2024 Fantasy President picks, debt ceiling agreement, Dollar dominance & more
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
Contents6 chapters
§01Bestie intros + Vegas recap!§02Sacks donation strategy, Biden's uncomfortable truth, mental acuity concerns, fantasy picks for president!§03Debt ceiling agreement, US debt situation, is USD dominance in trouble?§04Book banning§05Nvidia going for a vertically integrated monopoly in AI hardware§06Biden's fall, populism in both parties§01Bestie intros + Vegas recap!
Freeberg and punchy now. Freeberg gets punchy on the face. Punch drug. Salty Friedberg reminds
me of a story for this weekend. Okay. We're waiting in line to go to the Encore beach club to see Kygo. And Heiko. Me and Friedberg are at the back of the line.
Everybody else has gotten through. All you guys are filtering into the booth. Heiko is tight. Every word, guys. Can they say take out your cock?
It's so I don't have my phone.
That's all I have, my key card. free predicts out
of phone his keycard and a small
bag of the salt and vinegar salted pistachio.
Oh, he travels. He won't leave home without them.
So he
has his own backup Pistachist.
And they're like, no food in the club.
The guy says, no food in the club.
No. And he goes, what do you mean no food? This is in a bag. It's like it's just pistachios. Just pistachios.
They get in an argument back and forth back and forth. He's like, I'm gonna take a stand. This is outrageous. I said, Freeport, come on, let's just go. So we go inside.
This is where he takes his stand. And then he's like, can you believe it? They took my fucking pistachios. Like, these are my pistachios. Tilton.
That's
tough to be
easily killed. And then and then on the way out, he's like, if I see that guy, he did these pistachios. And
I thought this is a fucking curb your enthusiasm skit right here.
Were they
like are those my pistachios?
They're salty about those.
They're salty pistachios.
That guy was walking through the casino later eating the pistachios.
I fell in love with Friedberg this weekend. I had so much fun with this fucking oh, my god. There he is. He's a great time. He's such a
great time.
He's so He was he was living his best life in the corner. Nick, show the bigger picture. Nick just zoom out so you can see.
Oh, there I am. Yeah. Right next to him. There's me.
Look at how huge my ass looks. god. That's that's
a lot
of that's a lot of s.
That is
a lot of show that ass, Nick. Look at that huge dumper. Wow. That's incredible. And what's going on with those?
Are you are
those underwear?
Who's good is that, Jake?
That's my gun. But I think it's just a t shirt. I think it's just a t shirt.
You obviously stopped the Ozempic.
Yeah. No. I'm still
I'm still sideways. I'm still sideways. 175. You put
it right back on, didn't you? Nope. Nope. You stopped the Ozempic, and it came right back.
Vegas was so fun. gotta say, I'm gonna shout out to those guys that run that Delilah joint. I think that's, like, the best new restaurant. That is
a really great place to sit right. A little loud wish it would just go, like, one notch lower on the volume for the
old vehicles. We're all -- The good scene. -- 25. Yeah. All the clubs are too long.
to let your winners ride. Rainman, David Sachs. And it said -- We
open so with us again on the all in podcast, the architect himself
crazy hair doesn't care. David Sacks. Friedberg is committing suicide in the bottom of a pool. Apparently, he just cannot take all the adulation and insight.
That's a leaving Las Vegas scene.
Exactly. That's you leaving Vegas down a 150 Dimes. which you could have given to DeSantis like Saxx did. And hot off of his wonderful weekend, the afterglow of Vegas Chamath Polyharpatini. We went to Vegas to play cards.
It was a wonderful weekend. We had a great time. Everybody bonded. A lot of laughs were had.
Wonderful time.
Wonderful time.
Wonderful time.
I got into craps. I was never craps gone, but I had a I had one of those
How great was calling craps. Oh my god.
I had
a 40 I had a 40 Diral run. It was incredible. There's something about that game that is, like, super addicting to me. Oh, When you just go out of 40 die row.
Ugh. I think craps really is one of the best Gambling games ever created. So exciting. It's so exciting. It's so exciting.
I just
like hitting the hard ways. And then the feature bat stuff.
Feature bats. Those are such leaky bats. No. But when they hit, they're just so far.
When they hit, they Just all the dopamine gets released, loved it.
I spiked ASUS for the max bet. It was like -- Oh,
I saw that. You put 500 on it. Yeah.
They only let me bet 500, but I bet 31 to 1 on ASUS. hit it.
Table went crazy when that fifteen dimes were pushed. Speaking about pushing a 150 dimes, it's actually been getting a lot of press. for being the architect. I saw some stories. Let me ask you a question.
§02Sacks donation strategy, Biden's uncomfortable truth, mental acuity concerns, fantasy picks for president!
Total fake news.
All fake news. We know that. Everybody's emailing me to try to get about you. I just cc you on this, but the press has been trying to cover your role, architecting the Ron DeSantis presidential.
We talked about it last week. What's to come about?
Well, the press wants to know what a 150 dime skis is.
They can
look it up in the urban dictionary. I think that would be easier. Let me ask you a question about your giving strategy, your donation strategy. I noticed that you're donating to RFK for president and you're donating to Ron DeSantis. Are you donating to any other president candidates?
And why are you betting both sides of the aisle? This is confusing to me. How that you want a one side to win?
I mean, I've already explained this on previous pods.
I don't know the answer. What's the
--
The simplest way to understand my political giving is just to watch the all in pod. And I always end up describing who I'm supporting Mhmm. And why and which causes on the pod first. And then I back it up. I put my money where my mouth is.
So, like, there's no mystery. There's no, like, backroom deals going on. It's just me writing checks and support of things I've almost always already talked about on the pod.
k. So what about this question of betting both sides. So you're you're you're betting for both teams in a in
in a
basketball series. Like, I don't know. I don't understand that.
Well, I've said that it's not competitive at this point. I've said that I would support RfK Junior for the Democratic Party nomination, and I support DeSantis on the Republican side. There's no contradiction. I guess if they both made it to the general, then I'd have a real dilemma. But let's face it.
They're both underdogs in their lane.
Okay.
It'd be a high class problem to have if it amounted to being a DeSantis Kennedy race instead of a Biden Trump repeat
Well, I mean, I played blackjack with you. You do play multiple hands at once. So I guess this does this does track. It's it's not enough action for you to just play one hand.
I don't
really see a contradiction. there. Right now, there's a Trump DeSantis race going on and there's a Biden Kennedy race going on.
Okay. Now you hold a lot of fundraisers.
Chamath and I are actually doing an event for Bobby Kennedy soon in the next 2 weeks.
Got it. Let's go to you, Chamath.
Well, I think it's important to just acknowledge an uncomfortable truth, and I come at it from a person who's independent I'm not registered democrat or republican, but I've donated 1,000,000 of dollars to the Democrats in the last couple of cycles. But I'm concerned about Joe Biden's mental acuity. And recently, when you look at how the White House behaves, the thing that I'm worried about is that there's almost, like, the sensation that there's a shadow government that's actually running the country, and we didn't elect any of those people. And this is nothing to say anything bad about Janet yellen or Jeff Zients or anybody else. But I think it's very important to acknowledge that other presidents have typically seen turnover in the highest ranks of government every 2 years or so.
and there's been incredible consistency. Now one could say well that's a good thing. The other side of it is while that's what allows more vibrancy in government and to make sure that the president remains always in charge. And so I think it's very important in this moment where we have a president who's eighty two odd years old or however old he is. We need to have the chance the American public to reach underwrite his mental acuity.
And I think that's a judgment that we should all be allowed to make. And I think the fairest way to do that is to feel the candidate who can be on the debate stage with him and who can actually just go toe to toe on the critical issues so that we as an American electorate can decide for ourselves where does this issue land? Is he mentally super sharp and ready to go for another 4 years, in which case a lot of folks will Portum? Or is this a moment where we actually need to be very responsible about the future of the country and not create some puppet government situation? I don't think it's funny that we have this weekend at Bernie's like meme that goes around about him.
This is the president of the United States. He's the most important person in the world We can't be in a situation where like that is a 30% probability that people joke about. So my support of Bobby Kennedy is in part because what I've heard from him, I find intriguing. But the more important thing is somebody needs to be in the arena on the Democratic side and put to test this mental acuity construct here and get us to an answer. Because otherwise, I am worried that there's a bunch of folks that were not elected who are actually running the government, and I'm not sure how much Biden actually knows or doesn't know.
And I want to know the answer to that question.
I think everybody wants to know the answer and feels like Democrats would like a different candidate. That's what the polling is showing to be, you know, put on the field here. And there is the issue of He's had the fewest number of news conferences. We don't get to hear from him directly, which then fuels, I think, this perception, Friedberg, that he's in cognitive decline, and perhaps the cognitive decline has increased. Republicans love to and the right, love to, you know, make these images of him confused on stage.
Who knows if he's actually confused or if Those are being selectively edited, but it certainly doesn't look good when you don't put the person out there to face the music and to take hard questions, I can't imagine he would do very well in a town hall or in an extended number of debates. And so this is the thing that I find truly scary is if the guy can't make it through the debates and he can't debate RFK and 10 other people, and he can't do news conferences, and we haven't heard directly from him or had him like face some really hard questioning. They he had he did one thing on MSNBC or CNN, and it was so pathetically sycophantic. And it looked like it was highly edited. I kinda like the the the host who did it.
I'll pull up her name in a minute. I forgot her name right now. She's usually pretty good. She's kinda funny, and she's kind of insightful, but she just saw through softball to softball. Is there an age sulcan of science that we should have a cognitive test for for office in your mind?
I I don't have an opinion on that.
You don't?
On an age? I mean
Yeah. Like, should we oh, should we have a cognitive test?
A cognitive test.
Should we do should we cognitive test the president of the United States for office. Like, there there's also
-- --
what Chamath is saying is that when you hold debates and you do town halls and you do rallies, then that is a cognitive test. You'll see you'll be able to take the cognitive measure by seeing how quick on their feet they are. But if Biden doesn't debate anybody, we won't see it. And right now, they're saying they won't debate Kennedy. So that tells you right there that they're afraid of something.
just wanna reiterate this. This is the single most important person in the world. In the single most important job, If it breaks your brain in a moment like this to not be partisan and think, what would you do if it was the other side? I just think you're like an unpatriotic roob. And you're gonna get tricked.
I'm not saying you, Jason. I'm saying anybody that thinks that
I mean, you're a camp. I wanna see him debate. Yeah.
Especially if the Ukraine war is still going on because we're that close to being in a direct shooting war with Russia, which could lead to a nuclear war. So you need somebody -- -- seems
to be contained. I I'd be more worried about the relationship with China.
--
is contained. I think it's escalated.
I don't think it's contained. It's escalating. And as of yesterday, there seems to be some conflagration between Kosovo and Serbia that's kicking up. So all of a sudden, we were talking about a totally different European land war. And we have fiscal instability.
We're about to talk about it today, but The home market could implode in the United States. The commercial real estate market has already imploded. There's all this complexity And I think that the idea that you can't demand the most important person in the world to be on top of their game. I just think that that's outrageous. You expect the best player in the NBA to be elite.
Right?
Yes, of course. Yes. They have to get good sleep. They have to have good fitness. They they're measuring every single dimension of an NBA player's life.
They measure their sleep now, their diet, They're shooting percentages, everything. And we're not doing that for the president of the United States. By the way, the MSNBC host who got the one interview I've seen with Biden in years, was Stephanie Ruehl, r u h l e, from 11th hour.
Oh, they've given the questions. That's how she gets the interview. Have you seen that, like, Biden has these cue cards when he goes with the podium? And literally, it's got the questions and it says who to call on. So they script the whole thing.
That's a stacked deck.
That's a stacked deck.
but Trump did that as well. If you remember,
like -- No.
No. No. No. No. No.
No.
--
gave him the questions. Like, you're
kidding me. He did the same. I'm saying his set of PR. He said a PR, the McEnany lady. She had a huge binder and she would flip to the talk.
My point is, that's okay.
We never did the same thing with sense what you're talking about.
Didn't you pick the first five speakers? The first five questions were people you knew. You said that.
He didn't stack the deck, Jason. Come on, stop.
We didn't have a script.
You picked the first five speakers, my point.
That is
not something that called
you. conference. That's an introductory event. That's someone announcing. Okay.
Fine. What are you saying? thing. You're
you're giving us time. No. No. No. We're talking about a White House press conference.
Okay. And he goes up to the podium. And secretly, when they zoom in on the camera, they're seeing that literally he knows who to call on and what the question's gonna be. So in other words, the media is cooperating with the Biden administration
--
For access.
--
for access. And they're giving him the questions.
Alright. Anyway, let's let's move on.
I think it's very important to just acknowledge that.
You're trying to normalize it by comparing to a completely different kind of event.
I am saying that is something -- They
never did that with Trump. They never give Trump the questions you're kidding.
--
loves to mix it up. I mean, that's why he's winning.
That's how you know he's still mentally fit.
I mean, a mentally unfit Trump would be a scary proposition.
You may or may not like his personality or temperament, but no one is accusing him of being in denial.
No, he's sharp.
We're having dementia. Anne Schuchat: I
think it's important to get on the record. I don't think we are saying that he is unfit to be president. I think at least what I'm saying is We have a right to underwrite the president every 4 years and on this dimension, this is the biggest issue that I see with Biden, and I'm concerned in the lack of turnover in the White House, And I want to know that he is actually in charge day to day in making the decisions versus a shadow government. That's all I want to know. And I want to see him live on the debate stage so that he can validate Yes.
That he is firmly on the controls. 100% of Americans want this.
The only people who don't want it is people who are in power, who, you know, are part of his group.
That's not a
100%.
There's a meaningful percentage.
I'm talking about Americans who will vote. They all wanna see him debate. Is it I don't I don't know anybody who doesn't wanna see a vibrant debate. So I think this is something the Democratic party needs
to -- -- against them.
The Democratic party needs to rethink their stance on this. Put them out there. Put them on the field. up or down, left or right, he has to debate at least 3, 4 debates in the primaries, you know, earn his slot. It'll do real damage
to the Democrats if Bobby Kennedy gets a ton of steam and they ignore him. I'll give you a different example of how Bobby's being roadblock. which is when you go to 538.com. And you look at Nate does a great job of pulling up all of the polling that happens from all of the Holding agencies? There are many instances where the Democratic fields won't even include him when they ask him questions.
And so there is definitely a concerted effort here. And I think it's not that I don't want Joe Biden to win. I think he's He could be fantastic. Again, I voted for him, and I think that if he's mentally sharp and his hands are on
the control chance that you think he's sharp, Jamal?
No. I'm saying, I don't know. I know. I want to know for myself.
What do you think the chances are?
I don't mind. using logic here. think that could be pretty good, actually. You know, there's a lot of like, if you look at Buffet, he's 92. He's sharp as attack.
Munger's 96. He's sharp as attack. I think that if you live reasonably well, And Biden's got some great things working for him. He's he's been a teetotal of his whole life. So all the things that would have caught up with you in your eighties, Biden has avoided So from a health perspective, he has the best chance of being on top of his game.
Can he be physically frail? I don't care about that.
Mhmm. You
know? That happens to everybody. So I think it's important to disambiguate those 2. And so it is very easy to tell when you're standing on a debate stage hell. You can sit on the debate stage.
I don't care. But I want you to be able to explain what you think in a way that cogent and coherent, and you walk away thinking, ugh. I feel safer with him with his hands on
the controls here. Sucks, what do you think is he do you think the chances are he's sharpest attack? He's not in cognitive decline.
He's not sharpest attack. We know that. The question is whether he can serve at all.
Should people have to take a cognitive test?
Do you
think that would be a good improvement?
No. Look. I think it debates the cognitive test. But look at that.
--
for the Senate and stuff like because it does seem like people are
--
The voters are the cognitive test. Okay. The problem is when the media is cooperating with candidate by not asking them tough questions or even worth sharing the questions with them to give voters a false impression of how strong they are. I mean, look. The media's job is to be fundamentally antagonistic with the people on power not to cooperate with them.
Here's something super intriguing that happened this week. Jamie Diamond has hinted at running for office. Bill Ackman made a case for him. To run for president 2024, this is getting a lot of steam people are talking about it on CNBC, and it's trending on Twitter. On Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon Midge, some comments about potentially running for office in the future quote.
I love my country, and maybe one day I'll serve my country in one capacity or another. He's sixty seven years old? He didn't know that. Bill Ackman tweeted his support for diamond running as a dam against Biden. Hackman put out a number of compelling points.
Diamond is one of the world's most respected business leaders. That's true. politically centrist, pro business, pro free enterprise. All true. Supported of well designed social programs and rational tax policies that can help the less fortunate, smart, thoughtful, pragmatic, knows how to bring opposing parties together, highly respected by right, left, and center.
I think that's also true. Superably managed JPMorgan through every crisis. quote, no bullshit, straight talking charismatic leader with an enormous grasp of the world's issues and how to address them Chamath, I'll just ask it to you plainly if you had 3 choices or 4 choices. Trump DeSantis, Biden, and the Jedi, JB Diamond. Stack ranked those for us.
Rank them. Who do you got? Who do you vote for? Those are your 4 choices. Probably
Jamie Dimon 1. Okay. DeSantis 2. Okay. And Trump and Biden, it's a bit of a tie.
Bit of a tie. Garbage garbage. Okay.
Not garbage garbage. Don't don't say that. But -- Okay.
--
it's a bit of a tie.
I mean, there's two people that nobody wants to vote for, it seems, wants to run.
I personally believe that the era of septagenarians and octogenarians should come to an end in terms of their ability to run this country. I want that transition. Now Jamie is 67, so but he's he's still much younger than these 2 other guys. And again, to go back to yours is a lot. It's a lot.
And vitality, energy, This matters. And I think that he is a very competent economic rational actor. So it would be interesting to see. I mean, look, the the reality is if I had to be really honest with you, I think that what we should do is keep chipping away at the establishment in how they pick candidates. It's going to be a slow process.
But I think in 10 or 15 years, The real thing that we should all do is if there's enough citizen journalism that we should really just change the constitution so that we can allow people that have been here for 25 plus years that have paid all their taxes, that have followed all the rules, to run for president, And then we could actually just we could vote Elon in and just have him clean it up the way he's cleaning up everything else. Honestly, Why why not just do that? I mean, who would who would not want that? Sax, let me ask you
to Stack rank, and then we'll get you the change in the constitution issue, which is how does the hell marry? How would you rank those
4?
I think that we have run out of topics to talk about if Bill Ackman's latest political brain fart is a major topic of conversation. Frank fart.
I think this is inspiring. You guys put Trump in office. The GOP put Trump in office. He's the outsider. He's outsider lunatic.
And you can't even consider Jamie Zimmerman. You're laughing at that, and you put Trump in office? You guys put Trump in office. And you're gonna do it again?
What do you mean to you guys? Listen.
That GOP,
you're political party. Here's the part about this conversation that sort of makes sense. Two thirds of the country says that they are unemployed inspired and in fact, fatigued by the idea of having a repeat of the same choice that 4 years ago. Everybody wants a different choice. So I get this, like, fantasy basketball drafting thing that we're trying to do here.
Okay? The reason why I call it the brain fart And I look. Bill's a really smart guy. I'm not dragging him. But in order to win the presidency, you have to get the nomination of a major party.
And the problem with all this, like, fantasy drafting is that you're trying to draft people who are anathema to the party that you're trying to get them the nomination from. And Trump was able to get the nomination to the Republican party. Jamie Dine would have to get the the democratic party. That's not gonna happen. And it does remind me of Bloomberg.
Remember, Bloomberg spent a $100,000,000 on his campaign.
Came in late.
Yeah. him. And he spent a lot of money, and he made it to the first question of the first debate. And remember what happened? Elizabeth Warren said that this is a billionaire who talks about
--
He didn't fight. He laid down. He rolled over.
She, like, ended him with one question, one debate. So my point is that you gotta be able to get the nomination of a major party. And, actually, I think neither party could nominate a banker right now. I mean, if you saw what happened around the whole banking crisis that I think is still going on in slow motion, I mean, the amount of animosity both towards the banks that went under, and and the idea of, you know, potentially bailing them out. And then also the animosity towards JPMorgan when it actually bought 1st Republic.
I mean, both parties have such a strong populist wing in them right now that I think you can never get Yep. The head of the number one bank in the US to be their candidate.
You're completely wrong, I think, in this case, respectfully. I mean, he could run as an independent as well. And although, you know, you you like to think or it seems like you're proposing that things are gonna be as they always were, Trump shows a wildcard, and then people forget Ross Perot. You know, he he got 19% of the popular vote. He he he hit 20,000,000 votes to Bush's 40,000,000 and Clinton's
44.
It is not unprecedented, and we are in a really troubling time.
You started this off by saying that Democrats should draft Jamie Dimon. Now you're saying you should run
this. I'm fine if you are independent. I I don't care what he runs us?
--
independent. There's no movement. to draft the top banker in the country. Like, where do you see this brown swab?
--
reality star like Trump in. Okay? That was the wildcard of all wildcards.
He ran and he ran in one of the 2 major parties and he hit a nerve.
I know. That's my point.
So not from me.
Tell me about Ross Perro. Tell me about Ruspeau, and how did he hit
20
million votes? And isn't the world much different right now because of media, because of people going direct? We're talking I mean, Shamov's just proposed Elon If you're proposing Elon, you're saying people -- I'm
proposing a constitutional amendment so that competent people
--
Sure.
--
who are not born in the country. Got it.
Now if you've lived here for
25
years or 30 years, you've created 100 of 1000 of jobs and paid tens of 1,000,000,000 of taxes. The idea that you are less fit then half these politicians to run for president is insane.
Okay. That well, that's a different question. What do you think about that? That's it.
Do you
think we should change the constitution and allow non national Serrant for president?
Not don't stop saying non nationals. It's so gross. It's like, well, you know, it's people that weren't necessarily born here. But if you lived your whole life, you're the majority of your life and you've built value for America and helped it win. All of a sudden, you're less capable of being president.
That's absolutely not true. Oh, I didn't
say it was. I'm I'm I'm describing what the constitution says. Somebody who's not born.
This was called the schwarzenegger amendment because you know, when he was governor of California, there are people who wanted him to run for president. But look, it's too hard to change the constitution. It's a very difficult process. So do I think that's gonna happen? No.
Would you be in favor of that and under what circumstances? Do you think that it's about saying we should change that. He's emphatic. We should change it in fact.
what do you think?
It's not
a pressing issue for me. I'd rather have a balanced budget amendment. I'd rather the president have a line item veto to control spending.
If you wanna blow up the government and cut it down to size and impose the ideals of liberalism, true liberalism, free speech, well controlled borders, but good immigration, etcetera, etcetera. I feel like there are lots of people Who could do that? And the only difference is they were accidentally not born here except they've created more value in America than most Americans that were born here. I think its term would
actually be foreign born national would be the most accurate term.
Great. National now -- Whatever dumb term whatever dumb term you want
--
I'm just using the ones in the constitution,
and the government doesn't, sorry, Jermaz, for using accurate terms. I'll try to use less accurate terms in the future. So back to jam Jamie Dimon.
Nobody hears questioning whether he is a supremely
--
Yeah. -- Compton executive. Comforty Grant that. He's done an amazing job taking JPMorgan. It was ready.
The biggest. He's made it even bigger.
How is that possible?
Whether that's a good thing.
--
face let them say we gotta stop the banks from getting bigger. still wanna get bigger.
Yeah. Whether that's a good thing for the country, ultimately, is a different question. Yeah. No one questions his competence and his expertise. But, again, I see no ground swell for him in either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or even as an independent.
Because again, it doesn't fit the populous mood of the country right now.
Agree. Got it. So that's your pragmatic, like, path to victory. But let me ask you about confidence then because maybe I could frame the question and get a better answer out of you.
That's what I thought was answering when you said, who's the more competent person?
You guys interpret my questions, have you? Like, you interpret it in terms of competence? South interpreted the question, pragmatically to getting it to off. But let's ask Saks the question, and I'll ask you, pragmatically, and I'll ask Saks the question of competence. In terms of competence, I gave you, like, four people.
Is he the most competent person to run the country right now? No. I -- You think DeSantis is more competent than him?
I think that of all the major candidates who actually have a realistic shot, DeSantis is the most supremely competent as an executive. He's run the state of Florida. He did it during COVID, which was a major crisis. We all saw what happened. All of our friends were leaving California because California had lockdown.
Schools were closed. We had the worst learning loss of any state. Small businesses were going under our toddlers had to wear these stupid pointless cloth masks to store, and they finally reopened. that group. Hold on.
So Frances kept Florida hold on. because Santa's kept Florida open. They had a great economy. It's number
1
in job creation investment. People moving there. I've heard
the speech business.
--
the budget, and that's why he was able to grow his majority. from under one person when he first got elected to 20 points.
So you believe he would be more qualified than Jamie Dimon? at Chibat. Yeah. You think Jay's a guy would be more
--
Because he's actually been tested in a political realm.
Got it. You see, you think the that is the better test. I disagree.
And I think probably the number one thing you have to do to be effective politically is to be able to understand when the media, the mainstream media, and all their fake experts are wrong, Mhmm. Because that's why the country's in such a mess. We keep listening to all these fake experts who are wrong about everything, including COVID.
Did Trump do a good job as president in your mind?
He listened to the fake experts. He had Fauci in there.
So you don't think Trump did a good job as president?
On COVID, he listened to Fauci too much.
But okay. because Trump was an outsider, and you seem to think he did a good job as president. a lot of Republicans do. So that's my point. He was an outsider.
You love putting words in my mouth and characterizing.
I'm I'm asking you
if you already
do a good job right now.
--
ways that I never quite set.
Okay. I'm just asking you.
I think I think that Trump did a number of good things in office. For example, he kept us out of foreign wars. Great. And I think the economy was pretty good until COVID. But
--
Yeah. He had no political
--
But I would say there were, like, 2 big Achilles SEALs. One was we had huge deficits and death during Trump. And the other was once COVID happened, he listened to Fauci. Right. And Fauci was driving the train during COVID.
And hold on, gave us the lockdowns. And then Trump never fired Fauci. And on Trump's last day in office -- He
gave him a medal.
He gave him a medal.
Insaid Insane. And just so everybody remembers, June 16 2015, Ben Carson, and businessman Donald Trump, Tide in 4th place with 5%. So things can change.
And now Trump is swinging wildly at DeSantis saying that DeSantis was worse than Cuomo. on COVID
--
Okay. I really do wanna re litigate. That that's the last thing I wanna re litigate is COVID. Man, we got bigger fish to fry.
DeSantis, I think, has been doing really well over the last week because Trump has been making all these wild attacks on him. And -- That's gonna be a while.
--
responding. So now, like, they're they're really punching at each other. It's really Let's
§03Debt ceiling agreement, US debt situation, is USD dominance in trouble?
pivot to the debt ceiling real quick here. The House wrote it overwhelmingly lead to pass the debt ceiling agreement 314 to 117. It's in the hands of the senate. can be passed by the time you're listening to this. Some Republicans, big spending didn't go far enough.
No shocker there. But speaker McCarthy called it a first step Projected the bill would reduce budget deficits by 1,500,000,000,000 over the next decade, some highlights, Non defense spending flat in 2024 at $704,000,000,000, only increases 1% in
2025.
and aims to limit federal budget growth to 1% for the next 6 years. Persin's 30,000,000,000 in unspent COVID relief money, That seems logical. Fully funds medical care for veterans. That seems like a good idea. Reallocates $20,000,000,000 from the IRS over the next 2 years to put towards non defense programs.
That's that crazy idea to hire 80,000 or something IRS agents. pauses on student loan repayments will now end in August. We've talked about that on the show. Biden student loan forgiveness plan will be settled in the supreme court Some stats on US Debt, put up two charts here, and then I'll get Friedberg position because he's very passionate about this. US annual surplus or deficits through end of year
2022.
See those great years? I think those are the democratic.com Clinton years. It did round it up. Well done. Clinton.
US National Debt end of year
2022
My lord,
32
getting close to 32,000,000,000,000 US annual federal spending, up and around breaking 6,000,000,000,000 a year and tax revenue by deficit here if you have it.
Go to that the red chart. This is our NASH debt. This is a upside down hockey stick. So this is what's concerning about it is we're going exponential on this thing.
the problem with this just to reframe it once again for the 100000th time
Wait a sec. Wait. This red chart, isn't this Friedberg losses in Vegas this weekend? I think that's oh, no. That's our collective losses in Vegas as we get.
I think we did the math. This group was accounted for 10 biff.
10
bps of of Vegas's blackjack revenue for the year. So good job, everyone.
Good job. People everybody in Vegas is now Yeah. Completed their q 3 quarter targets early.
So the the problem, obviously, with mounting debt is the interest payments on the debt cause you to take out more debt. And there's a tipping point where it becomes insurmountable And there are many people sounding the alarm that we may be entering that point that in order to fund the interest obligations on the debt, we need to take out more debt and then there's more interest payments, and therefore, there's more debt, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And so this chart I'm sharing here is actually from the federal governments, GAO, the government accountability office, which acts almost like an independent accounting and forecasting body trying to provide some outlook on the fiscal condition of the federal government. And this is an analysis I think they put out a few weeks ago. showing that as of the fiscal year 22, 8% of the overall federal budget was going towards interest spending By fiscal year 25, it'll be 26 percent, and then net interest spending will need to grow to half of the budget.
But if you go to the other Sorry. Why don't
you say the why don't you say the years? because it's important to know what years you're talking about.
2051, 2096,
is what they're showing.
This is a
long window. Yeah.
I get it. But let me show you this chart. Just pull up the first chart. So this is our federal government's interest payments per year. Mhmm.
And so this is how much the government pays on interest for the debt. By the way, most of the debt is getting refinanced now at the higher interest rates. because a lot of this debt was sitting in in ZERP era since
2008.
But as the debt has to get refinanced and more debt is taken on to fund the interest payment obligations. The interest payment actually starts to to map more significantly, and that's what we've seen in the last 2 fiscal years in particular. Now when you take this chart and you overlay how much we spend on defense. So here's defense spending. we are I think as of this month or last month now spending more, the federal government is spending more on payments on the federal debt than they are on National Defense.
Whether we believe we are spending money on National Defense in a smart way or in an accountable way or whether these are good strategic priorities and good strategic decisions, the fact remains that at some point here, our ability to actually fund the programs that we wanna fund whether they're Social Security, Medicare, or defense, the the major cost outlays for the federal government, it's gonna get further hindered and continually more hindered by the fact that these interest payments are climbing so significantly. And if you go to the 3rd chart, I think it kinda provides the final point, which is Social Security. and we're very quickly seeing interest payments mount to the point of where Social Security spending lays. And when that happens, Obviously, as you guys know, everyone talks about that as being the Golden Program, the right and the left, the Democrats and the Republicans simply will not touch Social Security from a policy perspective, from a getting elected perspective, but the economic and arithmetic reality is running up against them which is that the interest payments on the debt are starting to threaten our ability to fund Social Security and and and Medicare. There's many more charts we could pull up to highlight this.
The Republicans in announcing the the debt deal this week made a lot of proclamations about being a win and showed how we were able to reduce spending by
$2,000,000,000,000.
I think the the the the statement they made, the deal cuts $2,100,000,000,000 in spending. over the 6 year life of the bill and $1,500,000,000,000 in statutorily mandated savings over the next 2 years. $2,100,000,000,000 over 6 years. Remember, we're talking about a
7 $1,000,000,000,000
per year budget. So that's $42,000,000,000,000 over those 6 years. We're cutting $2,000,000,000,000 of 42. So it's a 5% impact. It's a start.
It's a start, but what leverage do they have now? And I think that Isn't it that I'm not gonna
send this free bird that they actually did decide to make cuts? And that feels to me, and we did predict here that they would get this done. Does feel to me like this is some amount of progress. Right? I mean, do do you feel good about it or indifferent?
Friedberg?
I I think you guys know I I I think that there's we we have to tackle the the structural problem of revenue, spending, interest rates. Those are like very big numbers that are that are challenging each other, chipping away at the spending doesn't quite get us there. And, you know, it doesn't seem like there's a clear path here. Even, you know, the argument that RFK made when he came on our show, RFK Junior made when he came on our show, that cutting military spending would have an impact. I mean, you guys see military spending is already starting to get overtaken by the interest payment spending.
So does that really move the needle? I think it's gonna be an economic reality that all programs are gonna need to be cut back in order to fund the debt obligations or We're gonna see massive inflation. Oh, not capital inflation stuff.
My question was, do you feel like this was a a good step or a good signal that maybe the government is, and our representatives are getting the message that they need to make some cuts at some point.
I don't think that there's any way to provide the necessary fiscal security for the federal government without bipartisan unitary support around the objective which is to get to a balanced budget and to reduce the overall debt and interest payment obligations. And if you can't start from that point, it's this push and pull over what programs get cut, but I want more money being spent. I wanna have a pipeline. I wanna have
it pull
that stuff.
--
super enthused by this. I I thought it was a positive step Chamath. You I've talked about refinancing the debt, putting the 100 year $1,000,000,000,000 coin or whatever. We wind up doing refinancing this on a long arc, 50 year, 100 year arc. What does this debt ceiling reconciliation or whatever we're gonna call it?
But they came to some sort of agreement here. signal to you. You predicted they would get through this pretty easily. So
--
Yeah. Born anything. Nothing burger.
Nothing burger. Move on.
Nothing here.
actually, we just finalize that.
question. Would you buy a 100 year bond from the federal government?
If I was a foreign government, yes.
what interest would you need to get paid on that to take that on? Probably 1 to 2%. 1 to 2% for a 100 years.
Yep. So it would be downside protection.
You just feel like this is a secure place to put some amount of money.
This is how any any country with a turbulent currency would make this decision, and you could actually get close to 0. I think that when we had zerp you probably could have charged a negative interest rate because you would have effectively been charging countries, 3rd role developing countries even for world countries that just wanted a protective mechanism against their currency volatility, they would have probably paid you just like today, you can get BOJ debt, that's negative yielding. So it's no longer negative, but it's still probably in the realm of 1 1 a half percent. It's nothing. If you just do the math, it's nothing.
And this is why I don't understand why everybody just gets their underwear in a bunch here.
Okay. Non gender underpants
put the red chart up there.
Sorry. Nothing.
It's a nothing. It's a new thing. It's a nothing.
It's a nothing.
It's a it's a hockey stick nothing.
means nothing. I think you guys
are right.
--
see here is an accelerating problem.
Yeah. Caught revenue.
The debt is getting bigger and bigger at the same time that foreign governments and investors in general don't want to fund our debt. So therefore, interest rates will rise. Our interest costs will keep
going up. That's not why interest rates are going up.
Well, if they're going up because the Fed is raising rates to inflation. But at the same time, that's happening. Foreign governments are not as interested in having dollar reserves and US treasuries.
Said who? As demonstrated by what?
You look at the foreign reserves of these countries with these sovereigns, they are much less interested in holding US treasuries -- 4 numbers. -- China starting with China and all the British countries.
Foreign reserves are up. These guys are banking US dollars like nobody's business.
I don't think so. I think it's been going down since 2008. I'll find you a chart.
Yeah. maybe from 2008, I don't know, from this great financial crisis at the absolute depths. But what I'm saying is that in general, The anchor currency for governments and central banks has been will be and will likely be in the future, the United States dollar. And we get back to the circular argument, which is I don't think it's possible for politicians to cut expenses. So I am just an advocate for cutting revenue because I do think it's the simplest way to force people because the next time they go through these machinations and all this theater around a dead ceiling, They'll just have less revenue to play with.
And it'll just become a harder and harder and harder problem. Meanwhile, I do think that you have to take the ball where it lies and take these $24,000,000,000,000 or $30,000,000,000,000 and refinance it well out into the future. And make a bet on U. S. exceptionalism and U.
S. GDP. And if you don't want to believe it, don't fucking be here. Move to some other country where you think it's so much better and go do it there.
But, Tamak, what if the market's not there? What if the buyers are not there and you're wrong? Sure.
I mean you know what? An asteroid could hit the earth in the next day. We could talk about all kinds of long tail consequences but there is You have to be able to probably weight these things and then spend your time thinking about the things that are more probabilistic and be able to compartmentalize the anxiety of the less probabilistic things. So I think that could there be a scenario where there is no interest? Sure.
Is there on no because you see every day the government's in the market doing auctions. And there is a robust demand for United States government debt. And until there isn't this argument is species. And all I would tell you is just keep trying. Put out more.
Try a €45 bond and see how it feels like. Try a €50. You don't have to do a 100 if it makes you too anxious. That's fine.
Let me
just ask you. At some point, if the market isn't there, The buyers are not there. Then -- But,
you know, at at yeah. But but
let's just go through the analysis because I I know that you think it's it's at zero chance. But if it says low probability, Do you agree that the severity is high? That the significance of that being the case?
I don't again, I am not going to give an iota a breath to a long tail 5 sigma outcome. It is a waste of time. Because it occupies and I'll tell you why I don't do it occupies my mind share which takes away from me figuring out how to make money and win on the field today. So I have You know? Let's go.
I wake in a
24
hour day. Okay. Just to give you a sense of it, I sleep for 8. You know, I'm eating for another 1 or 2. All this bullshit I have 4 or 5 hours a day of useful thinking time.
And I try to think of the belly of the probable. And I try to compartmentalize these dumb long tail sigma events because it distracts me from making money and winning. I actually try to think about long tail sigma events that could make me money. This isn't one of them. So I just don't spend time thinking about it.
I mean, I could be totally wrong.
Could we pull up
this chart? Could we
pull up this chart?
work for me so far, and I'm gonna stick to what Guys, Saks has
been on Google for 5 minutes. He's got something for you, Tamara.
Go ahead. You stick to the investing strategy that works for you. I'd like to talk about the status of US treasuries. So if you look here at this is total foreign treasury holdings as percent of marketable treasury securities. So it's gone down from the mid fifties to the low thirties since
2008, 2009.
As a percentage. So
they they're
holding other things.
--
don't want our treasuries as much as they used to. Starting with China, they are diversifying into other currencies and gold. and there are a bunch of good reasons for that. By the way, this comes from a blog, which is really interesting. It's a crypto guy named Arthur Hayes, And this is actually a pretty interesting piece called exit liquidity.
He's writes. Interesting pieces on the banking system and dedollarization. He's got a little bit of a doomer thesis with respect to the US dollar. You know, obviously, he's pro Bitcoin. His views are sort of similar to to Balaji's.
But any event, I think one one of the points makes that's really interesting is that if you're to zoom out 30000 feet and think about the regime that we had during, let's call it, the Unipolar moment where China and the United States were strong trading partners and we had this close relationship with them. the way the global economy worked is that China would sell goods to the United States. They would have huge trade surpluses And then they would take those dollars, and they'd use some of them to buy raw materials like energy. That was called the petrodollar. And then they would take other dollars, their surplus.
And instead of repatriating at home, they would have to then convert that money into RMB and brought it home, They didn't do that. That actually would have increased the value of their currency thereby making their export less attractive. This is why they are accused of currency manipulation. They took their surplus dollars and bought US assets, mainly US treasuries. So we had this trading relationship with China.
I think everyone understands the physical world side of that trading relationship where you had US manufacturing jobs got exports at China. They basically made everything. A lot of cheap goods came into the US data trade surplus. What I think people don't understand is that a huge part of that trade surplus was used to finance US deficits and debt. And so you had this, like, cozy relationship between US elites and US politicians and China where they got to rack up these huge deficits.
The government got to spend a lot of money, and China would fund it very cheaply. But now that's all ended. That stopped. because we're basically starting to decouple from China. So China doesn't wanna do its business and dollars if they don't have to.
Obviously, for the products they sell at the US, they'll take dollars. But they're already trying to do as many transactions as they can buying oil, for example, or energy in RMB.
I I don't wanna dispute this chart because this chart is true, but it's a small part of how the entire puzzle works. And so this is a Bitcoin maximalist who cherry picks a few data points to try to make a point. But if you look at the IMF data and I put it to you in the group chat, you can't just look at US Treasury Securities. You have to look actual absolute dollar reserves. And when you look at that over time it hasn't fluctuated that much.
And so for all the dopes that don't understand how this shit works, It's not just securities, it's actually also money. And the actual amount of US dollar money hasn't changed that much. Gone 60 70 percent since 1999 in
the short.
I just find this argument again one of these long sigma arguments that are anxiety riddled, and I just don't wanna waste my time thinking about it because it'll distract me from winning on the field today.
You gotta be able to block things out if you wanna be a capital allocator. I agree. but an interesting discussion nonetheless.
I don't think these things are just noise. I think you're seeing a trend. I mean, look how many headlines there are about the BRICS countries getting together and starting to transact in currencies other than dollars.
Yeah. You know what?
Those are very cherry picked as well. And you said before, you the press. So you trust the press on these headlines all of a sudden? I don't think that that's actually
--
I don't think anyone's disputing the fact that China and Saudi Arabia and China and Brazil are doing energy transactions in RMB.
I think it's very tiny.
They are doing putting all their money into venture capital in the West, private equity in the rest, real estate in the West. The Middle East. That's where they're that's where they're focusing their energy.
There's a different issue. Look. No one is disputing the fact that China And the British countries more generally are trying to create a trading block that is not dependent on the US dollar. I think it's -- And they are gradually to say we're traveling.
It's like fast people traveling. -- to just let the US know, like, hey. We have other options here, and I think it's China just trying to It's China on their heels trying to make deals with other folks.
It's China pursuing their self interest, which is not to be dependent on a dollar that's been weaponized and controlled by the US politically.
You can be sure that Saudi UAE, and the entire voting block in the Middle East are shipping their money west not east.
I think you have a very accurate assessment of what China wants, but it doesn't mean it's gonna happen. And I think you have to make a bet. Do you think it's gonna happen or not? I that is not gonna happen. And I think the reason I and I've said this before is China is in a demographic time bomb, and that will dominate everything else.
That is a country that is plotting. And they're anti capitalist, Shamal. They're anti capitalism. No. No.
No. I'm gonna say that they are a capitalist. I am not gonna make these judgments, but I'm gonna tell you is they are demographically imploding. They do not have enough people. The country will be halved by the death rate and the lack of birth rate by 20 300.
Okay. So in another 70 odd years, that is a problem that is going away. And that is just mathematical. And if you just again You just have to take a deep breath, look at the data, and just extrapolate and you see. This is not a problem.
China is not a problem.
China has real problems. There's no question about it. They've got demographic problems. They've got problems in the banking system. They've got a real estate bubble.
start up problems.
There there are questions about whether the leadership now is turning away from the capitalism that got them to this point.
They are.
So there's no question that China has problems. But you wanna talk about trends. There is a major trend in the world right now where, again, the brix countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and you could put Saudi Arabia in that bucket and of a lot of other countries, they are looking to diversify off of the dollar. I'm not saying that the dollar is gonna stop being the world's reserve currency because I agree with you that there's no ready replacement at hand. But they are trying to do as many transactions they can off of the dollar, and they do not wanna hold treasuries like they did ten or 15 years ago.
I don't think that's true. -- trying to do is
I don't need transactions off the bat.
That's a very loaded statement. I don't think that's true. That statement's true.
But what talking about. This was, like, major news.
They tried to do one trade.
China and Saudi and China and
--
No. Saudi and China talked about it, and they didn't do it. they talked about. Yeah. I would like to see data
on that, not just a couple of headlines, because I think everybody wants to
--
Nobody describes this.
What are
you talking about?
Give us the data Brazil thing happened, but I think it was a small David.
Yeah. That's what yeah. That's exactly right.
You're first you're saying it didn't happen, and now you're saying that -- No.
No. I'm saying the Saudi Arabia China thing did not happen.
Your statement was they're trying to talk as many transactions as possible off the dollar. I don't think they're trying to do as many transactions off the dollar. I don't I have never seen any actual data point to support that.
--
making shit up.
No. You're -- Of
course, they wanna get off the dollar. Of course, they wanna get off the dollar if they can't.
No. No. I think Jason's saying you're right. What they want to do, but what they are doing just is what he's debating. They're not.
is sending their money west. I don't think they're trying to send these.
I don't think that's a good Hold on a second. You're you're right that Saudi Arabia is investing in the US. They're, I'd say, highly diversified. That's a little different than what China is doing.
Yes. We we are we're in agreement. China wants to get people off the US dollar. China's been declined. China's got big issues.
We all agree on that. The Middle East has a lot of cash. I think if they're gonna decide what to do with it, bill appease China to have a solid relationship to ship oil there, but I think China's a normal
customer now. China's a loyal customer. And our hearts
are in the West. That's where they're gonna change.
There's been a giant muscle realignment. How much you noticed?
I think the realignment is Chinese just negotiating it. becoming westernized and being accepted in the west and moving to an investor in the Western Technology. That's actually the trend.
The Chinese just negotiated or approached mob between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Did you notice that?
That's that's fine. I'm just talking about where they're putting their chips.
These things are all connected.
Where are they putting their chips? I think what you've explained, and I think we're in agreement, They'll sell their oil to China. Then what do they do with the bag? They take that same bag and they wanna put it towards the US.
It's even it's even worse. Again, the thing is even if you settle a trade in the yuan, I think you guys keep forgetting this key thing which is the yuan is pegged to the US dollar. So it is a proxy dollar. So if you really want to decouple, you first have to let this currency free float. They have no desire to let them do especially in a moment where they're economically imploding internally.
So again, you go back to the circular argument where everything goes back to the dollar. So Yes. They're saber rattling. Saks, I acknowledge what you're saying. I think you're totally right that they would love a free floating currency.
The Chinese would love. Chinese and they want that free floating currency to not be pegged to the dollar. But right now, they have kept it pegged to the dollar.
So even if they do it
-- --
that, and it says not. It says, like, I just pecked the dollar.
--
is yuan pecked to USD, and it says the Chinese yuan is not pecked to the US dollar. It was pecked from
94
to 2005, but in 2005, China made its currency a floating exchange currency.
It is not a floating currency.
Yeah. And then do you trust the who's wrong?
It's highly manipulated. I agree with that, but I don't think it's pegged.
It's not a floating currency. It is not a free floating currency. China controls the exchange rate between themselves and the US dollar.
Let's move on. I think we've covered this. It'd be actually one thing that might be interesting to me.
--
reality. You have no basis for declaring that things like the moves that China is making with Brazil and Saudi Arabia, you're declaring that to be fake news.
Nobody's saying fake news. We're saying it's happening, but it's probably minor, and it's probably more to describe
your favor. What's your basis for believing that?
because we have no evidence to prove that it's occurring. We just have a couple of headlines and some small but, I mean, where is it? I mean, all we're seeing is the the The money in Saudi Arabia is they're selling oil to China. Correct. They're doing deals there.
And then they're taking that money, and then they want to invest it in the West.
Who are you talking about?
The other thing to keep in mind is that the Saudi Real is pegged as well to the US dollar. And that's been there since, I think, the mid eighties. So China's is a very opaque manipulated currency market where they keep the dollar yuan spread quite fixed, On the other side, Saudi has kept the same peg $3.75 to the dollar since the mid-80s. So again, it all just goes to the US dollar. It's all proxies for the dollar, so there is some symbolic value, I suppose, in trading in yuan.
But everything goes back to the dollar because that's what it's measured in. So -- It's
not -- -- I suppose.
--
it's not symbolic. What's happening is deeply geopolitical. You've got a couple of things going on. One is that the US is now instituted sanctions on over 40 countries. Moreover, the whole world saw that in the case of Russia, we froze their foreign reserves and basically sees the property of their oligarch.
So if you're an oligarch in the Middle East, do you think you wanna keep all of your money and all of your reserves in dollars, you understand that the dollar has been weaponized and a political instrument in the United States. That's just a fact. So you're gonna look to diversify. You're gonna look to put your money in gold. You're gonna to put your money in other currencies.
Is there, like I said, a currency at hand that's ready to be a replacement for the US dollar? No. And it can't be the yuan. They don't have an open Capital Hotel.
Where would you diversify? If you were the CIO where would you diversify?
Well, what I would do if I were the secretary of the treasury of China is I would say that, okay, for the exports in the US, we're gonna keep getting dollars, and we'll do something with those dollars for everybody else, we're gonna try and do as many transactions in r and b as possible.
But what about the sellers of oil to China? What would they do?
They get r and b.
So you would tell
them to keep -- -- the trades that we're talking about.
You tell them to hold the
renminbi over US and Euro.
China is seeking to pay Saudi
Arabia for sale. If you need the CIO,
I I do understand it.
I do understand.
I do understand.
I do not understand it. What I'm asking you is, would you ask CI let me ask you a question. Would you, as CIO of Saudi or UAE, would you wanna keep renminbi, would you wanna keep euros or US dollars? Where would you wanna keep your money? And the question is, if they sell that, would they wanna keep it in renminbi?
I don't think they would wanna keep the wand.
Honestly, to answer your question, I wanna put it in gold. That's where I would put it. I would. I put it in gold. Okay.
Here's what China is proposing. Okay? They're saying to Saudi Arabia in Brazil, we're gonna pay you for your oil in RMB. And then you are gonna take that RMB, and you can buy our products Yeah. Because, again, we make everything.
We're the factory of the world. And if you still have a surplus after that, you could settle that surplus in gold. because Beijing has a very liquid, you know, gold exchange market.
They're giving them Amazon gift cards. Here's your gift cards. Yeah. spend in
our deck charts.
Two data points on this Saks that I just read. It's in this Barron's article that I included, Nick. You may just wanna link to it in the show notes which I thought was pretty good. Swift, which is sort of like the international payments backbone. The share of yuan transactions briefly rose above
3%
In 2022, that was the peak, and it's now off 26%, down to about 2.2%. So, actually, the share Yuan transactions has actually been shrinking in the last year. And then the second is that what this article states, which is interesting, is that all the belt and road loans that China gave into all these developing countries in Africa. The Africans were like, we don't want this yuan, and so they just dollar swapped. And so now the BRI loans are all serviced in US dollars as well.
all the 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars China spent. I'm just saying that, again, I'm not judging any
of this.
--
alternative swift.
I'm not judging you.
--
weaponized swift as well. So
--
Yeah. But swift still 98% of the of the world of how it works. All I'm saying is I just like to look keep things simple. I think the US
dollar's here for a while. I think that debts
suck I would love to have no deficits. But I also think these numbers are roughly like we're playing plus or minus on the margin 2 to 300 basis points. We talked about that last week. And so I want to keep my brain open to the simple obvious things like, you know, selling
That's what it's come to is CPG for you, Shamont. You're like, yeah. It's a down market.
I'm a
big CPG guy now. Yeah. That's where Shamont's focus.
Why don't you pull Friedberg into this debate? I have one more question.
That's what I was about to do. I'm doctor Doom. Go ahead. Doctor Doom.
I think I meant I'm the end
of the world.
--
doom. I'm just doctor reality or at least I'd try to be. I don't know. Like, there was a deal you know, China had a big visit with Brazil in March. We talked about it briefly.
I shared a couple of these articles that covered the transactions. They signed $10,000,000,000 of trade agreements and cooperative agreements, all of which were meant to settle in yuan. Brazil's kind of made the statement that they're gonna start to settle in local currency. And they're doing this multilateral trade program globally with partners where they're gonna trade and transact in local currencies. They're not to the dollar.
They're not fixed to the dollar. And I think that's just part of a general movement. I don't think it's about, hey. We gotta get off the dollar as soon as possible, but I think it's about we could diversify And there are other stable economies around the world. They might be having, you know, demographic issues or various economic issues, but gosh, man, don't we all?
Europe, China, the US, everyone's got debt problems, demographic problems, over leverage problems, growth problems, And fundamentally, I don't think that there's as safe a haven as there has been historically. And as a result, I think a lot of these governments and a lot of the business leaders in these countries are very much open to doing transactions in multiple currencies, and that's the beginning of the end. It's the beginning of a set of transactions that isn't about hey. We're all getting against the dollar. It's over.
Let's crush the dollar. It's like, we're just gonna do trades in other currencies.
No big deal. -- beginning of the end. Doctor Doo.
Alright. Shout out the dollar and the empire.
It's the end of the dominance. Right? It's the end of end
of the dominance and China imploded during that same time period. So I forgive me. I still believe in American Exceptionalism wins. There's
another article from Bloomberg. Brick this is from April 24th. All
of a sudden, this guy loves the mainstream.
Rick draws membership bids from 19 days to 4th summit. Listen, Jake. Al, I'm fine. If you wanna say this is fake news, go for it. Are you saying No.
I'm saying
fake news. It's just funny. It didn't happen. Like, believe it's fake news. Well, no.
I mean, if I mean,
I need no. I need information about the world When they write an article about me that's completely made up, I'm gonna call it fake news. Why are you treating, like, every press article is, like, the same? That makes no sense.
By the way, it does make sense for the bricks to expand. Right, Zach? because it's like, if NATO was purely an economic organization, that's probably what bricks evolves into. over time, and it makes a ton of sense for them to do it.
They're creating a competing
--
China is setting up an alternative to the IMF.
That's right.
They've they've they've got this alternative to the IMF. that they're setting up that's not dollar denominated. And they've got 7 nations in this thing now. It's it's you know? And by the way, Jay when I say the beginning of the end, I don't mean the end of the world or the end of the US.
The US will continue to be the innovation hub of the world. The US will continue to have Friedberg and civil rights that no that no other country can parallel. The US is an incredible place to live better than anywhere else on earth, but the economic status of the US given how we have spent money and how we continue to operate our federal government with this extraordinary deficit and dead spiral problem means that other people have to be protective of their currencies and their assets in a way that's thoughtful. It doesn't necessarily mean it's all over and everything. But the dominance.
You said the US has had economically.
You can already see this in all the trade barriers and tariffs that are going up, the decoupling that's going on. Look, the United States set up a a system of global free trade basically in 1945. And we had a bipolar world with, you know, the Soviet and you and and America. But the Soviets basically opted out because they were communists. They had their own system, but it wasn't compelling for the world economy.
Yeah. then we had the Unipolar World. So basically, for, you know, over half a century, we had this completely open system where there were no trade blocks in the world. Now we are seeing the rise of trade blocks with multiplearity. Yes.
The US is pursuing a contradictory policy because on the one hand, Yeah. Hold on. But here's the contradiction. On the one hand, we run these massive deficits and deaths. So we are a debtor nation who needs to make its debt attractive to to debt holders or are interest rates gonna keep going up?
Okay? So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, we are doing things like weaponizing the dollar and weaponizing swift and imposing sanctions. and engaging in geopolitical fights that are highly antagonistic to the nation's that r r would be holders of our debt. So one of those two things has gotta give.
Either we reduce our debt and our deficits and the need remember, we're not this is not a stable situation. We continue to issue, what is it, somewhere between 1 and 2,000,000,000,000 a year
-- 2,000,000,000. --
new government debt. So we have to constantly find more and more money out in the world to support our debt at the same time that we're weaponizing the dollar and the financial system so that these sources of global capital don't wanna participate.
And I agree with Saks. This is why I think the disappointment to me is that there isn't bipartisan recognition of this being as severe as a war. It is the sort of thing that the government that both parties need to get behind and say, let's figure out a path to solving this problem. This is the objective. We've got to get our fiscal affairs in order.
And then all the other stuff, the social stuff, the policy stuff we can fight about, we can argue about later. but we have to put some gas in the tank. We have to be able to drive where we wanna go, and we can't drive right now.
Here's what I'll say to you, Friedberg. Since you said the beginning of the end, Now maybe it's a poor choice of words. It's not the end. You said hold on. Let me just
get Don't don't misinterpret it by the end. Yeah. But don't mischaracterize what end up
--
Go ahead. -- depend of dollar dominance in global trade.
Okay. I disagree with you. I think dollar dominance will continue for some
Caller, are you disputing that the world is becoming more multipolar? Do you think we're still living in unipolarity?
No. And nor do we need to live in unipolarity for America still be the champions. We still aren't winning how to pace that nobody else is. Space, energy, cars, AI, we're probably gonna win chips And we're gonna probably win material science and batteries. And we're obviously gonna win biotech.
We're winning in every one of these categories We're the clear winner. The only thing we're not the clear winner in is factories and mass producing, schlocky stuff that sold in Amazon. China's completely imploded, and the Middle East is taking their last 20 or 30 years of capital, and they're investing it in the west in space energy cars AI chips, basic materials, batteries, all the stuff that's happening here on our shores. We are in the most winning position we've probably ever been in as a country. We took a bad beat.
We spent too much money. We got a dysfunctional government. We got culture wars. We got a lot of bad stuff distracting us. But the truth is when you look at brass tacks, When you look at innovation, we're winning on almost every dimension.
We're just a little caught up in the fog of culture wars, and, you know, thinking that we're gonna be dominant and perfect in terms of our budget. We do have to fix our budget. We all agree on that, but we are winning and China is currently stalled out. And it's because of freedom. It's because we support entrepreneurs because of the basic human freedoms we have.
YouTube guys are Doctor Doom.
This is so stupid.
I'm I'm hopping off. I'm done with this. Just strike my shit out of this episode.
You can
strike whatever you want. there anything else you wanna talk about today? because I'm done.
This is gone.
I'd love wanna talk about NVIDIA, but I don't know if he goes.
I I I'm sick of being characterized as Doctor Doom JACAL. It's fucking stupid.
You're sure
it's between Dan. we wanna have
a real conversation about, like, real fucking matters instead of instead of your extreme, like
--
But what I said?
I I'm not being fucking extreme. I'm not I'm trying to have, like, an actual disciplined conversation about where things are going. It's not black and white. It's not about, oh my god. The US is gonna win, and everyone else is gonna lose.
It's not a win lose situation. We cannot afford to continue to spend the way we're spending with our federal government. That's it.
I agree with that. We have to decide that we're still winning on all these other dimensions. So why are
we winning? That's not the conversation.
Why is that -- The federal
government is different from US Innovation. There's a difference. The federal government is where voters -- Okay.
--
where voters elect to tax and spend And voters elect people to create a system that can legally go in and take assets and spend assets and borrow money, and we've done it in an extent now that is becoming almost a runaway train. It is a problem. We saw the negative red chart that Saks had you pull up several times. That has nothing to do with US dominance and fucking electronics and chips and biotech and all this other sort of stuff, we have a problem with how we spend money at the federal level.
I agree with that. I agree. That's the conversation. I believe that the dominance that we have in entrepreneurship in every one of these categories is what will pull us out of
this. The free enterprise system is a wonderful system that produces a lot of good prosperity for America. Okay? That's great. I agree with that.
And it remains to be seen if China can sustain its remarkable economic growth that's had over the last few decades. So that remains to be seen. However, the United States is behaving like a late stage empire, and that is separate from the system that got us here. we have unsustainable fiscal deficits. We spend way too much money that we don't have.
We have a uncontrolled southern border. Our cities are in decline. We've got hundreds of thousands of people living on the streets. Have you seen it? We look like a 3rd world country.
There's 304 there's 3 of 4 cities that
We are we are all we are meddling in countries all over the world, engaging in wars or proxy wars. We are behaving like a late stage empire. So Jake Cal, It's true that the United States has a wonderful system, and that's what got us here to to it got us to unipolarity. We were the world's only superpower. but now we're in a world in which other countries are rising to.
It's more multipolar.
Agreed.
And whether we continue our dominance will depend on whether we make the right decisions right now. And right now, we are not making the right decisions. Adding 2,000,000,000,000 to the debt in peacetime a year Makes no sense.
Yeah.
You're a little rant. It's it's like Wiley Coyote going off the cliff and pretending like if he just doesn't look down, there's nothing you're gonna worry about.
I have said from the beginning, we need to get spending under control, but I am also incredibly enthusiastic about how we're performing in innovation and capitalism right now. It is off the charts how well this country is doing on those dimensions. Timothe, do you have any thoughts while we wrap up this thing?
No. I think we ended up conflating a bunch of issues into 1. I'll just say what I've said before, which is that the United States is kind of the simplest safest bet and that these decisions are made on a relative basis. China, Unfortunately, for them have has a huge demographic problem that will diminish them economically. and you're already starting to see it, but it's gonna get really exacerbated in the next 10 or 15 years.
That's just the mathematical reality. for a country that has literally zero immigration and no solution. Europe is not in a very great situation. And the only place that's really firing in all cylinders is India, but it has a long way to go to build the infrastructure that can really scale and make it as predictable as United States. Could it do it?
I think so, but it's gonna take a long time. But, you know, 50, 60, a 100 years of investment So I don't know. I just kind of, like, try to simplify it for myself. I think the US will be fine. I think the dollar will be fine.
I don't think it's right to spend this much, but I think that politicians are incapable of cutting expenses, and so I would like to cut their revenues. That's it. What's that?
It's a great discussion, Friedberg. Yeah. I don't think you respectfully. I don't think you understand what the audience actually wants to hear. this is actually the core of the of the debate that we just had.
Well, just do what Friedberg trusts you, which is just to play his clip in his words and then -- Yes.
I'll I'll wrap up. -- have her here. that the Saudi China trade, if this happens, an oil is sold in 1, is the beginning of, I think, the end of the assumption that the US dollars are global reserve. That's all. Yeah.
That's what you said. That was your prediction that you said in the beginning of the end. You said it twice. So if you don't believe it's the beginning of the end, that's fine.
Of the US dollar as a global reserve currency?
You believe that that if the US dollar will not be the global reserve. You said it twice.
Yeah. And
I disagree. I think it will be will we remain the global reserve for our lifetime. That's all. Some fundamental difference.
Let's move on.
Yes. I'm reticent to bring up the culture wars, but these have become prominent. So maybe we could have a meta discussion about these There are 3 things going on. 1, we touched on the book banning. I'm using air quotes there.
§04Book banning
And there's been a lot of feedback that's come in since then just to follow-up briefly on it. Books are not exactly being banned. It's a much more granular and nuanced issue. There was a bill 1467 that happened that Ron DeSantis did sign. They said that parents, reasonably, should get to see what's being put into classrooms and as you might suspect this is being done at a very local level.
When you put all that control at the local level, you will have different constituents, banned books that maybe shouldn't be. Some of them are obvious ones that were too graphic that I think most parents would agree should be in a school library. Other ones were horror books or young adult books. You can look at all this stuff just search for pen banned books report, pen America. And if you there are instances of books shouldn't be banned being banned in instances of books that we'd all agree on.
But it is not exactly book banning. It's letting each of the school districts make their own decisions, and they're not gonna make perfect decisions when you put them out in the edges. So just to make that super clear.
I think you're right to focus on the the terminology here because This is a question of what is put in the school library. That's it. So that's not a ban. Right. A ban would be if you can purchase the book for yourself, for your kids.
Any parent can buy any book they want, Florida. We do have an issue, I think, with the curriculum where really important classic books are being removed from the curriculum for political reasons, mainly in California. Books like Tequila Mockingbird or Huckfire. Yeah.
That was weird. They're being
removed because they're being accused of being racist even though the whole point of those books is to, I think
--
Call it out.
--
call it out and teach kids about racism. So there's a lot of stupid things happening from the left in terms of removing books from the curriculum, which I think is a much bigger deal than removing books from a school library. there's also things happening with, like, you know, Ian Fleming's James Bond books being rewritten, like, posthumously because
2
sexes.
--
accused of sexism or or raw doll's books are being posthumously edited. So, like, books are literally being rewritten in a way that their authors never intended. That is positively Orwell. That really is
--
That's really
wrong. -- banning or says wrong.
That's really wrong.
Now on this on this DeSantis thing, I mean, look, this is this is getting to the level now of being a hoax. one of the stories going around is that there was this book of poetry, this totally innocuous book of poetry that was being banned in Florida. And I wanna find out the -- -- Collins.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I wanted to find out the truth of it. Well, as it turns out, like you said, Jay Kal, this is in Miami Dade School District. A decision was made. This is not by DeSantis. This is made at the level of individual schools.
Okay.
Which are voted on and their parents on these school boards it's gonna just follow the demographics and whatever that local community is.
Right. So, basically, what happened is this this book of poetry was literally moved from the elementary school library to the middle school library. That's what happened. Yeah. But all of a sudden, this was spun on social media and by the mainstream media as if DeSantis had banned this book of poetry to the point where Miami Dade School District had to put out a tweet correcting this.
So a never ban or removed. It was just moved from one library to another from
the L. I think this is a super interesting point, David, where you and I are in agreement. You and I are both for freedom of speech and or big advocates of that. And then there are decisions and you can reasonably make this decision. Hey.
Let the parents decide. Great. When you let the parents decide, you have to take into account that these school boards could be hijacked by different groups of people or they could be very small monocultures of, you know, little towns or cities, here's the list, by the way. If anybody wants to look at this, you could actually look at the very granular list. Penamerica keeps an index of all these.
I put the the thing in the chat here. And you'll see things in left, right, everybody in between Some places are banning all the LGBTQ books. Some are banning the critical race books or books by people of color. Other ones are banning you know, the James Bond novels, etcetera. So it's it's a free for all of parents executing their rights at a very local level.
And, you know, I guess, if you want parents to have a say in their schools, it's going to be slightly imperfect and variable. But it's not like some that censorship going on, but there is censorship going on, I guess, in some ways.
The political question is, do you allow government bureaucrats to dictate to parents what their kids are gonna see or have access to. And I don't think that's viable. I mean, look, parents could take their kids out of the school and homeschool them if they wanted. Yes. So at the end of the day, so they have that right.
So why would you deny parents the right to determine what's in the school library.
And it does seem like all of this goes back
to you. By the way, some of these books that have been removed, are actually
--
Lord of the flies.
Yeah. Lord of the flies will probably get removed because they don't like somebody being labeled fat. Piggy. No. Piggy?
Oh, I just lost the weight. Take it easy. No. No. No.
I'm saying, right. Like, there are some great books that were written in an age where You know, you just say things in a certain way that aren't meant to be offensive but these books are very powerful and I don't know about you guys but I had a bunch of books that I read when I was younger that had a huge impact on me. And then the aggregates
--
I don't want I don't want those books getting removed from the curriculum. You're right. Lord of the flies.
Lord of the flies and incredible.
Killa mockingbird, those were all important books that I read part of the curriculum. But all we're talking about it, I think, is this even this very minor issue of what's in the library. Obviously, the parent should get to the side. And some of the things that have been removed from the library are pretty out there. Like, for example, there was one book that was educating kids on, like, how to get a grinder date, which they're not even supposed to be able to do.
Right? Like grinders for 18 and up.
There are other topics that like suicide and harm and other ones, when do you introduce that to a child? Is that something that's 3rd grade or, you know, a suicide discussion. When should that reasonably occur?
This is a crazy question, but I'll ask it to you guys. I would rather Lord of the flies be removed from a library than edit it because then at least there's a different place where you can get the original book.
Oh, for sure.
The idea of editing a book is so insane. It's so mind control. Yeah. It's really bad. That idea is very, very bad because you're reading something, thinking that This is what the author intended, and all of a sudden it's manipulated by some random false expert under some guys that you had no decision making in, that's really bad.
What's really, I think, important of
this discussion is what's how the press frame something, how politicians frame them, and then how they're actually executed on the ground can be very different. So this has become a raw shock test for what cause you back. And when you actually look at just the list, you'll see people in California, people in Colorado banning quote unquote banning or just not including certain books and libraries. It's parents having age old debates about when do you introduce certain topics to your kids. That's your job as a parent.
what happens in the library is gonna be variable. Alright. NVIDIA is going for vertical integration. They unveiled their GPU, CPU, Superchip called Grace Hopper after the navy admiral, obviously. NVIDIA Grace, GPU uses 72 Arm, newer version V2U, CPU cores, whatever that means.
§05Nvidia going for a vertically integrated monopoly in AI hardware
CPU can deliver up to 370 square on a spec crate 2017 in base, whatever that means. I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with all the Benchmark testing things. I stopped -- -- is the
is the peak of humor on the show. Go ahead
and take
a look. Listen. We're talking about Pentium chips. I could have kept up here, but I haven't kept up with this since the nineties. We're talking about the intel inside Pentium Chips.
Yes. I I did keep up with chips stuff. I'm sorry. I did keep up with market adventure.
Yeah.
Yeah. No. I I mean, I yeah, when we got past gigabit, I stopped.
I think what's really interesting here is this is a really important moment where, like, that design, that Grace Hopper design, which is basically a massive system on chip. It's an entire rig. It's a GPU and CPU and memory and interconnects. This is like them going for the jugular. This is what's crazy in a moment like this like that is basically them trying to create an absolute monopoly because if you have these rigs And these rigs are the most capable for learning.
And you have their SDK CUDA which is becoming the de facto software layer now that you use to write to their h 100 or Grace Hopper when it's available, and the A 100s. That could create a level of lock in that I think people should be thinking about if you're the hyperscalers like Amazon and Google and Microsoft, what is your reaction to this? If you're Facebook, what is your reaction to this? And I think that's really important because if these guys continue to innovate at this scale, you're not gonna have any alternatives. And it comes -- it goes back to like what Intel look like back in the day, which is an absolute straight up monopoly except the differences that even when you wrote something to Intel CPUs, you could actually run it on an AMD processor and it would work with no changes.
But that's not necessarily the same. So if you go from an A100 to something else in FPGA or some other silicon, You have to translate the model. And so it's very important to understand that there's no extensibility here. So like if NVIDIA continues to drive this quickly and and continues to execute like this. It's a 1 and done, 1 company monopoly in AI at the hardware layer.
And I think that that people are probably thinking about how to blunt that competitive outcome, but that's what I took away from that from that announcement from them, which is like they are ready to go for the jugular here in what looks like the most important market. that's emerging. Like -- What do you
think about the valuation, Chamath, trading at two hundred times or fifty times EBITDA? What can -- I mean, you
can't simple thing about price to equity ratios is if you take the price equity ratio and you invert it, that's your implied yield. Price earnings. Price earnings. Price earning. Sorry.
And you invert it. That's your yield. Right? And so NVIDIA is yielding at these prices I think it's somewhere like 2 to 2.5%, which is less than and it's almost half of a typical 2 year bond. And so when you have a yield that that's low, you have to see it just grow absolutely massively.
But there's this principle in capitalism, which is in order to grow like that, you're generating so much profit that competitors look at it and say, hold on. You don't deserve that much profit. I'm gonna take some of that.
Your profit is my opportunity. Your margin is my opportunity.
I think that your margin is my opportunity. It's exactly what happens. So I think what I'm waiting for, Friedberg is like in the next two quarters if AMD, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon don't announce something substantive, there's a very good chance that NVIDIA runs away with this. And I think that that's very problematic. But in that case, that price is cheap.
My bet, though, and it's it's a different version of your bet, but we get to the same outcome, is that I don't think that that's gonna happen because it's just too important. And so I think that everybody, other than NVIDIA, wants vendor diversity. Right? You don't wanna get locked into one person -- Portability.
--
wants a hardware.
or one copy. You know, one SDK. You don't want that. Nobody wants that except NVIDIA and NVIDIA shareholders. So my bet is in the two quarters, you start to see some real action so that folks start to have to balance their forecasts where it's not just a 100% NVIDIA, but it's NVIDIA plusplusplus.
And that's sort of what I would bet because it just seems like logical and right because I I'd otherwise it would it would be pretty derelict of these hyperscalers to just throw their hands in the air and just give the whole market to them, and it would be derelict of AMD. The other thing that's happening is And AMD, you know, AMD is AMD is a great memory solution, but they really don't have a deterministic AI chip. And I think that Lisa Su needs to get needs to act decisively here and build something, announce something, buy something, but she needs to be really aggressive here.
If you look at the language models, a lot of them are taking less and less CPU GPU to actually build them So this has been like a bit of a race or a competition on hugging face. I showed the leaderboard in another episode, maybe 2 ago. But I've been talking to some of the people who are doing these language models to Moth, and they said there's massive inefficiency. And so Yeah.
And by the way, the other thing that Seabrook mentioned Jay Cal is also happening, which is like the Friedberg, you talked about this, the atomization of these models is happening, I think, even faster than when you first brought that up.
Yeah. So what took 2 or $3,000,000 last year is now taking $200,000 just through software improvements and code improvements. Crazy. And now they're thinking, A number the the other thing people are coming to is because of so much what's the term hallucinations that people are using? Because of the hallucinations, people are making narrower models better deeper in legal or just, you know, Stack Overflow, just core or just a vertical in core.
They take less GPU, but they get better results. because you've constrained the dataset, and that's resulting in, you know, better outcomes. So I think this could also be where maybe people don't need as much GPU or CPU at the same time, so many people are going after it so that can flip where the demand could actually decrease because of software efficiencies or hitting some benchmark that's reasonable enough. What do you think, Friedberg?
Look. I think as performance improves, as cost declines like any economic model, there's a pretty nonlinear relationship with demand. So we'll find new ways to apply this technology. I think the demand's only gonna go nonlinear.
Other thing that's happening is people are starting to build like Mosaic, ML. They're building cloud independent model. So you can take the same model, build it on your own proprietary, personal cloud, not educate Chat CPT 4, not educate Bard, but do it with your own model. And then you can move it from Azure.
Brand reduction and fine tuning seems to, like, get to the point that we can run these things on small machines cheaply, quickly, and it just It'll change the it'll change the applications.
You're saying run inference cheaper, not run training.
Run inference. That's right.
§06Biden's fall, populism in both parties
Oh, no. This is not good. Biden just had a big fall on stage at the US Air Force Academy graduation.
Oh, no. I don't think he'll be okay. But woah. It's not like he fell off the stage. He just traded.
No. You do. Oh, it
doesn't it doesn't look good, but it could have broke something. Well, I hope he's okay.
I hope he's okay.
Yeah. I mean, we just had this all talk about it. Yeah. I mean, it's just -- Again,
I think, like, physical like, these kinds of physical things are are normal, and I think people need to be much more empathetic about that kind of stuff.
he was riding
a bike
over the summer last year, I remember. And he looked great for riding a bike.
I mean, FDR was in a wheelchair. So I don't care about that. all I care about is mental acuity.
Yeah. Me too. He's okay.
By the way, I I want him to be well enough to run because I'm scared of some of the other democratic candidates they might put up.
Say more.
You know? Like, I don't wanna get a president Newsome or a president Harris. I mean, I don't think Biden is very good, but I think he's better than Harris or Newsom.
Biden traps out who's a lead candidate in your mind. RFK. Really?
Wow. I would prefer RFK to Biden, but I think what'll happen if Biden drops out is we'll get a flood of establishment Democrat candidates in the race. Newsom, maybe JB Pritster, Harris, for sure.
There's a lot of differences between the left and the right, but the one similar is that there's a large amount of voters in both of those blocks who don't fundamentally like these establishment candidates. And I think that that sentiment is exactly the same. And so, you know, you can have a pro Trump wave on the right just like you could have a pro RFK wave on the left. and they are solidified by the same idea which is I think you're going to see more and more outsiders have a chance through the nomination process to get in.
I think that their party will stop it. I mean, they shut down Bernie Sanders. Remember that? It was Sanders against Clinton. Clinton.
And they
--
Yeah. They shipped them.
They they rigged the primary against them. Where am I allowed to use that word?
Uh-oh. I think they just labeled our they just labeled the episode.
No. But look. I mean, the the the establishment has in the democratic party has a huge influence over the outcome because they control the super delegates. Right? They'll never -- Would
it do some supercharge, the republican base? I mean, being like a coastal elite and what's happened with San Francisco and LA, I think that just drives out the Trump voters in a massive way that
--
I said, like, over a year ago, I thought that the -- Wow.
--
that 2024 would be a Newsom DeSantis race. I still think there's, like, a 10 20% chance on that.
Wow. That would be wild. It'd be wild.
It'd be
10%.
What about Joe Mansion? What's the story there? Anybody you have any insights on Joe Mansion?
We had a phenomenal dinner at my house last week. He is so charming. Okay. So what do you need this?
What do you care about? I don't know if you publicly disclose with him.
Well, it's already happened. We had a, you know, we had a we had a fabulous dinner, and he met a lot of people here. And he's he's amazing.
Did Saks come to that?
And Heather and and Heather's amazing. Heather's amazing too. His his daughter who she ran I think it was Mylan Pharmaceutical incredible executive.
Joe Matson would jump in. Yeah? You think Tremont? Match's founders. If Biden wasn't in, Joe Matson would jump in, you think?
I don't I don't know by any chance. I don't wanna speculate any on anything like that. But I think he's I think he's an amazing American patriot.
Is that your guy Friedberg? Would you go Joe Manchin because he wants to control spending?
I don't know. I don't know.
Sure.
I'll tell you one of the reasons why I like RFK Junior is that I mean, there's so many issues that he's deviating from Democratic Party Orthodoxies in favor of free speech. and against censorship. He's in favor of civil liberties and against this, like, massive surveillance state that we've created. And our foreign policy wants to end all the crazy wars. And I would say that of all the candidates I've heard, he understands the situation in Ukraine the most deeply.
Now both Trump and DeSantis have called for a ceasefire, and that's good. And I think RFK would work towards a ceasefire too. But RFK Junior goes deeper and explains how the whole situation in Ukraine came about. And so he understands it very deeply.
Alright, folks. There you have it. Another episode of the online podcast for The Decatur, The Architect, David Sachs. And -- I won't call him.
--
kingmaker. No. He's a kingmaker.
Oh, sorry. Kingmaker. I like
architect. -- news.
You like architect or king? It's facing It's crazy.
The whole thing was just, like, made up?
No. But I know. But as a nickname, which one you prefer?
What do you prefer? Architect, do you prefer? or king
--
What do the articles say? Kingmaker?
The article's a kingmaker. I said architect. I think architect is more Schvendaliish.
The article is about a hall that never happened.
Ignues?
With the person you don't know.
With the person I don't know.
Right. Okay. That aside. What what nickname would you like us to use going forward. Kingmaker or
a architect?
--
that the whole article was made up.
Yes. Putting that aside. Architect? Can I go with Kingmaker? I like Kingmaker.
I like architect.
But it's so silly.
Mister secretary, please tell us which one. Yeah. Secretary of State.
Look. I'm I'm a I'm a mid level donor, mid at best.
You're mid. They're
mid at best.
Red red sub Reddits are going crazy right now. Mid
at best. And then influencer, I'm mid
at best. So -- Could you be secretary of state?
Mid mid. However, there it's true that there are very few podcasters who probably donated anything.
You could be. Yeah. Henry Kissinger, a medal in Albright, highest ranking, foreign born, Citizens to lead.
Yes. I think that you would be an exceptional secretary of state. I'm just gonna put
that up.
So you could be secretary of state, Cabinet
--
I think
you would kick -- -- secretary
of state.
Because you have the intellectual firepower to actually not get bamboozled on this stuff. You'd hold your ground.
You know who actually I think was pretty good on on foreign policy. He doesn't get any credit was was Jared Kushner. I was listening to an interview with him. And This happened, like, 8 months ago, and he was describing the whole situation in Ukraine. And he says very clearly that he and Trump under stood that bring Ukraine into NATO as a red line for the Russians, and they never went there.
So they armed Ukraine, but they were very careful to not make any statements about Ukraine coming into NATO. He understood that that was a serious provocation. I'll post the interview in the chat. But it was with, I think, Gerard Baker from the Wall Street Journal. So Jared understood the situation better than most of these you know, foreign policy elite establishment types who don't understand how their actions can be perceived as provocative by the other side.
Well, he he's sure secured the bag after getting out of that gig.
2,000,000,000.
When he got the Abraham, the cord's done. And now Biden's just flush it down the toilet because he's alienated the Saudi so much. They've gone to the the Chinese.
I mean, the fact that there's flights between Israel and the Middle East nations now, and they seem to have a common it's pretty economy in China.
I don't think you understand how much Biden has alienated the Saudis. You wouldn't shake Biden wouldn't shake the man's hand. What's the point of that?
I I'd I'm I'm not in favor of buying Oh, yeah.
What was that? Like a fist bump or
they had a peanut?
prenegotiated fist bump.
Yeah. It's a little
--
How insulting is that?
The one thing I loved about Trump was he was willing to meet with anybody. My my idea of foreign policy is meet with as many people as possible. as often as possible and not go to war. I would meet with Kim Jong Un, Putin, Xi Jinping on the regular. every country we should be meeting with because that's how progress gets moved.
Not meeting with them is yeah. I mean, it's not a reward I think there's a part of this military industrial complex that believes a meeting with the president is a reward or an endorsement of the worst things anybody's ever done. It's not. It's a meeting to try to make the world safer or to try to build common ground. And so that is not me or Jim Crane or or however you wanna try to frame it.
It's intelligent. And I I'm for intelligent foreign policy, which is talking to people. Let's talk about some people who said yes to come to all in Summit. Let's just do a quick speaker
around that time. I gotta go to lunch.
I love you guys.
I love you, Bassie. Yeah. Fuck this.
I'm done with this shit.
love you. A soft rebrick. I love you.
Thank you. Darn it.
See you tonight. The total sick lord.
My wife winter's ride.
Rainman, David, Saturday.
And it said -- We
opened sit to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.
besties are golf. That is funny on a dog thinking, and I wish
driveway. We
should all just get a room and just have one think you, George, because they're all just a nuisance. It's like this, like, sexual friendship that they just need to release somehow.
What? You're the big bee. What?
You're a thief. What? What? Where did you
get Merkeys are now?