Sacks
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So they had a massive property and equity bubble collapse, and they've not had to deal with anything that looked like typical economic issues since then. And part of it is because the government plays a very big hand in the Japanese economy. There's a lot of price controls there. So I don't know. I'm not sure what it is that we can learn there that you can extrapolate to the rest of the world.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Let's talk about leverage for a second, Shama.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So for example, like if you take something like Citadel runs about $50 billion and they have extremely precise risk management systems, they're the best in the business.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
But as a result of that, they are so systematically important to make the financial machinery run properly that as they're inspected and as they prove that they have very good risk management, they're allowed to lever up to incredible levels, 15, 16, 17 times.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So I think that Citadel with the 50 billion of capital that investors have given them is probably running a trillion dollars on a daily basis in the markets. Renaissance Technologies, same situation. Millennium, same situation. A bunch of these funds that sit inside of the large banks, same situation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So when you add it all up, you're probably talking about a few hundred billion dollars of notional capital. That's enormously levered. That's what causes that sensation, as Zach said, that things are ricking.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
We have a lot of regulation on banks. Essentially what happened is after all of the chaos of the great financial crisis, the thing that we don't talk about is what we really did was keep running the same, if not more risk. We just took it off balance sheet. So the banks were able to structure business lines to work with these hedge funds.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And these hedge funds in turn were able to show over time that they're so tightly managed that there are no black swan events that could happen. that they can run highly levered. So I think we are in this moment where there'll be these fissures from time to time. So here's this Bill Hwang, that's an example. The Cary trade is another example.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
There've been examples a couple of times a year, but at some point, these folks will have taken too much risk. And we'll look back on it and we'll think that hedge funds should probably have been more regulated than they are with respect to their leverage ratios, not with respect to their strategies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I think we're in a low-key recession. So I think that we're going to probably go through a couple of very difficult revisions of old data. The thing to remember about non-farm payrolls isn't as much what the number is, but if you actually look to the number of times it then gets revised, the reality is that these things get revised constantly.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And right now we're in this trend where we are overestimating and revising down. Sachs mentioned this, that that was the same with GDP. So we are, I think, in a tough situation. And then what you're seeing is folks that run very cyclical businesses are telling us in very plain spoken English that demand isn't there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So the one that was interesting this past week, Jason, you mentioned millennials, but like Airbnb, where you think all these young people are running around, YOLOing whatever cash they have. Airbnb had a massive warning on demand.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So when I think the excess capital, whether it's the steamy check or what have you, has been exhausted, you're now starting to see it bear out in these cyclical businesses. I don't think the demand is there. I think we're in a recession. It probably becomes more obvious in Q3 and Q4. And so Powell's going to have to cut. The question is, will he overreact to the pressure
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
and cut 75 to 100 versus 25 and take it slow.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Well, those are not... Those are not opposing things. So you're saying a year from now? I don't honestly know. Okay. But I do think that we'll probably be in a technical recession.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
But I also think that there's a pretty decent chance the market will be up.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Nat and I, when we're here in Portofino, we go in the morning to the fishmonger and we'll buy, you know, fish for the family. It is unbelievably expensive. And we always think to ourselves, how is it possible that folks can actually choose to eat healthy and local if they want to? It's next to impossible. What was a Branzino?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
You know, if you want to have locally caught sole, it's like 48 euros a kilogram. Wow. And it's expensive. Wow. It feels like more than a restaurant. Yeah. To feed a family of seven, which is what we are, you'll have to spend $150, $200. It's not sustainable. It's not something that makes sense for enough people anymore because that probably used to be $40 or $30. But Freeburg is right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
We're in a real serious problem because it's like these systems have remained the way that they have been for a very long time. And while other industries like the tech industry have captured all these incredible efficiencies, but the problem is that then these other industries are what supports everyday people's everyday lives.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And in the absence of a way to actually reduce cost and improve quality, you end up where we are today. And I don't think that that's sustainable.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I don't have much to say. I mean, I think it's been a trend in their letters when he stops mentioning a company in his letter, it's because he's selling.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Yeah. And that's what happened here. Okay.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I think that David is right that Freeberg is right that China thing could have impacted it, because he also sold a lot of BYD, which they've owned since 2008, I think. So that's a Chinese EV company. And so it could be just that that could have played a part. To be honest, I don't know.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Maybe, yeah. I could buy that. That seems like reasonably logical. I think the thing to remember, though, is that these decisions, I think, have been stewing for at least a couple quarters. Remember, that letter that he writes was not written yesterday, right? That was being drafted months and months ago. So these decisions were made even longer. So I think these decisions were made a while back.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Another reason, if we're going to play kind of conspiracy theorists is like, you know, after the death of Charlie Munger, maybe what he's starting to do is consolidate the book so that it can transition elegantly to Greg Abel when Buffett passes away. Let me unpack that for a second.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Or maybe he and Greg Abel have already talked about the kind of risk book that they want over these next five to 10 years, and it reflects a discussion about what the incoming CEO wants. So there could be all kinds of reasons why. I don't really know. I just think that Apple, just back to Freeberg's core thesis, I agree with many of his general points.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I'm not sure that they affected the Berkshire strategy, but Apple is sort of a little bit wayward. It is a company with an effective and unregulated monopoly or duopoly that doesn't really know what to do. And I think that that's the biggest problem with that company. And that's independent of Buffett selling now or selling a year from now or having not sold a year before.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
By the way, you mentioned the Google thing, but this clearly was not part of his calculus. I think he just got very lucky. But if you're holding Apple today, I think you have to take the $20 billion that Google pays you every year, which comes in at 99% margin, and you should probably sensitize the value of Apple We're not having that 20 billion if this antitrust ruling against Google stands.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
That alone could be worth upwards of half a trillion to a trillion dollars, depending on what multiple you want to put on that 20.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I think that this Google thing is the most important thing that's happened in tech since the Microsoft DOJ decision in 2000. Internet Explorer, yeah. Yeah. Because if you go back to that consent decree in 2000, it essentially handcuffed this incredibly foreboding company. more than a decade while all kinds of innovations happened. So they missed out on two huge waves, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Microsoft essentially missed out on social and then they missed out on mobile, largely as a result of that consent degree. And then they were able to catch up and embrace SaaS and the cloud. Amazing. Amazing. But there is this small
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
O outcome here, which is essentially a consent decree where Google gets handcuffed for some number of years and it creates a couple of big waves of innovation of new companies that can succeed that may not have otherwise been able to succeed in the absence of such a consent decree.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And a good example of this would be the AI-powered search experiences that you're starting to see, whether it's from OpenAI or Perplexity or a few of these other folks. The big O outcome though is more if you go back to the Ma Bell kind of thing where the company gets broken up. I think that the odds of that are extremely unlikely. So I think the big O outcome
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
is probably something that you can pretty safely take off the table. I think it's going to be a little low outcome. But the point is that there's a distribution here between these two things that this judge will be in control of. And I think that, again, I'm just guessing, I think both the Democrats and the Republicans will really support whatever happens here.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And that's not necessarily because, I don't think that's necessarily because they have a bone to pick with Google. I think that they have bones to pick with other companies more than Google. But I think that it starts to set the tone for being able to check big tech in a very meaningful and productive way. And I think that that has important ramifications for Washington.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I mean, I think these kinds of things... So I've never done them. And part of the reason why is I think these things... look genius and they work until one moment in time where they stop working and it stops working so severely that it becomes almost impossible to unwind yourself.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Yeah, so I think typically in these situations, the thing you have to remember is you don't really make a lot of money in this trade. The way you make a lot of money is by leveraging this trade up. So meaning it's not like borrowing a million dollars in yen and then swapping it to US dollars and then putting it in T-bills is a real moneymaker. You're talking about 50K.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
That's not really going to move the needle. So what people try to do in these situations is do it on a billion dollars and then lever it up five or 10X. The problem with that is that you're posting all kinds of collateral as margin to these banks to give you that leverage. Because then all of a sudden capturing 150 basis points on 10 billion or 15 billion, now we're talking about real money.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
One of the things that I like to do when I'm in Portofino is when you see these huge yachts in the bay, I like to figure out what they are. Okay. And so I use Google for like a vessel finder. And two of the top three links send me to spyware. And I think to myself every time, every year this happens,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
How is it that in 2024, Google hasn't figured out how to click these links in a sandbox, isolate the ones that send you to spyware, and just take them out of the index? And of course, they can do it. They have 100,000 people and $2 trillion in market cap. So I think that there's just a level of... technical navel gazing at some level that I think besets every big company.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And so there are other examples here that you can look at that are a lot less charged than politics. I think Freiburg is right that it's largely algorithmic, but I think David is right in that there is a quality problem. I think the solution here is that for certain extremely important moments,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
There needs to be a little bit more intervention and there needs to be a little bit more curation so that it passes the smell test. I mean, the version of this that I also experimented with, and Nick, you can find the tweet that I had, was when I was searching for the assassination of Donald Trump on Google, it just didn't show up. It does show up now.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So I think they got the message and they fixed it. So clearly somebody's listening. And I think clearly then the index changes. So I think that both things are possible, which is the algorithm can improve. And also that certain things before people start to complain loudly about this perceived bias, there should be enough intervention to make sure that the algorithmic results pass a smell test.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And if they're not, to add some amount of reinforcement learning or something else, some human feedback that allows... that allows you to get to a good answer that's unbiased.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And so when these things go wrong and they happen very suddenly. What it does is it puts pressure on all other asset classes because people are scrambling to make sure that they don't get margined out.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Well, the judge, the judge already said yes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So now if Apple created their own- I think, David, I think you're being too narrow. Hold on one second. You're being too narrow. The initial complaint in the Microsoft Internet Explorer thing that kicked off the whole DOJ thing versus the consent decree were two totally different things. I think that you're underestimating the scope of the remedy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And what you saw over the weekend was it mostly a lot of that happening, which was a lot of these folks were putting this trade on to the tune of tens or probably even a hundred billion plus dollars of which they had maybe five or 10 billion of equity and $80 to $90 billion of just margin. And that's what caused this very quick cycle. Then it looked like it unraveled itself.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
No, no, no, no. I don't think that's a narrowing. Again, the big O outcome of breaking up the company, like what happened in Ma Bell. I don't think that's going to happen here. A little-o outcome that is a consent decree similar to the one that Microsoft had to sign is very likely.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
But what I want you to understand is the way that that started, which was literally around Internet Explorer and bundling versus the consent decree, was meaningful orders of magnitude broader. So what I'm saying is this little-o outcome is going to be much bigger than the scope of this lawsuit. And if they don't, man, they have dodged an enormous bullet.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And all I'm saying is, I think if you had to be a betting person- They settled on that, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
It was a consent decree. Basically what happened is for 10 years, the DOJ became the product managers of all critical projects inside of Microsoft. Right. The point is this, which is that when Microsoft went through this, the government, and they had broad support, used that consent degree as a way to essentially hobble this company so that other competition could come in.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
That competition was- Yeah, I don't disagree.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I agree with you. It wasn't just in the narrow scope of where that initial focus started. I hear you. And what I'm saying is, this judge will read that for sure. And if Google gets away with just having to do something around tack and search- They have dodged an enormous bullet.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
No, I think if Sachs gets his way, it'll be a big O outcome and they're going to break the company apart.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Well, Sachs is here. What I'm saying is the little O outcome is meaningfully worse than where this lawsuit is.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And so people thought, oh, we're probably mostly past this. I actually think we're not. I've said this before. I think one of the most interesting things I've learned in the last few years about the stock market is the stock market is owned by and large by these algos, meaning there is these large
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
kind of murky grayish hedge funds that have these computer trading algorithms that are allowed to be levered to the tune of 13, 15, 20 times about $50 billion. These folks are swinging around a trillion dollars each. We all just live in their world because when these algorithms make a decision, and they react to these kinds of events, that's when the real volatility starts.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Nick, timestamp the end of it so everybody can just skip to the end of it. Sorry, go ahead, Jason.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
No, I have no bashing to do. I will say two things. One is that I think his stance on this trans stuff is a little problematic in these swing states. I say a little only because I think it matters more what Kamala's stance on all these topics are. But I do think that where... there's going to be a big judgment issue around her selecting him is if there is veracity to the stolen valor claims.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And so when Sean Ryan, as an example, incredible podcast, if you guys don't listen to it, it's great. But when he gets to the bottom of this, and he will, Tim Waltz better hope that he told the entire truth.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I saw that quote. That was really jarring, actually.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I don't understand, by the way, I saw the dating process that Donald Trump had with his VP candidates, right? Sachs and I saw some of it really up close. Explain it. Yeah, explain it. Well, I can only speak to what I saw, but it just seemed to me that there was this month long audition where I think they were just trying to figure out, I'm guessing here, completely guessing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
where these folks stood on things, but also he was trying to get a sense of the person and whether they got along and whatnot. But what I also suspected is that this person was being highly, highly scrutinized behind the scenes on everything that they've said or done, where the person who's going to make the pick in that case, Donald Trump, was deciding, can I live with these issues or not?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
So I think the most important thing was summarized by friends of ours, Goldman Sachs. Nick, if you want to just throw up the picture that they sent me. They sent some really good market insights whenever these things happen to a bunch of their clients. One of the interesting things that they observed is a couple of facts.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
What the articles about the VP process on the Democrat side was more painted along the lines of there was a meeting and she kind of liked him. And so she went with him. And I agree, I don't think there's an anti-Semitic bone in her body, to be totally honest with you. I don't get that sense at all.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Yeah, that's not the issue, but the calculus, right? But what I would say is, this is the number two person. I mean, maybe you should spend more than a day, and then maybe people should be really vetting this person behind... closed doors on all of the things that could go wrong. And I mean, you have to assume that that happened.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
This is what I was going to say. So there's a great quote, and I don't know if this ever made the light of day, but there was a moment where was thought of as a potential VP nomination. He was like a real big Democrat stalwart. And I don't exactly know the claims, but I'm not going to go there. But the phrase that I was told is, doesn't vet.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And what it was, was a way of saying, look, we take our time. We understand everybody's background. We know what skeletons are in folks' closets. In that example, whatever was going on was sufficient enough where he would never really get nominated for something very, very big.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
I think that's sort of what comes up here, which is that in this impassioned desire to make a decision quickly, I still think the Democratic Party had an extra two or three weeks to make sure Tim Walz really bets. Now, I don't know whether these claims are true or not.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Again, somebody will get to the bottom of it, but it creates a pall over this campaign too early and where I think Kamala probably wants all of that noise away so that she can define what she stands for. It's sort of what we said last time. go after these five big issues that people care about, go into the five states on these five issues, and try to win this election.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
The first is the algorithms in the middle of all of this chaos sold about $41 billion of global equities. Okay, no big deal. except that it actually causes everybody else to have to react. And then they sell billions and billions more. The other thing that they noticed though, is that we're in a moment in time where you can see how these algorithms will behave over the next month.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
She can't do that if this is like, oh, what is your decision-making like? Why did you pick this person? Why did this person lie? So they have to nip this in the bud very quickly.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
CNN reported that Kamala thought that Shapiro was too ambitious.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Shapiro is really sharp. I mean, that guy is unbelievable.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Look, I think that a vice presidential pick matters, but only so much. And I think more than helping, I think what VPs do on balance is if you pick the wrong person, it can meaningfully hurt a campaign. I think the Dan Quayle potato thing comes to mind. You can become a little bit of a laughingstock, which just becomes baggage that you have to overcome.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And so this is again where it's a little bit of a head scratcher. I would just have thought that this would have been a little bit more buttoned up.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And right now, if there's relatively minimal volatility and not much changes, the algorithms will have to sell another 160 odd billion dollars of equity. And that'll pull through many hundred billions more from everybody else. So I think we're in a little bit of a delicate moment where the preponderance of the market action will be to continue to sell.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
And I think it's just going to be, when we look back in hindsight, another reason why getting levered on these things is very dangerous. There's no free money, basically.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
It's a great story.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
Sorry, you're saying Japan has inflation? Japan has no inflation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
There's a famous quote from an economist, Simon Kuznets, who said, there's four kinds of countries in the world. There's developed countries, undeveloped countries, Japan, and Argentina. And I think the reason he said that is that Japan has been in this state since the 90s.