much as it is, this market's been allowed to inflate and the cost of healthcare and the cost of drugs has inflated in a way that's simply untenable. And it doesn't make sense. And I think that it's because of regulatory capture.
00:52:35 Speaker_05
And I think that that needs to change. And I'm hopeful that it does.
00:52:39 Speaker_02
That's the second reason then to get the this form of money out of advertising, because you're basically explaining it as like a self looking ice cream cone.
00:52:46 Speaker_02
But again, there's another reason as well, I think that explains the sheer magnitude, which is its influence buying its influence.
00:52:55 Speaker_08
To your point, sexism, that was what I was about to bring up, you know, there
00:53:00 Speaker_08
it's very subtle, you're not going to have somebody at NBC, or CNN, or Fox come down and tell Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow, or Anderson Cooper, hey, you can't cover the story.
00:53:11 Speaker_08
But there is a bunch of self censorship that occurs, I believe, where people just don't select certain stories to be on the docket. And they just shape the coverage. So they might not say something positive or negative about Pfizer or
00:53:27 Speaker_08
Johnson Johnson, whoever it is, they'll just avoid that story. And because these anchors are getting paid, or have been previously paid 10 10 million 25 million a year.
00:53:37 Speaker_08
Do you think they're going to like, really go hard at Pfizer or somebody like that? No, they're just not going to I've been inside the machine. They just avoid those stories. Okay, let's keep going through the docket here.
00:53:51 Speaker_08
I think it was pretty good conversation. I know, by the way, I just wanted to say to the Trump administration, if you want the economy to rip, let M&A rip. But my one caveat is, is a really simple way to do this.
00:54:02 Speaker_08
If you're under a trillion dollar valuation, let those companies buy and sell each other because then we could go from a mag seven to a mag 70. That's where I think actually it makes the most sense.
00:54:12 Speaker_08
If you actually are concerned about the consolidation of power in the top seven, let them sit out acquiring more great companies and let the people under that who are the mid market cap companies, let them do the buying and selling because then you might have a mag 8, 9, 10 show up.
00:54:28 Speaker_08
That's not talking my book, it would be better for me, Friedberg, to let the mag seven participate because they can pay higher prices. They're not price sensitive.
00:54:35 Speaker_08
But I do think the mid market companies buying and selling would make a healthier environment for competition.
00:54:41 Speaker_05
So you think it sorry, you think it creates more competition, which will, that'll benefit consumers and grow the economy?
00:54:47 Speaker_08
Well, look at it this way. If somebody wants to buy, let's say Waymo gets spun out, somebody wants to buy it. If Amazon can't buy it, and Tesla can't buy it. And Amazon can't buy it.
00:54:59 Speaker_08
But they could merge with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, you know, all those mid Airbnb, if those companies could consolidate, can you imagine what would happen if Amazon couldn't buy those companies, but you could see Waymo spin out and then partner with DoorDash
00:55:15 Speaker_08
and partner with airbnb and you had that as one company now you got a 400 billion dollar company that is nipping on the heels that is aggressively competing with amazon that's what you want in the market is more competition for the max seven you don't want the magnificent seven to run away with it
00:55:31 Speaker_08
And we could create the eighth, ninth and 10th. So just imagine that freeberg, there was a another trillion dollar company, like, actually, I think Tesla just became a trillion dollar company again. So now that they're up in those ranks, great.
00:55:43 Speaker_08
Don't let Tesla don't let Amazon, etc. Nvidia buy more companies, let those that mergers and acquisitions and that strength happen under the trillion dollar mark. What do you think of that general concept freeberg?
00:55:56 Speaker_05
Yeah, I generally think competition is good. I generally think free markets should be allowed to operate. And I've shared my point of view. I think bigger is going to drive more innovation than lots of little.
00:56:06 Speaker_05
So okay, again, Waymo wouldn't exist if not for Google plowing billions and billions. And I don't know about you guys. I took Waymo around the city yesterday. Pretty sick. Like it is legit.
00:56:16 Speaker_06
I don't go to the city.
00:56:17 Speaker_05
Yeah. It's pretty legit. And I think that's a toxic cesspool. By the way, I will say my other comment is I think San Francisco has gotten 10x better now that I've been working downtown the last week or two.
00:56:32 Speaker_06
10x better from a toxic cesspool just being a cesspool.
00:56:36 Speaker_05
I think part of the reason is all of Walgreens is gone. There's no Walgreens left.
00:56:41 Speaker_08
You can't buy deodorant. Problem solved. There's nowhere to do crime anymore. You can't buy toiletries and tampons in San Francisco.
00:56:48 Speaker_06
How do you do that?
00:56:49 Speaker_02
You gotta ask Jason, Jason, how does it get an Amazon package delivered?
00:56:54 Speaker_08
Yeah, I don't. Hey, man, I'm in Texas. You can do whatever you want here.
00:56:59 Speaker_05
Jason gets his supplies airdropped in once a month. What are you talking about?
00:57:03 Speaker_02
I'm bullish on the San Francisco turnaround because I think Daniel Lurie getting elected mayor was huge. And this doesn't get really as much attention. But it's very important. The board shifted. The radicals got voted off the supervisors. So
00:57:17 Speaker_05
The board of supervisors are less progressive. Daniel's in the mayoral office. I think the city's already like turning around. I've been super blown away the last couple of weeks I've been downtown. I'm like, why am I not working downtown every day?
00:57:29 Speaker_05
It's actually really nice. It feels like San Francisco 20 years ago. Let's see. I'm pretty bullish.
00:57:35 Speaker_08
I mean, safety is the number one thing. If they can.
00:57:37 Speaker_05
And this budget needs to get put under control. San Francisco spends one and a half X per capita of what New York City spends. And that's something that Daniel and his team have kind of said they're going to address sort of like their own doge.
00:57:49 Speaker_05
And there's a team going in there to address this. So I'm really bullish on what's going to happen with the city. It's just such a. Great place.
00:57:55 Speaker_08
It seems like the power resides in the supervisors, and they seem to have flipped two or three of the really lunatic ones, right, Zacks? They got rid of dopey Dean Preston. Who was the other guy? Peskin. Peskin. He was an idiot. And those guys are done.
00:58:10 Speaker_08
So that's progress.
00:58:11 Speaker_05
Do you want to talk about the Trump candidates, J. Cole?
00:58:15 Speaker_08
let's get to that in a second. But before we get to that, FBI raided the home of Polly Market CEO Shane Copeland. He was on the election night stream. He was raided on Wednesday, November 13, eight days after the election.
00:58:28 Speaker_08
They say Polly Market is Bloomberg says Polly Market is being investigated for allegedly accepting trades from US based users. Here's the backstory.
00:58:37 Speaker_08
In 2022, Polymarket paid $1.4 million to settle a case with the CFTC for offering option contracts without proper designation. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also ordered the company to prevent U.S. traders from making bets.
00:58:53 Speaker_08
They recently said polymarket that is that they had taken additional measures to block Americans from trading at the same time calcium Robin Hood were able to offer presidential prediction markets because calcium, it seems like they won their lawsuit against the CFTC last month.
00:59:07 Speaker_08
So that allowed some betting markets to happen. But polymarket is still banned from the US because of that settlement in 2022. Here's the polymarket claim. They claim the raid was
00:59:18 Speaker_08
Obviously political retribution by the outgoing administration against poly market for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election and Shane posted on x discouraging that the current administration would seek a last ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents.
00:59:36 Speaker_08
Bunch of conspiracy theories flying around Peter Thiel and founder fund have made an investment into the company and Nate Silver is an advisor. I guess I'll just point out to be accurate.
00:59:49 Speaker_02
They're much more accurate than they totally accurate.
00:59:51 Speaker_08
Yeah.
00:59:51 Speaker_02
So how manipulative can it be if they've got everything right?
00:59:55 Speaker_08
Yeah, I mean, that's literally the point I was about to make. And I'll just end with this and then give it to you sacks for red meat. Americans are not allowed to participate in a lot of different markets.
01:00:07 Speaker_08
And these kind of actions have been taken many, many, many times, as we all know, poker, crypto, real estate, and prediction markets have all had actions like this taken against them.
01:00:17 Speaker_08
And they typically are a sorry, they read the offices to or just his house, just his house, according to the information we have right now, they bust into his house at 6am.
01:00:28 Speaker_02
And they took his phone.
01:00:29 Speaker_06
Yeah, by the way, shout out to like, like, if you're breaking the law, why wouldn't they that TBD.
01:00:37 Speaker_08
Yeah, it's a great, great speculation and important to note this action came after the election is resolved. So it's obviously FBI knew that doing this beforehand would be seen as political and doing it after I guess the decision
01:00:53 Speaker_08
No, I know what you're saying. I'm adding something else, which is, they obviously knew this would be political sacks.
01:00:58 Speaker_08
And so they did it after they knew if they did it before that would be looked like, you know, really bad that the prediction mark that's predicting Trump, a Trump win was rated. So they did it after. What do you think sacks? What's going on?
01:01:11 Speaker_02
Okay, I think it's political or not. We don't know what was driving this. It's certainly an extreme action to bust into someone's home at 6 AM with the FBI and take your phone. It's very curious.
01:01:23 Speaker_02
I think there's three theories that I've heard that I think could explain this. I want to just be very clear that there's no proof on any of this. speculation. Yeah, it's a speculation. Yeah.
01:01:36 Speaker_02
But by the way, just before I get into it, I think Shane Copeland had one of the funniest tweets I've ever seen.
01:01:41 Speaker_06
New phone, who dis?
01:01:42 Speaker_02
New phone, who dis? I mean, that was like ballsy. The FBI bus in your house takes your phone.
01:01:49 Speaker_08
And that's the first thing you tweet. That means that this is probably not a serious situation. But anyway, go ahead.
01:01:53 Speaker_02
Well, who knows, but yeah, or he's confident inside what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So theory number one is that what the feds are looking for is whether any domestic whales were illegally wagering on the election outcome because
01:02:11 Speaker_02
Theoretically, the money is all supposed to be offshore because domestic wagering on the election was illegal. However, a court ruled just days before the election that domestic wagering was legal.
01:02:23 Speaker_02
So theory number one doesn't really make a lot of sense because the FBI would be enforcing a rule or a law that the courts had just overruled just days before the election. But that's theory number one.
01:02:35 Speaker_02
Theory number two, and this theory was raised by Fortune magazine, is that the poly market was rife with what's called wash trading, which is a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold often simultaneously and repeatedly by the same people to create a false impression of volume and activity.
01:02:54 Speaker_02
This is illegal in the U.S., and it does occur in crypto markets. So they could have been going after that, but again, it does seem like a very extreme thing to bust into his house. Why don't you just ask Shane for the records during business hours?
01:03:08 Speaker_05
And what authority would the U.S. government have if it's all offshore in that context?
01:03:12 Speaker_02
I don't know, I'm just laying out possible theories, but Fortune Magazine did raise that theory. But again, if that's what your claim is, just subpoena Polly Market during business hours. I don't know why you need to raid the guy's home.
01:03:25 Speaker_06
Or raid the office.
01:03:26 Speaker_02
That's where the files are. Right. Now let me lay out theory number three, okay, which is going to be a little bit more controversial. But if somebody was manipulating these sites, okay, then on whose behalf were they doing it?
01:03:44 Speaker_02
And what you'd have to say is that they were doing it on behalf of the Kamala campaign.
01:03:49 Speaker_02
Because in the last few days of the election, there was a weird blip where Polly Market and Kalshi especially, Kalshi even more than Polly Market, all of a sudden flipped to Kamala.
01:04:02 Speaker_02
And you can see this, particularly in Pennsylvania, where all of a sudden there was a big flip at the end, away from Trump, towards Kamala, that turned out to be totally fake. And Trump won Pennsylvania pretty, pretty handily.
01:04:14 Speaker_02
And so you got to wonder, well, wait a second, was a Kamala supporter, maybe trying to push the narrative that there was a last minute surge to Kamala? Because that's what the action seemed to imply.
01:04:27 Speaker_02
And remember that at the same time this was happening, there was a big It was like a media push to create a narrative by her supporters in the media that there was a late break for Harris. Yes, by independence.
01:04:40 Speaker_02
And so you have to kind of wonder, was somebody trying to push the prediction markets at the last minute to feed a media narrative that they were trying to create? look, I have no evidence of this whatsoever.
01:04:51 Speaker_02
But the the action in the betting markets and the narrative they're trying to create in the media do line up. So if somebody was going to investigate election manipulation, this is what they should look into.
01:05:02 Speaker_08
Jamal, you have any thoughts here? No, zero thoughts. I mean, yeah, you know, my thoughts on an error. I don't see him ever doing anything risky or illegal. So it makes no sense to me.
01:05:15 Speaker_08
I'm guessing that somebody made him aware, pure speculation of something in the system. And that probably was on his phone. And they probably wanted to get that. And it's probably like a speeding ticket, ticky tacky thing.
01:05:30 Speaker_08
And you just have the law still working its way through the system, because they sacks were under an order to not take us. But Cal, she had gotten the mark that the law changed with their successful lawsuit, or they had defended their their case.
01:05:43 Speaker_08
So I would say it's all allegedly folks. And so wait for more information is always a good idea. All right, Trump is building his team. And it's a long list. We've got, I guess, dozens of names right now. So let's start with the four.
01:06:01 Speaker_08
Who's your favorite Jacob? Well, my opinion probably doesn't matter all that much. But let me go with the four that are creating the most buzz tomorrow. Let's let's create the let's go with the four that are having the most buzz.
01:06:14 Speaker_08
And then I'll let you each tell me what you think.
01:06:17 Speaker_06
You love?
01:06:20 Speaker_08
The one I Yeah, there is one actually I love but let's I'll save that for now.
01:06:23 Speaker_06
Who's that? I'm curious. I'm genuinely curious.
01:06:26 Speaker_08
The fake and Elon doing doge is my absolute favorite.
01:06:30 Speaker_06
Yes.
01:06:30 Speaker_08
Anything else that I am fascinated by Bobby Kennedy, going in and trying to make the country healthier. And the country is the most sick country, I think, of all of the Western countries. And I think our food system has massive problems.
01:06:48 Speaker_08
So I'm very excited to see what he does inside of the Health and Human Services Department. I think it's a little bit controversial, obviously, but I don't see how it could be any worse than what we currently have. How do you feel about that?
01:07:04 Speaker_08
Who's your favorite? I guess we can just go with people's favorites if you want to go that way.
01:07:07 Speaker_02
The way I interpret his cabinet picks is that he's creating a coalition. So I view it more as like a package deal. J. Cal, I'm not going to pick out one or two, although I do have my favorites.
01:07:18 Speaker_02
The person who I think very astutely understands what Trump is trying to do is Charlie Kirk, who's a major influencer on the Republican side. And he says that, that what
01:07:31 Speaker_02
MAHA, which is Make America Healthy Again, they get RFK, Bobby Kennedy, HHS, obviously. The Libertarians get Tulsi at DNI. I would add to that that they also get Elon Vivek at Doge.
01:07:42 Speaker_02
The base, the populist base, gets Matt Gaetz, they get Hegseth at DOD, they get Hohemann. And then the Peace Through Projecting Strength crowd, which is kind of a nice name for Neocon, gets Rubio as Secretary of State and Stefanik at the UN.
01:07:56 Speaker_02
So I think that Trump is basically trying to have his cabinet reflect the diversity of views within the Republican Party. He's not decisively choosing one side over another.
01:08:10 Speaker_02
What this means is that during his presidency, he's going to get all the views and all the options within the party.
01:08:16 Speaker_08
Okay, so that's the collective view. That's an interesting way of looking at it.
01:08:18 Speaker_02
Yes, exactly.
01:08:19 Speaker_08
point by point through the most controversial ones. Matt Gaetz is obviously the most controversial attorney. That's another trend. Yeah. And he has been put up as attorney general. He has to be confirmed by the Senate, obviously.
01:08:32 Speaker_08
He's the house rep from Florida. Sachs, how qualified is he for this job on a scale of one to 10?
01:08:38 Speaker_02
I think that Matt Gaetz would be a breath of fresh air at DOJ. I mean, look, here's- Why is that? The DOJ has been involved for the last eight or nine years in a completely fabricated effort to portray Donald Trump as an agent of the Russians.
01:08:56 Speaker_02
It started with the Steele dossier. They then opened an investigation based on that phony piece of opposition research funded by the Hillary campaign. They lied to the FISA court to spy on Donald Trump's campaign. They then worked
01:09:09 Speaker_02
with the various intelligence services and with the media to create this like hoax that went on for years and years. There's been no accountability for that.
01:09:21 Speaker_02
Furthermore, in the 2020 election, you also had that effort to essentially cover up the Hunter Biden hard drive. that the FBI and DOJ were sitting on that for roughly a year.
01:09:32 Speaker_02
They created a phony story that it was Russian disinformation when it turned out to be completely authentic.
01:09:38 Speaker_08
So you think there's a lot to clean up there? How qualified is he on a scale of one to 10?
01:09:42 Speaker_02
What the president ran on was that the DOJ needed to be de-weaponized, that it had been turned into a partisan political apparatus for the Democrats. I don't think anyone can argue with that at this point.
01:09:57 Speaker_02
I think the American people clearly bought into that argument. Now, in order to clean it up, you're going to have to bring in a total outsider who's willing to break some eggs and shake things up. Is Matt Gaetz the only person who could do that?
01:10:09 Speaker_02
No, there are other people who could do it, but Matt Gaetz is definitely qualified for that role. He was one of the most outspoken critics in Congress of this weaponization of the FBI. He was never fooled by the Russiagate hoax.
01:10:21 Speaker_02
Most of the establishment was. And anybody who bought into the Russiagate hoax is not qualified to run the DOJ at this point.
01:10:28 Speaker_08
Okay. Any concerns?
01:10:30 Speaker_02
Well, there's a bunch of unproven smears and accusations have been made against him.
01:10:34 Speaker_08
We'll put it aside that any other concerns.
01:10:37 Speaker_02
Excuse me.
01:10:39 Speaker_08
Aside from the the investigations and whatever in the smears, a bunch of unproven.
01:10:44 Speaker_02
Yeah, smears and accusations were made against him. And my own view on that is that if there was really something there, I think Merrick Garland's DOJ would have acted on it two or three years ago.
01:10:55 Speaker_02
So I personally discount all these smears without there being any evidence whatsoever. And I think it's very predictable that we're seeing with both Matt gates and with Tulsi is that the worst
01:11:07 Speaker_02
accusations get made without any evidence in the media, when the blob or the establishment wants to stop a true populist reformer from cleaning up their backyard.
01:11:18 Speaker_08
Your thoughts on that Gates, and that seems to be the most controversial one. Any concerns? You think he's the most suited guy for the job?
01:11:25 Speaker_04
I don't want to comment on that Gates, but I'd like to talk about why not? Because I'd like to talk about a broader point of view on it.
01:11:33 Speaker_07
Okay. So I think
01:11:38 Speaker_05
There's this kind of thing that happens in biology called evolution, and a lot of people think evolution is this continuous process, but it's not.
01:11:48 Speaker_05
Evolution is this process by which there is some significant growth for a period of time, and then there is an extinction event or an external force that causes what ultimately becomes what's called punctuated equilibrium.
01:12:01 Speaker_05
So the whole kind of system resets, and then the healthier, stronger species survive, and they grow, and they persist.
01:12:09 Speaker_05
And if you look at the first chart, Nick, that I pulled up, this will just show you guys past extinction events, large amounts of biomass over the past half billion years get wiped out when these extinction events occur.
01:12:22 Speaker_05
And then evolution occurs because the species that can survive the extinction event persists in the environment and they grow.
01:12:29 Speaker_05
And that's how evolution kind of actually takes place, is there's an external force that changes what survives and what doesn't. It's kind of a testing force.
01:12:38 Speaker_05
If you look at federal spending, and this is a crazy link, but here's federal spending over the last couple of decades.
01:12:44 Speaker_05
And I would argue that many of the agencies, much of the bureaucracy, many of the jobs created, many of the spending programs, many of the operating models, many of the behaviors can kind of be viewed as a species or species within this ecosystem that have kind of grown a lot over the last few decades.
01:13:04 Speaker_05
And I think what Trump's mandate was by the people and people don't wanna hear this and they don't like it, but his mandate was to be kind of the extinction event.
01:13:13 Speaker_05
And whatever agencies, whatever operating processes, whatever individuals, whatever bureaucratic systems exist within the federal government that can withstand the scrutiny of the individuals that Trump is going to put in charge of each of these agencies, that they can survive and they can come out the other end, there is certainly some degree of strength and resilience and hardiness.
01:13:36 Speaker_05
This is not about right or wrong.
01:13:38 Speaker_08
You say they deserve to exist if they can survive.
01:13:40 Speaker_05
I'm saying this is going to bring in the most disruptive force that federal agencies have ever seen. And the intention with Trump isn't to find some person to keep running things the way they have been run in the past.
01:13:51 Speaker_05
His mandate from the people who elected him, based on the message he put out there, is to do the opposite, which is to go in and be as disruptive and damaging and destructive as possible.
01:14:01 Speaker_05
And whatever comes out the other side will be stronger, will be harder. And theoretically, will be, you know, more resilient, and I think that that's the event that's underway.
01:14:13 Speaker_05
Now, the people who are getting exactly what they want in Trump's candidacies are the Democrats.
01:14:19 Speaker_05
They were saying Trump is going to put a bunch of crazy lunatics in office, and he's going to make them the cabinet, and now they're able to kind of clap their hands and say, we told you so, we told you so.
01:14:29 Speaker_05
And I'm not sure that if they're really getting the message, which is that the intention here isn't to keep things running the way they have been running, but to really fundamentally test the systems.
01:14:39 Speaker_05
And test the systems with the most challenging oppositional forces the systems have ever been tested by, which is the candidates or the individuals that he's putting in charge of each of these agencies.
01:14:48 Speaker_05
So I'm not saying it's right or wrong one way or the other, but I'm making an observation that this is gonna be kind of an extinction level event.
01:14:55 Speaker_05
that Trump's decisions on who he's putting in place, I think, are gonna drive an outcome on the other end that's gonna make the government look very different.
01:15:03 Speaker_05
And I'm not gonna sit around and say, this person's good, this person's bad, because I don't think the point is to find someone that's, quote, qualified to do the job. The intention is actually quite different.
01:15:12 Speaker_05
And the outcome may actually be positive for America if you fast forward a couple of years in some cases.
01:15:17 Speaker_05
And there's some cases where things could get really messed up and people could suffer and jobs will be lost and all sorts of bad things will happen.
01:15:24 Speaker_05
we cannot continue the way we have been with respect to federal spending bureaucracy and inefficiency in the federal government. And so something has to happen.
01:15:33 Speaker_05
And if this is the path by which this gets resolved in the limited window that's in front of this particular administration, which is probably two years, maybe four, maybe this is what has to happen.
01:15:44 Speaker_08
Chamath, where do you stand on Friedberg's interesting metaphor here that we're sending meteors into each of these departments to blow them up and see if they survive an extinction level event? I saw you nodding.
01:15:57 Speaker_08
Do you think this is an interesting framing?
01:16:00 Speaker_06
Great take. I have nothing to add to Friedberg's take.
01:16:03 Speaker_08
Got it. Who's your favorite? Yeah.
01:16:05 Speaker_06
You asked me the question I answered. Who's your favorite? Well, I think let's take you on and Vivek off the table because that's an obvious one that we've been behind since the beginning.
01:16:14 Speaker_08
Yeah. know, and we all support the idea who's not against more efficiency. I mean, you have to be an idiot to be against efficiency. It's the easiest one to say you love.
01:16:22 Speaker_06
I think the highest beta pick so far has been Bobby Kennedy. I think the second highest beta pick is Matt gates.
01:16:31 Speaker_08
Explain highest beta pick in this context, please.
01:16:33 Speaker_06
I think the third is Tulsi Gabbard. That there's the potential for an enormously positive two or three sigma outcome, but there's also the chance that it can really not work. That was exactly why I picked Bobby Kennedy because he's gonna shake it up.
01:16:52 Speaker_06
Right. Peter Thiel just did this podcast with Bari Weiss.
01:16:55 Speaker_05
And it was fantastic, by the way, highly recommend.
01:16:58 Speaker_06
Highly recommend.
01:16:58 Speaker_05
He's awesome.
01:16:59 Speaker_06
Yeah, the one of the great things he said is that he was talking about science. But I think the example works here as well, which is that we didn't have enough skepticism, and we had too much dogma.
01:17:11 Speaker_06
He was talking about sort of like the death of science. And I think that that idea applies here as well, which is that the federal bureaucracy has not really been challenged. And Vivek put out a very compelling post on x, where
01:17:29 Speaker_06
basically said like, well, when you on the one hand, there's going to be radical transparency. But on the other hand, there's a lot of case law that we can use to kind of try to really dismantle the government apparatus.
01:17:42 Speaker_06
And they're putting themselves on a shot clock to do it by 2026 for the 250th anniversary. So I think I'm really predisposed to this idea that it'll force the government to be very resilient at the end of this process. And I think that's a good thing.
01:18:00 Speaker_06
And it'll probably be very different than what it is on the way in. And I think that that can be very positive.
01:18:07 Speaker_08
All right. So we got your mouth and myself actually giving some specific names that we thought were interesting. I'll go back to you, sax. Maybe I'll phrase it as
01:18:17 Speaker_08
to Chamath's phrasing, which one do you think has the greatest chance of creating a massive potential change that could be positive, but also has some possibility of a destructive downside? In other words, it could go either way.
01:18:30 Speaker_08
But man, if it goes the right way, it could be brilliant and amazing and great for all Americans. Who would be your number one, number two in that regard?
01:18:37 Speaker_02
Well, you have to identify what the potential downside is. I think the single biggest risk in a second Trump term is that somehow the United States gets into an unnecessary war, a war that we don't need, another forever war.
01:18:50 Speaker_02
It's certainly not what President Trump wants. He's been abundantly clear on the campaign trail that he wants to avoid wars, he wants to avoid World War III. It's clearly where all of his instincts are.
01:19:01 Speaker_02
But the fact of the matter is we have a very fraught and difficult international situation right now. The Middle East is on fire. We have a proxy war going on with Russia. So there is the chance that things could always spiral out of control.
01:19:14 Speaker_02
And you need, I think within the cabinet, not just hawkish voices, but also dovish voices so that the president has the full range of options at his disposal.
01:19:23 Speaker_02
And so in that sense, I would say that, you know, Tulsi is being one of the more dovish voices is incredibly critical just to balance out some of the other voices who are more hawkish.
01:19:35 Speaker_02
And so in that sense, I think, you know, just making sure that the president gets to hear from a wide spectrum of views, I think that that part's very important.
01:19:45 Speaker_08
So that would be Tulsi.
01:19:46 Speaker_02
Tulsi would be your pick for like, yeah, just because like Tulsi could literally make the difference between whether we get in a unnecessary forever war or not.
01:19:55 Speaker_02
I would also just say that with respect to the other picks, there's obviously a lot of hysteria going on, a lot of hyperbole about the downsides. I don't think it's gonna be like a meteor hitting the earth. I don't think it's that destructive.
01:20:09 Speaker_02
I think that it's more like will some eggs be broken up to make an omelet, right? That's the analogy I would use rather than the meteor. And the thing I would just say is that we all agree the United States is currently on an unsustainable,
01:20:24 Speaker_02
fiscal path. We know that we're spending too much money. We know that the bureaucracy is too big. What's the downside of shaking it up? There's just way more upside than downside in terms of shaking up this bureaucracy.
01:20:35 Speaker_02
Because the current path is bankruptcy. Exactly. So why do we have to act like that it's so risky to bring in outsiders and populists and reformers into these agencies, we know there's going to be huge resistance to them.
01:20:49 Speaker_02
The biggest risk, frankly, is inertia taking over. And the reformers aren't able to do enough.
01:20:56 Speaker_08
And we all do when nothing is not an option.
01:20:58 Speaker_02
Yeah, and then we go bankrupt. That's the big risk.
01:21:00 Speaker_08
Why is Chelsea getting attacked? What's the Russian people are saying? Like, I don't I don't know any of the history here. So tell me.
01:21:08 Speaker_02
It's obvious. It's because Washington is a very hawkish place. It's basically run by the war machine. There's, there's no money going to Washington to lobby for peace. All the money in Washington is coming from the military industrial complex.
01:21:22 Speaker_02
So by definition, it's extremely hawkish and it's geared towards war. And Tulsi- Is there some history with Tulsi in Russia? Yeah. Just to finish my point.
01:21:31 Speaker_08
Yeah.
01:21:33 Speaker_02
Tulsi has been one of the few consistent voices advocating for peace. So of course, the establishment wants to basically get her nomination vetoed. But again, I think you have to see the cabinet as a package deal.
01:21:45 Speaker_02
I think it's very important to have Tulsi as one voice for peace within a larger cabinet that already has many hawkish voices.
01:21:52 Speaker_08
Okay. All right, everybody, for your Sultan of Science from O'Halo. David Freeberg, the chairman dictator Chamath Palihapitiya from 8090. And David Sachs, from Kraft Ventures.
01:22:06 Speaker_08
I am Jason Kalacanis, your host here at the all in podcast and this week in startups. We'll see you next time on the all in podcast. Bye bye.
01:22:16 Speaker_02
Chief Retribution Officer.
01:22:33 Speaker_01
and they've just gone crazy with it.
01:23:04 Speaker_02
We need to get mercy